Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Seniors) Share this | Hansard source

In calling for this discussion of a matter of public importance today—it being the adverse effect of the carbon tax, particularly on senior Australians—I do so wearing my hat as the shadow minister for seniors. There has never been a minister for seniors in this parliament before. We have had ministers for youth, we have had them for children—we have had them for all sorts of groups. But never before have senior Australians been recognised in this way, which was an acknowledgement by the Leader of the Opposition of the importance of this group. For the purposes of the portfolio responsibility, seniors are those people who are over the age of 50 and, in fact, constitute 40 per cent of all voters. It is important to note in this debate that the impact on senior Australians can be particularly cruel, particularly on those who have retired or are on pensions and those who are self-funded retirees, because those people are on fixed incomes and do not have the elasticity of looking forward to an increase in salary to make up for the imposition of the carbon tax.

The carbon tax is essentially a tax on electricity. And it is designed specifically to see people use less electricity. It is designed to lower the standard of living, particularly for those people who cannot afford to meet the increases. The stories that we hear—for instance, of people delivering meals-on-wheels through the winter to people in receipt of the age pension and finding those people in bed, not because they are ill but because they are cold—are true stories. These are people who are forced not to turn on the switch to activate a heater or, in some cases, even lights, to the degree that there have been some suspicious fires that have been caused by people resorting to candles because they felt they could not afford electric light. That is not the Australia that my father and his generation fought in World War II to deliver to this country. The idea that we should not consider having electric light and electric heating as automatic rights in an Australian household is something quite foreign to people who recognise the sacrifice that was made to ensure we lived in a free country.

It is important to realise that the impact of electricity prices, particularly on people who are self-employed or who work in small business, is also very relevant to seniors, because people who are self-employed or work in small business will work much longer than those who work in big business. The fact of the matter is that you can find people who are shopkeepers, accountants or lawyers—people who are maintaining an active work-life well into their 70s and 80s in private practice and yet are being hit very hard by this electricity impost.

I will give you an example of a sole practitioner in a law firm who has a very substantial practice but has just seen a quarterly electricity bill rise from $1,000 to $1,500 for the quarter. And the likelihood of that continuing to rise, of course, under this carbon tax is well known.

Let us look at how it operates, because it is a tax that is both cascading and compounding. It gets into the nooks and crannies of every aspect of your life. Everything we do in a civilised country depends on electricity. It is the difference between a First World country and a Third World country.

When Bob Brown was here and in cahoots with Prime Minister Gillard, they wanted us all to live in a cave with a candle. But now that we have Senator Milne, she would really rather we did without the candle!

The fact of the matter is that your life is meant to become lesser. When the Prime Minister talks about a 'gold standard' for infrastructure to deliver electricity, what on earth is she talking about? Does she want a silver standard? A bronze standard? A lead standard? How many blackouts would be acceptable to her? The fact of the matter is that, on previous occasions, this same Prime Minister has complained about there not being sufficient infrastructure. And yet when the infrastructure is built, in order that communities have electricity and do not have blackouts, it is spurned as being 'gold plated'. Well, there are plenty of instances I can think of in the world of countries where there is simply not enough infrastructure. There are plenty of countries where the elites will take the power and the people will be poor. This is not the sort of country we want here.

But let us look at how this tax works. The tax is imposed on the so-called emitters, or generators, of electricity. It is imposed on the creation of the good, the service, of electricity. On every transaction that occurs between the tax being paid and it being paid by the final consumer, again the tax is paid. So it becomes a tax on a tax on a tax on a tax, and then the GST is paid on it as well. It is quite unlike the GST which, as a value-added tax, has all the taxes paid between the initial creation of the good or service and the final consumer refunded. Consequently, there will be rises that will occur in everything we do.

Prime Minister Gillard says there will be no carbon tax on fuel for the family car. Really? How does she think that the petrol is got from the tank at the service station into the tank of the car? Electricity pumps it. How do you think you pay for it? You go to the cash register, which is driven by electricity. In this building, the lights, the air conditioning—everything about it is driven by electricity. The sewage system, the water system—all driven by electricity. And that is the impost that the carbon tax has put on every aspect of our lives.

Our dependence on refrigeration is well known. You go to the supermarket. You pick up fruit that appears to be fresh and yet you know it has been kept somewhere else in a warehouse under refrigerated circumstances. You take your meat, and you take it for granted; somehow it got from the abattoirs to your supermarket and has been kept cool and fresh and safe—electricity again. And also there are the gases that are used to make that refrigeration work; the escalation in the tax for them has gone through the roof—some people say 290 per cent. So this is an insidious tax that is attacking the very structure of our lives. That includes an impost on the fans in schoolrooms for children and on the buses that take the children to school. Nothing escapes. And yet we have a Prime Minister who stands there as she did today and says, 'No, no; everybody is protected or compensated.' Let us understand. What does compensation do? Compensation is a payment for an injury that the person paying it has caused. This Prime Minister said, six days before the election, 'There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.' Let us remind ourselves why she said it: because Tony Abbott had been saying throughout the entire election period that, as sure as night follows day, there would be a carbon tax should the Gillard government be re-elected. So she looked straight down the barrel of the camera to refute it. Had she not said that, she would not have been in the position to negotiate to become the Prime Minister, because win she did not. And the Treasurer said it was a hysterical allegation by the opposition. Well, it was not hysterical; it was accurate. The long and the short of it is that we have said we will repeal that tax.

Let us again look at this question of compensation. Treasury calculated that the damage done is $9.90 a week and therefore they will offer compensation of $10.10 a week, saying that people will be 20c a week better off—wow! Anybody who truly believes that Treasury can predict with that degree of accuracy must believe there are fairies at the bottom of the garden.

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