Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry and Science) Share this | Hansard source

To assist any member interested in this particular matter, I do have the video available; I am getting it converted to be available on YouTube for everyone to see an accurate and correct reflection of events.

The government espouses all these benefits of the carbon tax. It is such a ridiculous proposition. If the carbon tax is so good for the jobs of tomorrow, then why don't you double it? Then we will have even more jobs! That is how illogical this actually is. The government talks about compensation for industry. Well, you only provide compensation when you injure someone. This carbon tax is intended to injure business, is intended to injure industry.

It is particularly heinous because what we have done in this parliament is pass a tax before the rest of the world has done so. It is insane, absolutely insane, to penalise Australian businesses, to put extra lead in their saddlebags when they try to export overseas, competing against businesses that do not have the costs of a carbon tax imposed upon them. It is insane to penalise our businesses that compete with imported products, because those products are not exposed to a carbon tax. There is no other country that has a carbon tax of this nature, one that is intended to increase, to go up and up and up. This is why, fundamentally, the carbon tax is bad; it is disastrous for business, particularly in the manufacturing sphere, particularly for energy intensive businesses, because it goes to the heart of the competitiveness of those businesses. And there is no answer. As Graham Kraehe from BlueScope said, any compensation is 'like putting a bandaid on a bullet wound'.

This is affecting all sorts of industries. The food and grocery manufacturers, who employ over 300,000 Australians, are labouring under extraordinary pressure. They have said that a carbon tax will be bad for Australian manufacturers. Kate Carnell, the recent Chief Executive of the Australian Food and Grocery Council, said:

For Julia Gillard to say that food companies who aren’t in the top 1000 emitters won’t be affected by carbon tax is simply wrong.

Further, she said:

Products requiring the most energy to manufacture would see the biggest cost increases such as baked goods, dairy sugar and paper products like nappies.

The Labor Party bleat and try to label us on this side as scaremongers because we merely oppose the carbon tax. Do they say the same thing about a whole list of industries and businesses who have condemned the carbon tax? Let us look at other trade exposed industries. We saw economic modelling showing that there would be a forced closure of eight coalmines and that $22 billion of exports would be forgone. We have seen Treasury's own modelling of the carbon tax show that the aluminium industry would be cut by more than a half by 2050. We have seen the shelved expansion of the refinery in Western Australia and we have seen the situation in Geelong, where the car industry is also affected. We saw independent modelling regarding the impact of the carbon tax on the car industry—an extra $460 million over 10 years. If this carbon tax is so great, why are all these industries saying, in one way or another, that a carbon tax is going to make them less competitive and that a carbon tax will make a difficult situation much, much worse?

There are some further words of wisdom from Graham Kraehe, a great Australian with over 40 years experience in manufacturing. I hear some members on the other side laughing. Well, colleagues on the other side of the House, you actually do need business people to run businesses, to employ people and to increase the living standards and the economy of this nation. He has asked a very simple question: why is the government prepared to sacrifice a key sector of the Australian economy by introducing a carbon tax on Australian manufacturers, with little impact on world CO2 generation? What is being proposed is a system that will tax Australian made goods but will give importers of those same goods a competitive advantage, with no comparable tax payable.

It could not have been said more eloquently and concisely. We see this right across the board. We see the pressure on the furniture, cabinet and joinery makers, who employ 137,000 people. They say that a carbon tax will further erode our competitive position, with no real effect on climate change. We see an impact on the tourism industry of $731 million. The government claims, bleats, that the carbon tax is good for Australian businesses and is setting us up for the future, but it is setting us up for failure. It is setting us up for more job losses, and they know it. That is why they are sneaking behind closed doors trying to keep certain businesses and industries sweet by saying, 'Look here, we'll throw you a bit more compensation money to make up for the injury we are causing you.' That is no way to run a government or an economy and it is no way to plan for the difficult economic months and years we have ahead. This government should stop listening to those lunatic greens and start listening to the people who make this country great: those businesses that employ great Australians.

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