Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

Two years ago, the Prime Minister looked down the barrel of a Channel 10 camera and into the eyes of the Australian people and she made an unambiguous and clear promise:

There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.

There was nothing ambiguous about it. There were no nuances. It was a clear, definite promise to the Australian people: 'There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.'

Labor was in electoral trouble at the time. There was a lot of commentary about Labor's proposed carbon tax, and she knew she had to put it to bed if Labor were to have any chance of getting over the line in this election. So she made a clear, unambiguous promise, a key moment in the election campaign: 'There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.'

And of course, she was not alone in making that commitment. The Treasurer told ABC TV: 'We have made our position very clear: we have ruled it out.' The Treasurer also faithfully promised the Australian people there would be no carbon tax under a government with which he was involved. Indeed, he even ridiculed anybody who would suggest that Labor was likely to do such a thing—and they were the leaders of the Labor Party; they were the people who had the obligation to make a pledge and a commitment to the Australian people about what their policy platforms were. It was abundantly clear.

And Labor MPs around the country in 2010 campaigned on that false assertion. I did not hear any one of the members opposite voice dissent—not one. In each of their campaigns, when they were asked, they made it absolutely clear that they would not be supporting a carbon tax. And, I might add, so did all the members on this side of the House. All the members of the government, all the members of the opposition, made commitments that there would be no carbon tax. But, for this Prime Minister, her word was not her bond; it was a betrayal that certainly burnt deep into the mind of every Australian—monumental deceit. Every Labor candidate went to the election promising there would be no carbon tax. But then, only days after the election, came the betrayal. In the hallowed parliamentary courtyard, flanked by the Greens and Independents and other Labor luminaries, Labor broke its promise to the Australian people and announced we were to get a carbon tax—and not just any carbon tax: the world's biggest carbon tax! And we were going to get it ahead of the rest of the world. And we were going to do it even if no-one else in the world followed through. Labor broke its promise to the Australian people in a most deceitful and shameful way, and it will hang on the head of every Labor member of parliament and dog this government to its electoral grave.

Regardless of what people's political beliefs might be, in a democracy like ours, where we take the electoral process so seriously, we expect our leaders to honour the promises they make. If there is to be trust in this country then elected representatives must say what they mean and mean what they say. So poisonous is the Prime Minister's forked tongue that we hear again about the faceless men coming around looking for somebody to replace her. But the reality is that it does not matter. Labor's legacy and its veracity deficit, its chronic waste and mismanagement, its massive debt and this dysfunctional government make none of those opposite fit to lead this country. There has been treachery and dishonesty. All of that is bad enough, but it is worse when Australian families have to struggle to meet the mounting extra cost-of-living pressures under a higher Australian dollar and are now forced to meet this extra cost.

The government's own modelling says three million Australian families are worse off. And in spite of the compensation that the government may be paying to some, no-one can be compensated for a lost job. No-one can receive adequate compensation for the impact on their lives when a factory closes, when a mine becomes uneconomic or when, because our nation is just so less competitive, we lose whole pieces of our economy. Senator Hanson-Young did not care if whole regional towns closed down. As far as she was concerned, and the government backed her, this carbon tax was something that our country was going to have—even though the government had said it would not happen.

The news kept coming about what the impact of this carbon tax would be on the local community, and the Labor Party did not care. A hundred councils in May 2009 were told that their emissions would make them liable for Labor's carbon tax. The Hobart City Council will budget an extra $770,000 for the impact of the carbon tax on its budget. The Salvation Army says that the carbon tax will add up to $1.25 million to its annual land-fill bill. There is a $36 carbon tax surcharge on the Spirit of Tasmania journey from Melbourne to Devonport. The Queensland Competition Authority approved a price increase of $52 per household for electricity but said the price would have gone down by $70 had there been no carbon tax.

The Department of Climate Change figures show that electricity generators will face a carbon tax bill of $3.9 billion in the first year alone. Anglo American Australia, our second-biggest coal exporter, says the carbon tax reduces the net present value of its assets by 30 per cent. Queensland Rail reports it will add $5 million to its costs, leading to higher rail fares. The biggest abattoir in Australia, at Dinmore, will be slugged $3.3 million. The 14 largest abattoirs will have to pay $60 million to meet the carbon tax requirements. Local government said it will be $200 million more for the cost of garbage. New South Wales Treasury says that public transport fares will rise by $150 a year and that electricity bills will go up by $57 a year for students and $100 million a year for hospitals. Queensland's government-owned power corporations lost more than $1 billion in write-downs on the value of their assets because of the impact of the carbon tax. And Treasury's modelling of the carbon tax is based on real-wage reductions of 0.8 per cent by 2020. The Australian Trucking Association says the carbon tax will add $500 million to trucking costs from 2014.

All of these sorts of things seemingly meant nothing to the government; they went ahead anyhow—$5,000 extra to the cost of an average house of $300,000. The tripling of the fuel excise means that airfares will rise, and some domestic air services will close. None of this means anything to the Labor Party. In fact, in many instances they denied it would even happen—there was not going to be any impact at all. And, if there was a little, they would be providing compensation to help people. Now the bills are starting to come in; people are getting their first bills under the carbon tax.

Yesterday we heard about the Belair Hotel in South Australia, in Adelaide, which has faced a 45 per cent jump in the off-peak component of its monthly power bills. Today we heard about the Lakes Resort Hotel. And here is an electricity bill from the Phoenix Hotel, in my own electorate. In the very first month, their emissions and renewable energy charges have gone up by $271.97. These are the kinds of cost increases that every household in this country is facing right now.

And that is not the end. Remember, this is just the $23 a tonne on introduction of the carbon tax. It goes up every year. Every year it will be higher. If your bills are not high enough this year, wait until next year; they will be higher again. And what will it be like when we get out to 2050, and the carbon tax is not $23 a tonne but $350 a tonne? What is that going to do to your household electricity bill? There are no more compensation payments; they are already done.

But you should not be surprised by this massive impact on your living standards. The people of Australia should not be surprised that this tax is going to bite so much into their standard of living, because the very intent of this tax—as the Prime Minister has admitted several times over the last couple of days—is to put the cost of living up, to put the cost of electricity up, so that we will lose less and therefore emit less CO2. The very purpose of this tax is to hurt people. The very purpose of this tax is to force people not to do the things they have been doing in the past that might emit CO2 into the atmosphere.

So the Prime Minister is actually proud that her tax is achieving its intended purposes: putting up the cost of living, making life more miserable for many Australians. That was the very purpose of this tax right from the beginning: to make our cost of living higher so that we keep our car in the shed rather than drive it to visit our sick neighbour. Or perhaps we do not go to the football game but watch it on television—although you probably could not put the lights on, or even the TV set, because it would be emitting CO2 gases. The purpose of this tax is to change your behaviour so that there will be less emissions.

The Prime Minister deceived the Australian people two years ago. The conventional wisdom, of course, is that she did that to appease the Greens and to cling on to power—that she far preferred to have the favour of the Greens than to be honest with the Australian people. A succession of slippery deals have mired Labor in political intrigue and a quagmire through which every Australian has been dragged. Australia's proud ethos of being fair dinkum with each other has certainly been sullied and stained by this government. Until the people have the chance to have their say and break free of this Labor scourge, there will indeed be a stench about the processes of government in this place. What price integrity? What price honour? What price a Prime Minister's solemn commitment to the people she presumes to lead? Take a look around, Prime Minister: no-one is following, no-one is interested, no-one believes anything you say. Labor MPs hoping for a change for the better under a new leader are a bit like Ingham chickens hoping they will get a better life if there are new managers. The reality is that heads will roll no matter what.

What if, in fact, the Prime Minister had stared down the Greens and told the Independents, 'I've listened to what you've got to say, but I made a promise to the Australian people, and I will not break it'? Surely that is the kind of promise you would expect an honourable Prime Minister to make, especially on such a critical issue. You would expect the Prime Minister to faithfully remember her words of only a few days earlier and to keep her promise to the Australian people. But she did not do it. She preferred to break her word and, as a result, the Australian people continue to suffer the consequences of her decision.

And of course that was not the only commitment she blatantly broke in relation to this issue. She promised, for instance, that there would be community consensus before any action. Remember that one? There was going to be community consensus. I have not noticed any community consensus in favour of a carbon tax in my electorate. Then there was that other great initiative: a 150-member citizens' assembly that was going to decide climate change policy. That was a decisive government in action: find 150 people out of the phone book and ring them up and say, 'Come down and decide our climate change policy.' Frankly, that would have been a better outcome than what we have ended up with; 150 people in the phone book would not have voted and would not have commended a Prime Minister for simply breaking her promise. The reality is that this government has been dishonest with the Australian people. It cannot be trusted. Whatever else it may do, this government will be remembered for that dishonesty.

And of course the ultimate irony—the ultimate insult—is that this carbon tax will deliver significant economic pain, but for no economic gain. Even Labor admits that it is not going to make any difference to the climate. Emissions are going to continue to go up. Other countries are not responding to this courageous act of self-harm by the Australian government. They are not responding in that way. This is a lose-lose situation for Australians. Our industry has become less competitive, our cost of living is going up and the environment is not one bit better off. (Time expired)

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