Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

That was a wall-banger! It has come to this: the party whose leader before the last election pronounced to Australians, 'there will be no carbon tax under the government I lead', whose leader pronounced to Australians the day before the election, 'I rule out a carbon tax,' and whose deputy leader only a few days before the election made it absolutely clear that he thought that the idea of the ALP introducing a carbon tax was 'hysterical' is now worried about truth in advertising! If the ALP were a trading operation, the ACCC would have put them into liquidation by now; in fact, I suspect that they are in liquidation at this moment!

The member for Blair tried to cite the Productivity Commission. If we are interested in truth in advertising, let us go to page 50 of the Productivity Commission's Emission reduction policies and carbon prices in key economies paper of last year. This may be a little bit inconvenient for those opposite, because it says:

… no country currently imposes an economy-wide tax on carbon emissions or has in place an economy-wide—

ETS. That is what the Productivity Commission said last year. My advice to the member for Blair is: if you are going to quote the Productivity Commission in a debate about truth in advertising, you might want to be truthful about what they said.

I turn to the issue of truth in advertising. I will deal with the facts: firstly, whether the carbon tax works at an environmental level, before we address anything else; secondly, what it means for electricity and refrigeration costs; and, thirdly, who pays. At the moment we are living through a $70 million carbon tax advertising blitz. That includes the $46 million which will be spent on the advertising to be screened until Saturday night. Forty-six million dollars has been budgeted for this advertising by the government and spent so far. Since budget day, that is $270,000 a day on advertising telling us about the carbon tax. After 1 July it will continue—there is another $24 million in advertising to come after 1 July. Apart from the fact that it has not really worked, there is just one problem with the advertising: it is the Basil Fawlty moment of political advertising—'Don't mention the carbon tax!' At the moment we are seeing carbon tax advertisements which do not mention the carbon tax. So this matter of public importance, this critical issue before us today, is about truth in advertising and about the government, the party, the group of people and the parliamentarians who have authorised $70 million of expenditure on carbon tax advertising and who do not have the courage to call it by its name of a carbon tax. These miraculous ads with—believe it or not—the hashtag '#cashforyou' do not actually bother to mention 'carbon tax for you afterwards'. It is a slightly bizarre moment of Pythonesque proportions from our furry friends on the opposite side. These guys have a degree of hide when it comes to talking about truth in advertising: $70 million—$46 million so far with another $24 million to come—at $270,000 a day and nobody bothers to mention the carbon tax! That is how much they care about truth in advertising.

Let me go to the whole point of this carbon tax, being to reduce emissions in Australia—so the whole goal is to do the right thing. I am one who believes categorically, absolutely, emphatically that that is an important and valuable thing to do—never doubted it, never will; it is something I believe in. But let us look at the Treasury modelling, because the member for Blair mentioned the Treasury modelling and I have a suspicion he has not read it. Let me say this about the Treasury modelling: it is quite crystal clear and categorical. In 2010, according to page 18 of the summary of modelling, Australia's emissions were 578 million tonnes. By 2020, when you look at the modelling—again on page 18—Australia's emissions will be 621 million tonnes. So over 10 years, after a carbon tax of $36 billion in the first four years and a carbon tax which is going to increase significantly according to that same Treasury modelling, Australia's emissions will have gone up by 43 million tonnes, or by almost two tonnes per person across Australia's population.

That is the starting point, but the consequence of that is that the government then has to go offshore and purchase, through corporations that are doing the acquisitions on their behalf, 94 million tonnes of foreign carbon credits. These carbon credits are going to come from China and Kazakhstan, among other places. I love Borat but I would not be buying 94 million tonnes of carbon credits from Borat and his friends, and there is a reason why: we lived through the Home Insulation Program and we saw what happened when you let loose the dodgy traders and the shonks and when you do not put probity in place. This system is designed to do that. Don't take our word for it; take that of the European police authorities. At the moment they are prosecuting a €5 billion scam from Norway and in Italy they caught a Mafia don over false trading and dubbed him 'The Lord of the Winds' as he was so engaged in this. This government is not exactly heading off in the right direction, because the purpose—the reason for being—of the carbon tax is to reduce emissions in Australia and it completely fails to do that, not on our modelling and not on our estimates but on the government's own estimates.

Beyond all of that, though, there is a financial implication: when you purchase 94 million tonnes from overseas at the government's projected rate of $37 tonne by 2020 you will be spending $3½ billion a year on top of the likely carbon tax revenue of $14 billion. So that is $3½ billion a year on foreign carbon credits. But when you follow it through—because, as the member for Aston has often pointed out to me, this carbon tax starts at $23 a tonne, it hits $37 a tonne in 2020 and it hits $350 a tonne in 2050; it is a 1,500 per cent increase in the price—what it means for the purchase of foreign carbon credits is that, on the government's own estimates, we will be buying 434 million tonnes of foreign carbon credits at—now wait for this—$350 a tonne, which is about $150 billion. That is 1.5 per cent of GDP by 2050 which we will be spending not once or twice but each and every year. These are the figures directly from the government's own modelling. That 1½ per cent of GDP on foreign carbon credits is in addition to the carbon tax, and that 1½ per cent of GDP is what we will be spending every year, and that is almost as much as the current defence budget as a proportion of GDP. So each and every year for eternity, on this government's own modelling, we will be purchasing foreign carbon credits to the extent of almost the entire defence budget. So when they talk about sustainability, when they talk about truth in advertising, they might—just one of them—pick up their own Treasury modelling and understand that the system they have created is so unsustainable that no government will be able to continue this into the future and that no government can condone or authorise almost the entire Australian defence budget, as we project forward to their target datelines, being spent on foreign carbon credits. The impact on Australia's budget is incredible. It is extraordinary.

So what does it mean in human terms? This is a carbon tax about electricity, and let us look at what is happening with electricity. The government does not talk about electricity in its advertising. It does not talk about the massive impacts on manufacturing and otherwise. Let us start with the facts. In New South Wales there are 18 per cent price rises, and nine per cent of those come from the carbon tax; in Western Australia, 12 per cent price rises, with a nine per cent price rise—or 72 per cent of the price rises—coming from the carbon tax; and in the ACT, 17.74 per cent price rises, of which 14 per cent, according to the regulator, comes from the carbon tax. So, in other words, 79 per cent of the price rises in the ACT, for both residents and commercial operators, come from the carbon tax. That is the reality. So if you want truth in advertising you might want to put those figures on the table, and that is my suggestion to the government.

Let us go back to the point that the member for Aston has made. We start at, per tonne, $23, we go to $37 and we hit $350—and that is on the government's own modelling. It is not an incremental increase; it is a manifest, manyfold increase which starts on day one. It does not finish on day one; it starts on day one and it continues thereafter, every day and into eternity, on the design of this system.

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