Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Families, Housing and Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

That's right, an insult. That person will be $425 a year worse off as a result of this government's great big new carbon tax. We know that 52 per cent of households in Western Australia, for example, will be worse off under this carbon tax.

This is coming at the worst time of all so far as Australian families are concerned. We know that no other country in the world is doing this. We are racing ahead of the rest of the world to the great competitive disadvantage of Australia. It is coming at a time when Australians are already facing increased cost-of-living pressures so far as their lifestyles are concerned. From the December quarter of 2007, when the Labor Party was elected to government in Australia, until the March quarter of this year—so measuring their term in office—what has happened so far as the cost of living is concerned? Electricity prices have gone up by a whopping 51 per cent on average across Australia. Gas prices have increased by an average 30 per cent. Water and sewerage rates have increased by an average 46 per cent. Health costs—that is, things like hospital, optical, dental, pharmaceutical costs—have gone up by an average 20 per cent across Australia. Education costs, school fees and other incidentals related to education and schooling, have increased on average by 24 per cent since 2007.

Interest rates have increased seven times since September 2009, increasing repayments on the average mortgage by over $500 a month in a little under 18 months. On top of these, we know that the costs of all sorts of other things have gone up. The price of bread—one of the staples of life for any family or any individual, for that matter—is up by 11 per cent. The cost of food overall is up by 13 per cent. The cost of fruit has gone up by 28 per cent. The amount of rent that people are now paying has increased by 20 per cent.

I cannot think of a worse time to introduce a carbon tax in terms of the impact that it is going to have on the cost of living of Australians and their job prospects and the job prospects of their children. That is the great tragedy of it. We have an out-of-touch government hell-bent on simply continuing the deal it has done with Bob Brown and the Greens. That is going to lead to ruination of not just this country but the standards of living of so many Australian families.

Let me remind you what a carbon tax means. It means a $9 billion a year tax. It means a 10 per cent hike in electricity prices in the first year alone. It means a nine per cent increase in gas bills in the first year alone. You will see higher marginal tax rates for many low- and middle-income earners. Of course, there is a $4.3 billion hit on the budget bottom line which will see every Australian slugged over $40,000 over the coming decades. That is the equivalent of a whole year's work for many Australians who are going to be paying year after year after year for Labor's broken promise. On top of that we have a $515 a year hit on the cost of living and that is just for starters under this great big new tax which is being introduced by the Labor Party.

What we have is a Prime Minister who has lost the trust of the families of Australia. There is one thing that a government cannot lose. It can lose all sorts of things and it can be unpopular for a time, but when the bond of trust between the people of the nation and the Prime Minister, in particular, and the government is destroyed then it will not be regained. That is why people have given up listening to this Prime Minister. That is why when you go around the electorates of this nation, people explain their great frustration about what is going on in this place at the present time. Promising commitments with no intention of honouring them is the greatest measure of all of distrust and that is what we have seen from this Prime Minister. Of course, now we have the foreign minister stalking, the backbench in disarray, the government in denial and this leaves the country without any real leadership for the future at a time when we need it.

At a time when the cost of living is increasing significantly in Australia, when the international financial situation is in crisis, when Australians are concerned about their job security—for example, we have seen 54,000 jobs lost in manufacturing alone in the last year, and we know that nine out of 10 workers in the manufacturing industry are not going to be in businesses that get one cent of compensation—so far as this tax is concerned we have a complete lack of direction from this government. We have a Prime Minister who is no longer focused on the concerns of Australian families. She is focused simply on her survival and whether or not the faceless men will do what they did to her predecessor and remove her at sometime in the future. What we have is a disjointed, dysfunctional disarray that pretends to be a government in Australia—they should do the decent and honourable thing and call an election.

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