Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The great tragedy of the carbon tax debate will be that schoolchildren a generation from now will learn not about the respective strategies of those on either side to these chambers; what they will learn about is the ham-fisted mishandling of the Labor Party from 2007 to 2013 of the carbon abatement reduction issue. What we have seen is constant flux and change from a party that is confused between the moral challenge of this generation and the practical reality of Australian families who are struggling with the ever-increasing cost of living.

We are almost alone globally as a nation that has effectively put huge amounts of political capital into this carbon tax debate. It is a debate with such ferocious intensity that visitors to these shores are somewhat surprised as to how we got here. It is worth looking back to 2007 and the aspiring Prime Minister, Mr Kevin Rudd, who attempted to make the carbon tax and emissions reduction an issue upon which he would set himself apart while at the same time attempting to be as similar to John Howard as he possibly could on virtually every other issue.

In 2007, of course, there was hope of some international agreement. It is disappointing that the member for Canberra devoted half of his speech to reading out quotes from coalition MPs from 2007, because politically it was a very different time. Indeed, there was then hope of some form of international agreement. There was hope that we could go Copenhagen and strike an agreement. There were MPs from both sides of this chamber who were willing to give that very prospect a chance.

What we have is a Labor Party that failed to come to grips with that reality, and when it fell apart at Copenhagen and we had then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd with the shiny apple of his own ETS in the front row of international agreements completely ignored by the major economies of the world, he came back, walked back over his moral minefield and backed out of the space completely. With that lack of confidence that was transmitted to the Australian people, he was soon replace as leader. Probably for that reason more than any other. Enter the then Prime Minister Julia Gillard , making whatever promise it took to win the 2010 election

By this time the low levels of scepticism, which in my electorate were around 13 to 16 per cent, had grown to nearly 40 per cent, primarily because such an important policy issue became a political football, exploited by the other side of this chamber.

We are in a more paralysed, more confused and more polarised position than any other country on the planet because of the handling of this former government. When Wayne Swan said it was a hysterical allegation, when the previous Prime Minister Julia Gillard said that there would be no carbon tax under a government that she led, Australians gave them one more chance, only to see it betrayed within weeks.

Let me make it fully clear. There was no need to embark on a carbon tax in order to gain a Greens agreement to govern. This was a Prime Minister that should have said: 'I need your support to govern, but I made a commitment to the Australian people and it is something that I cannot break.' What she said was quite simple: 'There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.' It should have been watertight but it was not. It was at that moment that she wrote the political epitaph for her administration. She never recovered. I am giving this political context to say: haven't times changed.

In my very marginal seat, where there was 16 per cent scepticism towards a carbon tax and emission trading, it soon tripled. We now have a situation where even reasoned debate from members of this chamber will probably fail to convince nearly half of our population that this vitally important issue is something that our great economy can move forward on.

Let's not forget that both sides of this chamber agreed to five per cent reductions on 2000 levels. That is an impressive cut—and it may not be enough—but we have still been hectored by the Labor Party for not reducing emissions satisfactorily. Yet their own figures show that under their carbon tax Australia' emissions would increase from 560 gigatonnes to 637 gigatonnes. That is not a reduction; that is an increase. Constantly—and from the perfectly coiffured member for Kingsford Smith—we have had an elaborate argument about the lack of market mechanism in Direct Action.

Let's just step back and look at international efforts around the world. Last time I checked, the UN clean energy abatement process involved abatement procurement. That must be a market mechanism. So is Norway's attempt to purchase abatement, and Japan's. In fact, anything that is not direct action, which is purposefully and specifically purchasing abatement, is by definition indirect action.

The whole problem is that, in this purist and economic approach to involving everyone in carbon abatement, we are affecting and molesting, we are ripping into, a system where people who cannot do anything to reduce their emissions pay anyway. If you are a senior living in my electorate, huddled around the heater in winter, made to pay more for your energy, wrapping a blanket around you because you cannot afford to turn on a heater, you do not want a bureaucrat telling you: '550 bucks should be enough'. You would rather they did not take the money in the first place. That is why half of Australia does not want this bloody tax. It is quite simple. And if you involve people who can make no difference to emissions reduction in this intentionally labyrinthine process, then you will get this kickback.

Let me go back a step. If you want to abate some emissions and you intentionally tender that process, surely that is a market mechanism. If I put $1 on the table and ask all comers to deliver a service or a good for me for that price, surely that is a market mechanism; if there is a price at a service station for fuel and people can drive in and pay for fuel, it is a market mechanism; $3.8 billion of all of Labor's approaches towards emissions reduction was direct action. Every time you gave money to a brown coal burning power station to clean it up, as this Labor Party did, it was direct action. Everything the globe has ever done to reduce emissions that did not involve an economy-wide tax was by definition direct action. Norway can do it; Japan can do it; UN can do it; but any direct action that is here in Australia is somehow an anathema. Seriously. We have an emissions target. You can purchase abatement directly or you can have an economy-wide tax.

To my second point and emphasised strongly by the member for Canberra: yes, most economists prefer an economy-wide scheme. That is because they are economists. If economists had their way, we would have a market-based mechanism for everything: for returning plastic containers, aluminium cans, ring pull—the lot. You could have an economy-wide scheme for all of them, but there are too many unforeseen costs; the returns are not sufficient; there is too much dead weight, so we do not do it. That is economics 102.

Of course not every economic idea becomes reality, because there are practical implications—that is, most people, through their ordinary work and going about their ordinary endeavours, have very little latitude and very little ability to change their basic emissions. We cannot rebuild our houses. After you have insulated the ceilings, there is not much you can do. So why do we make everyone pay more and then write them a cheque and assume that is going to cover everyone regardless? Fuel stress, the distance you live from a CBD or where you work, the number of people who live in your household, the materials with which you have built your dwelling, all change those figures and make it horribly imprecise.

Times have changed. This is a Labor Party that has traduced this debate. The politics of it has been appallingly handled and this has made it very hard for moderate members in this place to forge a way ahead. It has become polarised. It has become difficult, and now we have an opposition—that specialised in collecting money, specialised in collecting revenue even before it was received and specialised in spending it before they saw it—lecturing us about a direct and targeted approach to reducing emissions.

There is a role for technology. There is a role for our major agricultural and commodity economies with whom we both trade and compete to come to an agreement at some time in the future. In 2008, it looked like it could happen and Australia went there with good faith. There is no prospect of that anymore. There is no prospect in the US, despite their three dollar a tonne tax on their nine eastern seaboard states. There is nothing in Canada. I do not see anything happening in Russia. I do not see Japan doing anything. I do not see China doing anything until 2020. Call me in 2019, because I think my phone will be fairly quiet.

Two elections from now, let us have a look at what China is doing and then maybe we can instigate international dialogue about a global approach and an approach with our trading partners. It is not just about big economies; it is about economies that have the same endowments as ours. I do not want to see effort shift with major mining enterprises moving to places where there is not a carbon tax. The previous government had no answer to that double-blow of a carbon and a mining tax. This side of politics will not stand by and watch high-paying jobs go to Zambia, no way. We will go to international mining conferences and see auditoria packed with new starts in the African continent, new starts in South America and new starts in Siberia. And the room where they talk about starting an enterprise in Australia that gives jobs to my friends and my friends' children will simply not occur. That is the legacy that will be studied a generation from now.

There is a chance still for the globe if we get together; there is no doubt. There is still a chance for major economies to take the lead but there was no point embarking on a $30-plus carbon tax in the absence of having other shoulders to the wheel, in the absence of having other economies move with us in a realistic way. I know on your hands you can count a dozen or so countries that have embarked on a carbon tax. But they are Swiss cheese carbon taxes: carbon taxes with all the exemptions where it might in any way affect the country's most beloved sectors. I respect those countries for doing it but paying $1 through to $11 per tonne is something very different to what was being foisted on us by a government that paid so heavily for such political short-sightedness.

It was a government that for six years, as I said, spent the money before it had collected it. Nibbling away and eroding confidence in it was the simple fact that the money, hard earned by you and me, was collected by a government—potentially $16 billion before there was any emission reduction at all—which then frittered it away on everything from insulated ceilings to green loan schemes—where young Australians invested $3,000 of their own money to become a green loan assessor and do their part to reduce emissions in this great nation. And what happened? It was ripped away from under them with no compensation. Close friends of mine trusted a government to not possibly destroy an ambition or a dream to help in this great green crusade that many of us had bought into. No, they lost everything. From an environment minister who chopped the numbers, who cancelled the program by SMS and who left them with no recompense and no refund for money they spent on training and registration. Thousands of dollars went up in smoke. Similarly, the pink batts scheme. These are examples of where this money was going to be spent.

The Clean Energy Fund was similarly simply propping up what were potentially non-viable loans in the private banking sector. And people lost confidence. What they are looking for is a government that does what it says: says one thing before an election and delivers it afterwards. This coalition government is utterly committed to that. Do not for one moment think that emission abatement cannot be equivalent to what was proposed over on that side of the House.

I have a very simple message to the people in my electorate of Bowman, an outer metropolitan bay-side economy deeply concerned about the ecology, deeply concerned about the environment and very proud of the environmental protection we have achieved so far. When you travelled from the islands to Brisbane under the Labor Party you paid a carbon tax on all your transport every day backwards and forwards. That is right: every day. What do you do about that under the Labor government scheme? Do you swim, sail, peddle boat? Seriously, there is no way to reduce those emissions other than get on that boat and pay more for the removal of the diesel rebate under the Labor government's carbon tax.

We go to the dumps every weekend and hope that we cannot have the carbon tax on our major landfill, and we do. How can we possibly make major reductions in the waste that we leave in our bins and have collected or drop off on weekends? It is extremely hard to do. Simply, an economy-wide tax on everything we did hurt too many people at a time when the economy was too precariously balanced, at a time when international confidence to move forward is limited. We must move with direct action. We must be focused. We must gain those reductions, and we can do it without the punishment of an economy-wide carbon tax.

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