Ian Macfarlane (Groom, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Energy and Resources) Share this | Hansard source

I think we need to be tough on frivolous points of order and eject the member from the House!

The most insidious aspect of the Gillard government's carbon tax is that there is no sector of our economy and no corner of the Australian community that will be exempt from its reach. The minister for local government is simply wrong when he says farmers will not pay the carbon tax. He knows I was a farmer. He knows that farmers will pay the knock-on effect of this tax on every consumer item they buy on their farm, including the costs in bringing their inputs to that farm through transport.

The carbon tax is designed, quite simply, to make everything more expensive. That is the way it works. It is designed to make sure that it is impossible to escape. It puts up the cost of consumables to the community because it has at its heart a belief that if you increase the costs then people will use less and, therefore, emit less. Those on that side cannot deny that. Key to the increasing costs is the increase in the price of electricity. The price of electricity will go up to households, businesses, local governments, state governments and even the federal government in running this building. It is simply impossible to escape any of these increases in cost.

The minister for local government suggests that local governments are not already doing everything they can to lower their power bills. We know that that statement is incorrect. We know that local governments are already, because of the substantial increases in the price of electricity over recent times—since 2007, electricity prices have gone up by 50 per cent—doing everything they can to be more efficient, like installing more efficient street lighting. But the savings of all those efficiencies will be lost as the price of electricity to local government goes up. So we will see higher water rates, higher sewer rates, higher costs in maintaining roads within the local government areas. This is a tax that will affect local government and, in doing that, will affect the ratepayers of that local government authority.

This is a government addicted to new taxes. We have seen a flood levy, a mining tax, a $2.5 billion tax on condensate in the North West Shelf and, just recently, a tax on those people who have taken the responsible step of converting their vehicles to LPG. Those quarter-million families who used a government incentive—a subsidy—to convert their vehicles to LPG have now been caught in the ultimate honey trap. The government opposite encouraged those families to convert to LPG on the basis that there was no excise. Once they converted their cars, the government brought in a new tax. Those people will not only pay higher prices for LPG but will also see the price of electricity at their homes go up 20 per cent.

The transport industry—after the next election, we understand from what the Prime Minister has said—will see a 6.5c rise in the cost of fuel. That rise has already been targeted to hit the resource industry as soon as the tax comes in, but the transport industry will see a 6.5c rise in their fuel costs. That again will pass on to local government. Local government run their own trucks. They run their own machinery as they repair roads in their authorities. As I said at the outset, this tax will reach into every corner of our community, and local government will pass those costs back on to the household. It is all going to end up in one place: families facing higher and higher cost-of-living pressures.

I heard the member for Wide Bay and Leader of the Nationals talk about the impact in terms of the disposal of rubbish at municipal dumps. I had the opportunity when I was up at Maitland a few weeks ago to meet with the local mayor, who said this was going to cost ratepayers around Australia over $200 million just in disposing of their rubbish. In the municipality that I was in, that equated to about $35 a household. That is on top of higher electricity prices, higher water prices and the increases that we are going to see right across the board because this tax reaches into every household. It will affect not only electricity and gas prices but grocery prices and all cost-of-living pressures that are put on a family. And why? Because the Prime Minister broke her promise.

'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.' She said so brazenly, as did the Deputy Prime Minister, in the lead-up to the last election because they knew that if they were honest with the community and said, 'We're going to introduce a carbon tax,' they would not have been elected, because the community knows the impact of this tax is higher costs on the community, higher costs on their families and less money to spend on their children. This is a bad tax and it will not achieve any sort of outcome. For state governments the hit will be just as substantial. The New South Wales government will have a substantial hit on the value of its power stations, already estimated at $5 billion in write-down on those values. The Queensland Labor government—and I would not trust their figures as far as I could kick them—are estimating the loss there will be $1.7 billion, but in reality it is probably double that. On top of that, the Queensland Treasury modelling shows that the state's gross product will be down by about 3½ per cent as a result of this carbon tax in the ensuing years to 2049-50. This is a hit on the bottom line of economic growth and the state governments will feel it. A study by Deloittes shows that a carbon tax of $33 a tonne will drop economic growth by 4.11 per cent over the same period.

This is a bad tax. This is a tax which will achieve nothing. This is a tax that will not cause the conversion of coal fired power stations to gas fired power stations. This is an attack on the living standards of everyday Australians and everyday families. That is why the opposition is opposed to this tax. That is why the people of Australia are opposed to this tax. That is why thousands of people have been massing in front of this parliament. They now feel that the only way they can be heard by this government is to come down and confront it. So out of touch are the people on that side of the House that men and women of Australia feel they have to come down here to ensure that this government gets its message that they do not want their everyday activities costing more as a result of this tax.

See this speech in context