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

Thank you, Deputy Speaker Rishworth, I accept your admonition. The Minister for Resources and Energy has backed away from it and he is not talking about it, saying unless we negotiate a deal that suits the government. But I think that really is the minister's code for, 'Oops, we've stuffed up. We didn't realise how much this would cost to pay out the owners of the power stations. We'd really like to go quiet on this one. We would like to just sneak out of this one and let no-one really notice that we ever talked about Contract for Closure.' The mere threat of Contract for Closure has been a social and economic disaster for a region like mine.

I know the minister at the table understands coal communities, but this policy of Contract for Closure has destroyed confidence in my region already, at a time when the economy is already soft. The government likes to blame that softness on other factors—and these are genuine factors: the high dollar, the European financial crisis, and high transport and wage costs. All of those are having an impact on heavy industry and on the manufacturing sector. But the question I continually put to members opposite—and I have yet to receive a decent answer to—is: Why are you making it harder? Why are you making it harder for Australian manufacturers? Why would any Australian government at a time like this do anything, anything at all, that would make it harder for Australians to compete on world markets? And I get silence like I have yet again tonight. Silence once again. Not one member opposite has got any explanation at all for why you would introduce a carbon tax and make things harder for Australian industry at this difficult time.

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