Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Regional Transport) Share this | Hansard source

I will get back to it, Mr Deputy Speaker. The point I made is that that kiss is memorable because it is going to be the kiss of death to small businesses throughout regional Australia. We now know that the member for Griffith will be no different to the member for Lalor when he is reinstalled in the Lodge. When he returns as Prime Minister, the member for Griffith will treat small business in exactly the same manner.

It is often said that in politics timing is everything, but it is never the right time for a bad tax. Now is the time when we have volatile world markets and there is great economic uncertainty. This is not the time for a new tax and those opposite know it. They know it because they are getting that feedback from their electorates on a daily basis. They just have not had the courage to come into this place and stand up for their communities. It is certainly not the right time to introduce a tax that our international competitors will not be paying, when the Australian small business sector is doing it hard.

If there is a first rule in Australian politics, surely it should be to do no harm. When it comes to the small-business sector right now, confidence is down and certainly the retail sector in regional communities is down—and I presume it is the same in metropolitan areas, but I tend to spend more time in regional communities—and confidence is taking a battering. And the worst thing a government could be doing right now is introducing a new tax which will diminish community confidence further and force people to keep their hands in their pockets and not spend, particularly when their international competitors will not face the same impost.

That is the crucial point. We are making Australian businesses less competitive compared to their international counterparts. This tax will erode small business confidence. It will encourage businesses which have the option to relocate offshore to do just that, to take jobs offshore, and it will also make it more difficult for small businesses right across our nation.

One area of small business which has often been missed in this debate is the agricultural sector. The government has continued to make claims that the agricultural sector is out of the carbon tax. The feedback from constituents of mine involved in the dairy sector dispute that. The President of the United Dairy Farmers Victoria, Chris Griffin, put out a statement earlier this year highlighting their concerns that the introduction of a carbon price of just $20 would cost the dairy industry over $45 million per annum. This would work out to a $5,000 charge for every Australian dairy farmer per year. Mr Griffin stated:

These additional costs will disproportionately affect the ability of Victorian dairy producers to compete in international markets. Our competitors will not have to deal with the burden of a price on carbon, making it impossible to pass on the added cost of the tax to consumers.

Dairy farmers hit with a $5,000 increase in their cost of production will survive. But what it will mean is they will have to reduce their expenditure in their local communities. The small country towns that rely on a profitable dairy sector will suffer as a direct result of that, and the people who will suffer most are the small businesses, like the local sports shop. Instead of mum and dad going in and buying the brand product from the local sport shop, they will go to a large warehouse or department store and buy the cheaper variety. That is what happens in small country towns when you undermine the profitability of the dairy sector—the small business community suffers as a result.

That highlights the greatest Labor Party myth about this carbon tax—that the so-called 500 biggest polluters are the only ones who will pay the carbon tax. Regional Australians are smarter than that, and small business owners in particular understand that that is a myth. They realise that they are at the absolute pointy end of this debate. They know that this tax will cascade through the Australian economy like a toxic waterfall. This tax will cascade through the economy and add costs to everyday Australian families. It will hurt small businesses, it will make Australian exporters less competitive and it will cost jobs.

If it was so good, why didn't the Prime Minister go the Australian people before the election and say, 'I will introduce a carbon tax'? If it was so good, why wasn't she honest with the Australian people in the first place? This really comes down to a matter of trust. The Australian people simply do not trust a government when it has a Prime Minister who cannot even arrange for the installation of home insulation batts without tragically killing four young men. This is a complex reform of the Australian economy and the Australian people simply do not trust this government to be able to deliver it.

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