Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I beg your pardon, Member for Gippsland. The member for Gippsland put up this motion. I could not sign up quickly enough to talk about the price on carbon. Obviously, firstly, we need to turn to the motion put forward by the member for Gippsland. It talked about the impact of the carbon price. As the first thing we do, let's look at the facts. Let's have a look at the economy. I wondered whether, if we went back 10 years, the Treasurer at the time, Peter Costello, had a set of figures like this, with 4.3 per cent growth, especially compared to the rest of the world—

Mr Chester interjecting—

Yes, a surplus. I take that interjection from the member opposite. That is certainly what we are predicting in our budget, with 14,000 jobs created in the month of July. That is despite the Premier of Queensland sacking thousands of people. The number was 5,000, then 6,000, and then 7,000, and they are on track to having sacked 20,000—some say even 30,000—people. When we look at private investment in the economy, we see the highest percentage of GDP in almost 40 years. The investment pipeline lined up to come in, especially in resources but also across Australia, is $500 billion, or half a trillion dollars. And look at the TD Securities results in terms of inflation. Surely with those figures, inflation must be out of control, or unemployment must be a problem. But, no, we have unemployment at around the five per cent mark. Since back in July when the carbon tax was introduced, we have had inflation at 0.2 per cent.

I remember a time when it was said that there would be serious price increases, or, according to the member for Warringah, 'astronomical and unimaginable price increases'. I am not using his imagination as a yardstick for what people are doing. He talked about it being a 'wrecking ball' on the economy. Surely the Treasurer 10 years ago would have been in raptures over those sorts of economic figures. We heard it was a cobra poised to strike the economy, and then it transmogrified into a carpet snake—

Ms Rishworth interjecting—

Sorry, a python. A carpet snake is a type of python. Anyone from the bush knows that a carpet snake will not hurt you. You probably don’t want to put your finger in its mouth, but a carpet snake won't do any harm. Most carpet snakes do good things around the home. They get rid of mice and a few things like that.

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