Jane Prentice (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is truly mystifying how, in a modern society, with all of human history and knowledge accessible through a device in our pockets, those opposite still believe that a tax is going to magically affect climate change. Those opposite must be deluded to believe that to take climate change seriously you need to tax people—families, community groups, single parents and pensioners—and somehow emissions will be reduced. The previous Labor-Greens government tried to incubate this insane, irrational and irresponsible notion, hoping it would grow in popularity with the Australian people. But this is not the first time that Labor and the Greens have underestimated the intelligence and common sense of the Australian people. Australians know that the rate of emissions continued to increase under Labor and, along with it, the cost of living. The Labor-Greens coalition government misled the Australian people when they said that the world's largest economy-wide carbon tax would not affect the cost of living.

This is evidenced by the fact that, now that this toxic tax has been repealed, costs are coming down. The Brisbane City Council is responding to the removal of the carbon tax by refunding the carbon tax element of this year's rates and removing existing carbon tax related fees and charges, while still leading the nation with its environmental initiatives. Brisbane City Council will provide a one-off refund to all ratepayers to cover the $17 million of carbon tax costs in the 2014-15 budget as well as the $7.1 million collected for future emission costs. That is right: with the removal of the carbon tax we are actually seeing the cost of living go down. Now that the carbon tax has been removed, the cost of power has decreased by nine per cent. Now that the carbon tax has been removed, the cost of gas has decreased by seven per cent. Now that the carbon tax has been removed, council rates have decreased and been refunded. Now that the carbon tax has been removed, public transport costs across Queensland have been reduced. Now that the carbon tax has been removed, unnecessary pressures placed on small businesses will be released, meaning savings can be passed on to consumers. Now that the carbon tax has been removed, Australians are all better off.

Yet those opposite still insist on re-introducing this toxic tax. The blind faith of those opposite in a policy which still resulted in emissions increasing, obviously not tackling climate change and instead placing a whole-of-economy burden on Australians, is horrifying.

On this side of the chamber we have taken a realistic approach to tackling climate change. We are committed to our target of reducing emissions by five per cent below 2000 levels by 2020. This is expected to be 22 per cent lower than if we had not taken action. The coalition government has committed $2.55 billion to the Emissions Reduction Fund, which supports Australian businesses to improve their productivity and reduce their energy costs rather than taxing them and making their operations more difficult—which would force them to lay-off staff—and somehow expecting them to reduce their emissions.

Australia is committed to a new global agreement that establishes a common playing field, for all countries, to take action from 2020. Australia has joined the summit declaration on the phase down of hydrofluorocarbons. The coalition's approach to climate change is about practical action, actually getting in there and helping large emissions contributors change their practices, to see a positive environmental impact. It is not about imposing a tax that increases the cost of living. It is not about spending billions of dollars on 'renewable-energy' facilities that are not yet economically or environmentally viable and indeed are incredibly damaging to the environment, and are inefficient and unreliable sources of power so that coal-burning power plants must always be on standby to account for drops in energy output. This means that fossil fuels are being burnt anyway. It is not about announcing renewable-energy schemes that sound exciting yet take 20 years to break even for the fossil fuel and environmental cost of building them.

Unlike those opposite, the coalition believes in taking real action, not participating in marches protesting against the use of fossil fuels while setting up nylon tents made from petroleum derivatives, or writing on signs with pens using ink derived from petroleum, or marching in shoes derived from petroleum, or selling climate-action tee-shirts printed with petroleum based plastic paint or shouting into megaphones made from petroleum based plastics and powered by fossil fuels. The irony is astounding.

Unlike Labor and the Greens, the coalition is not about screaming and shouting. We are not about announcing scientifically baseless policies. We are about action. The coalition stands for reducing emissions in a way that will not hurt everyday Australians already doing it tough.

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