Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Competition Policy and Consumer Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

It is an honour to stand before the parliament tonight and follow through on what I promised my electorate I would do. That was along with 148—maybe 147, if you want to argue the point—other members in this House, who all went to the last election promising that there would not be a carbon tax. I am happy to stand here tonight and honour my undertaking. I wish those opposite would do the same. In fact, my electorate and electorates right around Australia wish Labor members would actually do what they promised. They still have ringing in their ears the deceitful words of a Prime Minister who got elected by stooging the Australian public by promising, 'There will not a carbon tax under the government I lead'.

The Prime Minister has rightly been attacked for making such a blatant and calculated statement so late in the election campaign and clearly motivated by the hesitation of many thousands of Australian voters who believed in their hearts that you could not quite take the Prime Minister at her word. After the backflip involving the abandonment of Kevin Rudd's climate tax arrangement and Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, people were not convinced—and we on this side of the House understood. That is why there were repeated challenges to the Gillard government, its ministers and the Prime Minister to be frank and straight with the Australian public about their intentions concerning a carbon tax.

The Leader of the Opposition, I think at least a dozen times, highlighted what we understood was the secret agenda of the Labor Party and of Prime Minister Gillard and her ministers. That was to sneak in, slip-slide into office, hope that no-one really challenged them on their intentions with the carbon tax and go and do it anyway in the spirit of what Peter Garrett once outlined before the 2007 election—just get in, do what you need to do and then do whatever you feel like afterwards. That was the concern the Australian public had. So, staring down the barrel of a camera, just as I am doing now, the Prime Minister sought to reassure Australian voters that there would be no carbon tax under a government she would lead.

That was designed to remove the hesitation that so many Australian voters had about what Labor was really planning, and because of that I am certain that numbers of voters in many electorates across Australia thought: 'Well, okay; that's as black-and-white as it gets. If that's what the Prime Minister of Australia, albeit one that has only just arrived, is going to say, staring down the lens of a camera, maybe we could take her at her word.' That proved not to be the case. So a government was formed, a Prime Minister was re-elected by one of the most calculated deceptions, which exercised a great democratic deficit—

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