Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

You would know—to keeping the carbon tax in place, keeping prices high, keeping electricity prices high. As a politician I might grant myself the indulgence momentarily to say that if the Labor Party want to fight the next election on the carbon tax again, they should go right ahead. I do not think the Australian public in three years time will be thanking the Labor Party for having another debate, another election campaign, about the carbon tax, which they rejected quite empirically in the election on 7 September and have rejected in every published poll for many, many years. As those opposite have said on many occasions, the carbon tax has destroyed many leaders of both political parties, whether it was an emissions trading scheme or a carbon tax.

This debate management motion will allow a full debate in the House of Representatives on the issue of the repeal of the carbon tax. I look forward to that debate and I look forward to hearing the Leader of the Opposition, if he wishes to jump up and speak against this debate management motion, reconfirming how out of touch Labor have become from their working-class roots, their working-class base. They want to keep prices high for working families, I suppose to please the commentariat in the press gallery, the commentariat amongst the inner city electorates—not like the member for Port Adelaide's electorate. He must be scratching his head about why his party want to keep the cost of living going up when there are so many difficulties in his electorate of Port Adelaide. But I suppose Labor want to stick closely to the inner urban voters, the academics and the commentariat who think this is a do or die issue for Labor, whereas Australian families, Australian businesses, trade-exposed industries, farmers and rural and regional Australians all know that if we are going to improve our economy, grow our economy, provide jobs, protect our industries from overseas competition, we have to do so by abolishing the carbon tax. You stick to the inner city elites if you wish too. You stick with them and if you do that you will stay in opposition for a very long time.

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