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

I am not sure whether or not there were 30 pieces of silver, but it certainly brought up images of another occasion on which a famous kiss was given.

We know that the Greens are not interested in ordinary Australian families. If you look at the whole range of measures that they put up to this parliament, you can see they are contrary, they are antithetical, to the interests of Australian families. Protecting the environment comes before protecting Australian families, as far as the Greens are concerned. The tragedy for Australians is that we have these measures because we have a minority government which is totally beholden to Bob Brown and the rest of the Greens. Was this something that was being proposed by the government prior to the last election?

Opposition members: No!

No. It was ruled out. Then, after the election, in order to retain government, the Prime Minister signed up to this deal with Senator Bob Brown.

This carbon tax is going to hurt Australian families; there is no doubt about that. I would just like to take the chamber through some instances of real people in this country who are going to be hurt by this measure. Now, these are not my constructions; I did not create these scenarios. These are taken from the government's own material. This is what the government is saying about the effect and impact of this particular tax. These are real people, like Melbourne couple Kirsten and Julian Finger. Kirsten is a qualified paramedic and Julian is a registered nurse. They have one child who is under four years of age and they are expecting a second child. They are a pretty typical Australian family, with two people in the workforce and two kids—one under four, one on the way. We are talking about ordinary Australian families that could be in any of our electorates right around this country. And what is the impact on them? They will be approximately $200 a year worse off under the government's carbon tax, based on the government's own online carbon tax estimator. If we go to the online estimator which the government has put up on the web and put in these figures, what do we find? After all the compensation that the government talks about, this ordinary, typical Australian couple are going to be $200 a year worse off.

Let me take another example, that of a police sergeant earning $80,000 a year, married to a clinic nurse earning about $80,000 a year, with two children, one five and the other six years of age—again, what I would call a relatively typical Australian family: two parents, two incomes and two kids, who in this case are in primary school. They will face a cost-of-living impact of $859 a year but receive compensation of only $31. That is $859 worth of additional costs offset by what? A measly $31. The family will be $828 worse off because of this government's tax. Let me take a third example, that of a storeman earning $38,500 a year who is married to a part-time retail assistant earning $16,500 a year and this couple has no children. The storeman's wage is not huge by any stretch of the imagination and nor is that of the part-time retail assistant by the measure of incomes in Australia; a lot of Australians are in this situation but they are hardly wealthy. This couple will have a cost-of-living increase of $440 a year, according to the government's own calculations. What compensation will they receive? They will get just $303 in compensation. Again, this is a relatively low-income working couple who are going to be $137 a year worse off under this government's carbon tax.

Yet we have the Prime Minister day after day when asked about the impact on these sorts of Australian families just laughing it off—giggling it off is perhaps a better description. She says: 'Don't worry about that; people are going to be better off.' The reality is in the government's own calculations. Do not trust my word for it; go to the website this government has put in place and do the calculations. You will find that, in situations like these, people are going to be worse off.

Take the situation of a single mother with two children aged three and 12 and who is working as a nurse earning about $80,000 a year. She will face a cost-of-living increase of $514 a year and yet the compensation she will receive is only $445 a year. She is going to be $69 a year worse off under the carbon tax. We have the government pretending all Australians are somehow going to be better off because of these changes. The reality is, as these examples illustrate, tens of thousands of Australians are going to be worse off because of this taxation proposals.

Let us consider an electrician earning $75,000 a year who is married to a stay-at-home mum and they have one child under five years of age. Again, this is a typical family constellation in Australia. They will face an increase of $491 a year, but they will only get compensation of $409 a year. This family with one person in the workforce and mum at home with a kid is going to be $82 worse off as a result of these proposals.

It is not just families who are affected. Consider an occupational therapist earning $80,000 a year who is single and without children. This person will face a cost-of-living increase of $441 a year, but receive just $16 by way of compensation.

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