Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It was very interesting to listen to the member for Isaacs give a long run-through of things that have been cut. But he does not seem to get it. He does not seem to understand that the budget we have inherited forces this government to find $1 billion every single month just to pay the interest. Imagine what could be done with that billion dollars every month. In a single day that is $33 million, every single day. In the 15 minutes I have to speak, the interest bill this country would have paid would have been $350,000. That is the legacy we have inherited from six years of the previous Labor government: the obligation to find the money to pay that interest. Seventy per cent of that money actually goes out of the country because we have borrowed that money from foreigners. We have borrowed that money from overseas. So every single 15 minutes we have to raise $350,000 just to pay the interest.

Instead of members of the opposition coming into this chamber, standing at the dispatch box, apologising for their incompetence and apologising for their waste, we get these diatribes of complaints. The most concerning complaint that I get is the absolute hypocrisy we hear about when they whinge about the cuts, especially when they are blocking the repeal of the carbon tax which will put $550 per annum back in the pockets of the average household in this country. We hear about how terrible the $7 co-payment is. But they are blocking a $550 cut. If the average household has 80 trips to the doctor, that is what it would pay for. That is what the repeal of the carbon tax would cost. Instead we get them coming in here whingeing away about these cuts when they themselves refused to repeal the carbon tax.

In the time available in this debate on the appropriations bills I want to go on about one of the effects of the carbon tax in my electorate of Hughes. We know that the carbon tax forces up electricity prices, just like a whole other range of great and well-thought-out green schemes like the RET and other variable schemes.

The fact is the carbon tax is a tax on electricity and that forces up the price of electricity. So what do consumers do when the price of electricity rises, especially when they have to heat their homes in winter? They simply look for alternatives. One option is people elect either to heat their house or to eat. There is another option: in a case that happened recently in my electorate, a family could not afford their electricity bills so what they did was get some coal and they warmed their house with coal to try and keep the kids warm. But they forgot to open the windows and these young kids were poisoned by carbon monoxide. They had to be rushed off in a critical condition to Liverpool Hospital. These young children could have died. This is the effect increasing electricity prices has.

The other option people have, especially in the west and south-west of Sydney, when their electricity prices go up because of the taxes that the previous Labor government put on and refused to repeal, is to go out to the bush, grab some wood, bring it home and burn it in their open fireplace. When you burn wood, you release what is known as particulate matter. Particulate matter are the very fine particles of ash and dust and soot that go into the environment when you burn fossil fuel or when you burn wood. In fact more than 50 per cent of particulate matter in Western Sydney is caused by people burning wood in their fireplace at home. Why is particulate matter of a concern? It is only recently that the World Health Organization has declared that particulate matter is carcinogenic. We know from health experts that particulate matter causes lung cancer, it causes cardiovascular disease, it causes asthma, it causes as bronchitis—a whole range of different illnesses and diseases. We also know that children are the most susceptible to particulate matter pollution.

Particulate matter pollution is of particular concern in Western Sydney because Western Sydney has a unique topography. It has the mountains to the west, high ground to the north and the south and that simply makes the air pollution worse in Western Sydney because it gets trapped, it accumulates and it circles inside the basin for several days. In fact, it has been said that if you were designing a city, for air pollution Sydney would be one of the last places you would decide to put a city.

We have some statistics of the harm that particulate pollution was causing before the carbon tax came in. Back in 2003 the New South Wales government stated that particulate air pollution in Sydney causes between 643 and 1,446 deaths in Sydney alone. That is up to 1,400 deaths in Sydney caused by air pollution and they said that was a conservative estimate. To put an economic price on it, as well as 1,500 deaths they are talking about close to $1 billion or up to $6 billion per annum. That was almost a decade ago. What has happened the air pollution readings in Western Sydney since the carbon tax has come in? We know people are going out and they are looking for alternatives. They are burning more wood.

I went to the air quality monitoring reports which are produced by the New South Wales government and particulate matter is measured in two ways: there is what is called PM10 and there is also what is called PM2.5, which is the smaller of the two. What we found was that since the start of the carbon tax, particulate matter PM10, as measured in Liverpool in my electorate, has increased by 25 per cent. But it is even worse for particulate matter that is measured in PM2.5—that has increased by 40 per cent. So what the carbon tax is doing is making the air quality in Western Sydney worse. The carbon tax is polluting the environment in Western Sydney.

It is concerning how high those increases have been and how high are the levels we are at. The World Health Organization has a recommended standard for particulate pollution of an annual average of no more than 20 micrograms per cubic metre. That is what you should not exceed. In Liverpool, here in Western Sydney, we are now at 21.1 micrograms per cubic metre—so the constituents of my electorate are now breathing air that is over and above what the World Health Organisation standards recommend for PM10. The other one is PM2.5, which the World Health Organisation says is more dangerous. Since the increase of the carbon tax, with more people burning wood to keep themselves warm in the winter, we now have PM2.5 measurements that are at dangerous levels. We have a standard here in Australia that says that the annual average should not be more than eight micrograms per cubic metre. With that big increase in air pollution, we are now up to 9.5 micrograms per cubic metre for PM2.5. We are above the levels that the World Health Organization and the Australian standards recommend—because of the carbon tax and these other schemes that are forcing up the electricity prices. This is causing pollution, it is causing disease and, given the previous statistics and given the substantial increase in levels, I am in no doubt that it is also causing death. And yet the opposition refuse to meet their election promise to repeal the carbon tax—to eliminate the carbon tax. Shame!

In the time left, I would like to briefly comment on some of the other terribly misleading statements that we have heard from members of the opposition. We in this place have an obligation, and the obligation is that we have to make sure that we enact policies that ensure we pass our nation on to our children and to our grandchildren in a better condition; with more freedom and with more opportunity than we had when we inherited it from our forefathers. But what we are doing is loading them up with record levels of debt that have never before been seen in this country. We talk about that billion dollars that goes out every month. But if nothing is done, we know where the trajectory is taking us. In 10 years' time, that debt—if nothing is done and no changes are made—will blow out to $667 billion. And then the interest payments we have to find will not be $1 billion a month; they will be $3 billion a month—$36 billion a year. That is what we are passing on to our children and to our grandchildren: to have to find the money to pay the interest on the debt that this government racked up, and that this opposition wants us to continue to rack up.

I would also like to quickly comment on some of the changes that have been made to education and to HECS fees. I received an email today which was very disappointing, about a lady in my electorate who had been misled. She wrote to me and said we were stealing her children's future; we were taking away their future—because she had listened to all the propaganda from the opposition.

Going and getting a university education is the best deal that you could possibly get. We have to remember: when these changes are made, the average student will still pay only half the cost of their education. We hear that the average HECS debt today is around $20,000. We admit that that is a significant amount, but the figures show that, over their lifetime, someone who gets a degree will earn a million dollars more than someone who leaves in year 12 and goes on with no further education.

So here is the deal that we are offering students today. You can get into a university without paying one cent upfront. You do not need one dollar. The government will lend you that money, and when you start to work and you are earning above $50,000, you will then have to pay it back—but you will not have to pay it all back; you will only have to pay back half of it, on average. And for that, over your lifetime, you, on average—and there will be people who will do a lot better than that—will be able to earn $1 million more.

This is an opportunity that any young kid should be grabbing with both hands. But we have the opposition whingeing and whining, and misleading young people by telling them that they cannot have this opportunity and that somehow what we are doing takes away that opportunity. It does the exact opposite. The changes we are making will give 80,000 more places by extending that same deal to people who want to do diplomas or who want to obtain a degree from a non-registered university, and also to people who want to do a trade course. We are extending opportunity to the young people of our country. And Labor are telling young people the complete opposite. They are telling untruths.

Debate adjourned.

Federation Chamber adjourned at 1 9 : 00 .

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