Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

Let me begin in Hastings, in my electorate of Flinders. Mick Carroll is the proprietor of Carroll's Injection Moulding. It is a firm which, when you include him and his wife, employs six people as of my last discussion with him. Carroll's Injection Moulding is a proud Australian firm—Mick and a number of members of the firm are part of the Mount Martha Fire Brigade—but it has to compete against international imports into Australia. What Mick has told me is a story that has been repeated around Australia. He said: 'I'm proud of the environmental savings we have made within our firms, but the increase in electricity and gas prices under the proposed carbon tax is likely to be the final straw and I will have to export much of my manufacturing offshore and some of these six workers will lose their jobs.' That is what Mick Carroll has said. That has been the story around Australia in so many places, from so many people, and what it means is that global emissions will not go down but that Australian jobs, investment in Australia and Australian emissions will be exported to China, India, Indonesia and other countries with different regimes. In many cases, the emissions for the projects in question will go up if they are occurring in a less developed environment.

So let us begin with the heart of the matter, and that is that this scheme at this time in this form will not reduce Australia's emissions and it will not reduce global emissions, but it will hurt real people with real jobs and it will hurt every Australian who has to pay electricity bills, gas bills and grocery bills. But there is a choice. There is fundamentally a better way than a massive tax on electricity, gas and groceries, and it is an exemplar of the two philosophies in contest in this chamber. One is a philosophy of tax and punishment. The other one is a philosophy of incentive, hope and optimism. That is what we bring to this chamber, that is what we bring to the Australian people—and, strangely enough, that is what the Prime Minister purported to bring to the last election when she ruled out a carbon tax.

In speaking on the Clean Energy Bill 2011 and related bills, I want to proceed in four clear themes: firstly, democratic respect; secondly, the truth about international action and where Australia fits in that; thirdly, the flaws in the tax itself and, in particular, the inelasticity on a relative basis of electricity, the impact on families, the impact on the economy and the true cost in economic terms of what is being proposed here; and, fourthly, the fact that there is an alternative, a better way, which is effective, costed, capped and fully funded from offset savings.

Let me turn first to the notion of democratic respect. The nature of democracy is that parties take to the people a platform on which they seek election. Their fundamental duty is to outline that platform, to seek a mandate and to implement that platform.

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