Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Childcare and Early Childhood Learning) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to speak on today's MPI, which is about the impact of a carbon tax on state and local governments. I would like to pick up on some remarks that the member for Newcastle made in her contribution. She started off by saying that the opposition denies the basic facts of climate change. That is not what this debate is about. It is certainly not what rural and regional members and constituents of mine are about, member for Newcastle.

This is about considering the question: if you take action on climate change, what sort of action do you take? There has been so much talk from the government about transition and transformation in our patchwork economy. There has been so much jargon on this subject. Transitions are all very well. Of course we would support them if they were in the interests of the country and the interests of the planet, but they are not. We have to look at what this government is doing with its carbon tax and the effect that it has on the people that we represent here in this parliament.

Those effects are not good. The member for Newcastle spoke about the steel industry—and, coming from Newcastle, she should know the steel industry well—and said that the opposition has no plan to match the government's steel transformation plan. But the point is that if we did not have the government's carbon tax we would not have the need for the steel transformation plan. Admittedly, in one respect $100 million is good help for the steel industry, but it is coming from a carbon tax adjustment fund. By what convoluted logic can the government then say to us, 'You're not supporting the steel industry'? Of course we are supporting the steel industry. We do not want to see a situation where every piece of steel in Australia is manufactured overseas. I recently visited an engineering shop in my electorate of Farrer, in Corowa on the Murray River. They provided the bridgework for some magnificent steel bridges over the Yarra and won awards for it. I asked the proprietor, 'Do you think that in five years time the steel you use in your metal fabrication shop will come from Australia?' He said, 'Not a chance—not the way this government's heading with its carbon tax.' How ashamed we should feel to live in a country with the resources we have and to import often second-grade steel from China. How ridiculous that is.

We had the lecture from the member for Hotham about the opening up of the Australian economy, becoming competitive, floating the dollar, tariffs, and recognising our place in the integrated globalised modern world. Sure, we all know that stuff, Member for Hotham. But it is an insult to link the reforms that were made—some by Labor governments, some by Liberal governments—to this carbon tax and to try to suggest that this is part of that, that this is also one of those great reforms. The member for Hotham also said that economic diversification is the key to success. He has worked that out, because he has travelled around regional Australia. He has not been to my electorate, but he has been to the electorate of the member for Riverina and conducted one of his forums in Wagga and he appeared on an ABC TV program in my electorate. He has even been to some more remote parts of Australia. I recognise that he needs to do that. He has come back with the message that economic diversification is the key to success! So tell me why would we be attacking our manufacturing sector and shrinking the diversified base of our economy down to something that we will as members of communities struggle to deal with, particularly in regional areas? If economic diversification is the key to success, the next logical thought that the government should have is how we maintain, strengthen and sustain that economic diversification, and the last thing we should be doing is taxing it.

I started by talking about the need for action on global warming. It is something I support. I am on record as supporting it and I am proud to do so. I do not agree with all of my constituents. Sometimes I have very vigorous conversations with climate change sceptics and I say: 'You could be right, I could be right, but I am adopting the precautionary principle that we need to take action to prevent the warming of the planet. That is a good thing.' But if this government is serious about taking that action then what they should be doing is encouraging the rest of the world.

The foreign minister has been tripping through Africa and the Middle East. He has been doing good work there, I recognise that. He has made a fantastic number of visits to foreign countries, but where on his agenda has been the encouragement for the next global conference following Copenhagen? Does anybody even know where it will be? I probably should but I don't, because it is never mentioned. It is not mentioned by the government. If they want to see action on climate change that we can be a meaningful contributor to then they should be encouraging the next global conference on climate change, and the Foreign Minister should be using his good offices and his links with so many of his counterparts throughout the world to make that happen. But it is not even talked about. Everything has shrunk back to the Australian agenda. So somehow we can be this small, isolated piece of action on climate change at the end of the world. Does anybody think that the American government—America being the biggest emitter of carbon so-called pollution—is going to go to the next election with a policy of a price on carbon of $30 a tonne? Of course they are not. Does anybody think that we should be taking action without the most industrialised countries going forward at the same time with us? Of course they don't, if they think about it.

This tax has a terrible effect on state and local governments. I happened to bump into a councillor from the City of Shoalhaven in my office this morning. Shoalhaven is a beautiful part of the world and has 95,000 residents. I asked the councillor, 'What do you think the effect of a carbon tax will be on the people you represent?' He said, 'Well, our electricity bill is $400,000 a year." I said, 'Wow!' And he said, 'But that is just for running the street lights.' $400,000 to run the street lights for the City of Shoalhaven of 95,000 people is quite a lot of money and it will be quite a big impost if that goes up by what the estimates are, which is between 10 and 20 per cent—so let us say 15 per cent.

The other cost that he mentioned and other councils have mentioned to me is the cost of landfill. Unfortunately, landfill is one of the top 500 polluters being attacked by this government. Not everything makes sense in this area. When it comes to landfill everything that you have dumped in the ground for years is taxable all of a sudden to your local council. They have to make calculations and you would assume they would pass on those costs to their ratepayers, except in New South Wales, where they face rate caps and cannot pass on the costs to ratepayers. Where will they go? Reduce services, reduce staff, shed more jobs.

You think of the services local governments provide. We drive through towns in the middle of the drought and everybody who comes into a small local town often sees it as an oasis of green, calm and tranquillity. The worst thing that happened is that you could not water the lawn. You think of the energy that will go into pumping water to water the green spaces in our towns and our cities. That is extremely energy intensive. You think of the cost of electricity on every single council provided service, whether it is the public library, the maternal and child healthcare service or the council offices themselves and it is a relentless, impossible burden that is facing local government. And it is one which the minister for local government, who has spoken in this debate, should really be ashamed of. This tax will hit regional Australia harder than any other area. We know as members of this side of the House because we come from regional Australia, we go home to regional Australia and we feel the pain of regional Australia.

Much has been made of the state governments' reports and investigations into the cost on states of a carbon tax. They have been ridiculed by members of the government. In all my experience of watching state premiers in their dealings with Canberra, if they do not agree with Canberra they say so, and if they do agree with Canberra they say so. So when you have the Premiers of Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland stand up and show results that say there will be increasing cost burdens on their states with this carbon tax and what is the government going to do about it—job losses: 24,000 in Victoria and 31,000 in New South Wales. They are easy numbers to say but we know the pain of every single job loss when we see it in our own community. Those are very big numbers. State governments, of course, are going to be hit incredibly hard by this carbon tax and those premiers should be saying to Julia Gillard: 'Sort this out. Do something different.'

Our own fabulous Parliamentary Library has produced some information that suggests that the price on carbon that would have to be put that would make the difference that that government says will be made is a price that is well above what we are actually seeing. Which means that, in spite of all this pain, it is still a fraud on the Australian people and it is not going to achieve the things that they have said that it will. (Time expired)

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