Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Banks for that very important question. The government has been absolutely open about the impact of carbon pricing on the general price level, and we know that it will impact on inflation by 0.7 per cent, less than one cent in the dollar. We know that the great bulk of businesses will do the right thing; they always do. But, for any business that is thinking of misleading claims about the impact of carbon pricing, they will have the ACCC down on them like a tonne of bricks, because it is simply not going to be justified for people to be making the sorts of claims that were made by the shadow minister before without that going through full ACCC scrutiny.

It is the role of the ACCC to examine unreasonable claims. It is the role of the ACCC to put in place fines if those claims are found to be false and misleading, so that is what we have done with the ACCC. We have funded them. They are establishing a hotline that consumers can call, but not just consumers, because it could be other businesses that will become the victim of this process. It is there for business as well as consumers, on 1300 303 609. As I have said, we have put in place the appropriate funding, and there can be fines of up to $1.1 million—up to 1.1 million reasons for people not to rip off consumers or other businesses.

The opposition have been running around the place, saying that the impact on prices is going to be unimaginable; they are going to go through the roof. We have also had a further Treasury study, and this new Treasury analysis once again shows a price impact of less than one cent in the dollar in the September quarter of 2012. This is a study of what markets are expecting from the impact of the carbon price, and it has confirmed the original Treasury modelling. But, despite all of this, we have got the opposition running around with their scare campaign, whilst at the same time you have got opposition backbenchers over there investing in coal companies, which the Leader of the Opposition tells us are going to be wiped from the face of the earth.

The fact is—and this is a simple fact—that on 1 July we will see the true test of Tony Abbott's slippery scare campaign. The fact is that 1 July will reveal the Leader of the Opposition as a dodgy snake oil salesman—nothing but deceit and negativity.

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