Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

Haven't we seen an extraordinary spectacle from the Prime Minister and government ministers today in question time. Every time members of the coalition asked the government about the extraordinary increase in power prices due to the carbon tax, government ministers, led by the Prime Minister, have laughed. That is what they have been doing. They have laughed off this hit on the cost of living of decent Australian families. And doesn't that just prove: every time your power bill goes up the Prime Minister has a smile on her face, because that is just the carbon tax doing its job. The whole point of the carbon tax is to increase the cost of living for Australian families.

We did have a truly extraordinary performance from the Prime Minister today. She said today, in answer to the first or second question she got: businesses knew a carbon price was coming.

An opposition member: How?

How? Did they read the chicken entrails? Did they read the tea leaves? Because if they had listened to the Prime Minister what would they have heard?

Opposition members: 'No carbon tax under the government I lead'!

No carbon tax! No emissions trading scheme! Nothing whatsoever until—

Opposition members: 'A deep and lasting consensus'—

was achieved. So how this Prime Minister could attribute some kind of ESP to the businesses of Australia—particularly to BHP, which is on the verge, it seems, of announcing the cancellation of the Olympic Dam mine expansion—is just utterly beyond comprehension. The Prime Minister today liked to talk about something that might have been said in the 2007 election. Well, this Prime Minister and this government have dudded the Australian people not once but twice. They said at the 2007 election there would be an emissions trading scheme; they did not deliver it. They said at the 2010 election there would be no carbon tax, and they did. What a fraudulent display from this Prime Minister.

Then of course we had the Prime Minister claiming that the coalition would keep the carbon tax if we formed a government, and the minister for families saying we would claw back the assistance if we formed a government. Well, they cannot even get their scare right; they cannot even get their smear right, which shows what an extraordinary government we have got.

I went back to the record of August 2010, election month, and on no fewer than five separate occasions we had this Prime Minister saying that her whole objective was to help families with cost-of-living pressures. She does not say that anymore, does she? She cannot say it anymore because no government that took the pressure on families seriously and wanted to relieve it would hit every single Australian family with a carbon tax.

Members opposite never stopped talking about working families. Remember that phrase that rung around this chamber, day in and day out, back in 2007 and 2008? They never talk about working families anymore because they are precisely the people who are being hit by the toxic carbon tax.

Let us have a look at what has happened to the cost-of-living pressures on working families since members opposite formed a government. Since December 2007, power prices are up 64 per cent; water prices are up 60 per cent; utilities prices are up 58 per cent; gas 42 per cent; insurance 35 per cent; education 31 per cent; health 33 per cent; and rent 27 per cent. What do they want to do? Make it all so much worse by adding to all of the price rises that have occurred up till now the greatest hit of all: the world's biggest carbon tax at the worst possible time.

Let us look at the economic situation that this government has created when it comes to ordinary families. Employment has risen very, very little. In fact, 2011 was the first year since the early 1990s when no net new jobs were created. GDP growth per person was 2¼ per cent a year between 1996 and 2007 under the Howard government, and just half a per cent a year under the current government. No wonder the families of Australia are feeling under pressure. No wonder the Howard era looks like a golden age of prosperity, now lost because of the bumbling and the new taxes of members opposite.

Consumer confidence is down. Manufacturing output is down. Employment growth is slow. Productivity growth is poor. Economic growth is fragile and confidence is almost non-existent in many sectors of our economy. So what is this government doing? They have got the answer! 'We have the answer,' they say. What is it? A carbon tax. Oh, great! What geniuses! Look at their own modelling. Members opposite like to say that the coalition is engaged in a scare campaign. Let us engage in a fact campaign by looking at the government's own modelling. On the government's own modelling, steel production under a carbon tax: down 21 per cent. Aluminium production under a carbon tax: down 61 per cent. Coal-fired power generation absent carbon capture and storage: down from over 70 per cent to just 10 per cent of Australia's total.

But there's more. Gross national income per head—that is, the real wealth of Australians—by 2050, will be $5,000 a year less under a carbon tax than without a carbon tax. Our cumulative GDP with a carbon tax is $1 trillion less than it would be without a carbon tax. This is on the government's own figures. It is as if this country were to stop working for a whole year. That is the wrecking ball that is going to swing through our economy as a result of this government's carbon tax.

And the tragedy is that it is not even going to reduce emissions. Again, look at the government's own modelling. Our domestic emissions do not go down by five per cent; they go up. That is right; they go up by eight per cent from 578 million tonnes to 621 million tonnes in 2020, despite a carbon tax that by then will be $37 a tonne. We only get the five per cent emissions reduction that the government is committed to, and that we support, because Australian businesses have got to buy $3½ billion worth of carbon licences from foreign traders.

Who do government ministers think are ultimately going to pay for those carbon licences?—Australian consumers, Australian families. But it just gets worse. In 2050, when we are supposed to achieve an 80 per cent reduction in our emissions—in fact, the reduction in domestic emissions is more like three per cent—we only achieve the much boasted reduction in emissions because in that year alone Australian families have to pay for $58 billion worth of carbon credits being bought abroad. We will spend 1½ per cent of our gross domestic product buying carbon credits from foreign carbon traders. We will spend more buying carbon credits than we will on defence, as a percentage of GDP. Shame!

It is no wonder that members opposite want to talk about anything but the carbon tax. They would rather talk about the member for Dobell than about the carbon tax, because this is utterly toxic to their standing with the families of Australia.

Let's look at the burdens that this government is placing on the families of Australia. Taxes are going up and up and up, because spending is going up and up and up. Let's contrast the record. The last four budgets of Peter Costello delivered the four biggest surpluses in Australian history.

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