Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

Today marks a significant debate for the future of Australia. Not only is this bill a bill which enables a newly elected government to act to keep its election promise but it is also a day and a debate in which a debilitating piece of legislation, which is affecting every single Australian, starts the journey to be repealed. There are times when I am sure members of the Australian public look at some of the activities that happen in this chamber and in this building and wonder if politicians really understand the impact of the decisions that have been made and how they impact on workers and the families of Australia. We have listened to the Australian public and we know first hand the impact of Labor's carbon tax and what it is doing to every individual Australian. The newly elected Prime Minister of Australia came into this chamber and kept his election promise to the Australian people that the first piece of legislation to be presented in this new parliament would be the repeal of the carbon tax.

We have just heard the shadow minister use his time repeating the standard arguments in favour of climate change, and I presume it made him feel good. But he did not make any effort to explain how Labor's tax was going to change climate change. Nor did he explain how an emissions trading scheme will lower the temperature, how traders sitting in capital city buildings selling one another bits of paper is going to lower the sea level.

Labor never attempted when they were in government or now in opposition to explain how their new taxes and the buying and selling of pieces of paper was actually going to change the climate. The fact that they did not even attempt to try and explain this mystery to the Australian people is part of the reason why they are sitting on the other side of the chamber at the present time.

The reality is the new government recognised that the carbon tax as long as it was in place would continue to take its toll tomorrow, next year and into the future unless we acted promptly to stop it. It has and will continue to be a blow to families, businesses and our national competitiveness.

During the election campaign, I travelled across the country meeting with locals, particularly in regional areas, and I spoke with farmers, transport operators, small business, stock agents and many others concerned about their businesses and their families. They had basic concerns about the future of their towns and their cities. Over and over again, I heard these same sentiments being repeated. The cost of doing business in Australia is increasing and it is making it so hard for businesses to survive. Nowhere is this statement more true than in our regional and rural towns and cities—towns and cities that are heavily dependent on roads and transport to receive goods and services.

The Nationals are committed to ensuring that these regional and rural towns and cities are vibrant and exciting places that many Australians will want to live and work in; however, for this is to happen, these towns and cities need access to reasonable cost transport options and for many it means having a reliable and competitive trucking industry. Without access to a good trucking industry, many of our regional towns and cities will simply struggle to exist. The cost of living will increase significantly, and I fear that many of our regional and rural centres will simply not be able to withstand another cost hike on their business. Yet the Labor Party seems to be perfectly comfortable with allowing this to happen. In fact by introducing the carbon tax, the Labor Party has condemned many rural and regional areas.

Businesses across the country are just shaking their heads in gut-wrenching frustration over the carbon tax that hits them now and will bite them again and again, and especially, if the fuel tax which Labor had planned for the trucking industry from the middle of next year were to in fact to become a reality. Labor intended that from 1 July 2014 , the carbon tax would hit the road transport industry—an industry that transports over 277 million tonnes of food and live animals each year, an industry that literally ensures that we have food on our tables and clothes on our backs. The previous government had announced that fuel used by the truck industry would be subject to the carbon tax from mid-2014.

The legislation had not actually been introduced, but Labor intended that the new parliament would today not be debating the abolition of the carbon tax but its further extension to the transport sector. Labor was committed to extending the carbon tax to further parts of the economy and of course it was committed to a formula that was going to increase the level of the carbon tax every year. This new tax on the trucking industry alone was going to add half a billion dollars to its costs every year—half a billion dollars impost on people living outside the capital cities and those who depend on transport to move their product to market here or, for that matter, to other parts of the world.

Labor had this assumption that business would simply respond to the carbon tax by reducing their energy use or switching to renewables. It assumes that businesses could do this or, alternatively, they would pass their higher costs onto consumers and that in turn would alter consumers' behaviour; however, experience has shown that neither of the assumptions fit the commercial reality of the trucking industry or, for that matter, other businesses.

In tough economic times, as we have been enduring over recent years, there was no capacity to raise prices. The higher dollar has made imports so much cheaper in this country, and so it was cheaper for Australian consumers to import something from overseas than to in fact absorb these extra costs imposed by the carbon tax, a tax that none of the major exporters to this country have to pay.

The aviation industry were faced with this firsthand. Australian airlines found they could not pass on the extra cost to travellers; in fact it simply hit their bottom line. If indeed they had been successful in passing on the costs to Australian travellers, that would have been devastating to our tourism industry and would have resulted in even greater losses to our tourism sector than has happened in the past.

It is hard to think of anything about this carbon tax that was good for the country. There was never any evidence that it was going to make any difference whatsoever to emissions in Australia. Indeed the statistics up to the end of 2013 show that Australia's emissions were 557 million tonnes—exactly the same level as they were in the previous year. So in spite of all of the impositions that the government had imposed on Australian industry, emissions did not fall. Indeed, Labor's strategy it seemed to make its carbon tax work was dependent upon making Australian industry uncompetitive so that Australian factories would close. Of course, when a factory closes there are less emissions in Australia. What Labor did not seem to realise was that it would make no difference to global emissions; indeed, they probably got worse because we imported products from countries that did not have a tax like this and did not care about the environmental impacts of climate change or emissions. Other countries were just intent on producing products for the lowest possible price. That is what they did and therefore Australian industries became uncompetitive. If there are reductions in CO2 emissions in Australia as a result of Labor's carbon tax, it will be because there are fewer jobs because there are fewer industries here. We are doing fewer useful things. We are not competitive as an exporter. That is simply bad, bad news for people who are dependent on these factories and these industries for their jobs and to support their cost of living.

The cuts in emissions that Labor was attempting to achieve through its carbon tax were at the expense of a strong and vibrant national economy. No country can afford that. No country can afford to stand alone and impose costs on its industries that others do not bear. Abolishing the carbon tax will make a difference to Australian industry. It will reduce the costs, not just the cost of their electricity, although that will be important; it will reduce some of their other costs such as the cost of refrigerants, which has had an enormous impact on industries like horticulture, dairying and on abattoirs. These additional costs make such a difference. It was imposed in other places as well, as we heard in question time last week—a million dollar impost on the Mackay city dump and there are scores of other dumps across the country that have to pay this special carbon tax on their operations. Australian consumers and the Australian people were being assaulted by this tax from every direction.

When the shadow minister was speaking previously, he actually lauded the direct action being taken by other governments, but he does not seem to want to embrace it for Australia. If the United States is prepared to take direct action in relation to some of its emissions, that is to be applauded. But if Australia proposes to take an implemented direct action plan as an approach to climate change, somehow or other that is to be condemned. The Labor Party are going back to its old emissions trading scheme, its old ideas about trying to deal with these sorts of issues. That was unacceptable then. Labor abandoned it because they knew they could not persuade the Australian people that it would deliver results for them and have any significant impact on emissions. The previous government's own modelling showed that under the carbon tax our emissions would increase from 560 million tonnes to 637,000,000 tonnes by 2020. Not only was the carbon tax not going to reduce emissions; emissions were going to actually increase.

The heart of our direct action plan is to take specific actions which will make a difference. The fund that the Prime Minister described in some detail when he introduced the legislation is about delivering the lowest possible cost emissions reduction. Abolishing the carbon tax will result in the average cost of living for all Australian households being around $550 lower than it would have been under a Labor government. The Nationals, who really began the fight against the emissions trading scheme, believe that we were right then and that we are right now. The coalition are moving to get rid of the carbon tax and that will provide real opportunities for Australia. We want to encourage not inhibit the growth of business in Australia. We want people to have the confidence to invest in this country. Now, with the carbon tax regime, they choose to go to other places. Whatever you call the slug on businesses and households, whether you call it a carbon tax or an emissions trading scheme, the cost to people, businesses and communities will be the same. The cost will be counted in jobs, closed factories and uncompetitive industries.

This government was elected with a mandate to scrap the carbon tax and reduce costs for businesses and households, to boost jobs in manufacturing and to restore Australia's competitiveness. What clearer message could be sent to the Australian Labor Party and members in this chamber than the message they received at the last election? The Australian people stood up and said no to a carbon tax. They said no to a carbon tax whether you called it an emissions trading scheme or something else. They said no to the increased living costs through higher electricity bills and fuel costs. But they said yes to a government that wants to introduce a direct action plan and a government that will keep its promises. Remember, Labor promised that they would not introduce a carbon tax but they did. The Australian people voted on the carbon tax and now it is time for the Australian parliament to respect their wishes and to vote to get rid of this insidious tax. It would be very foolish for an opposition to continue to not listen to the words of the Australian people— (Time expired)

See this speech in context