Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have received a letter from the honourable member for Indi proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The impact of a carbon tax on jobs

I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry and Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is one job that this carbon tax is intended to save, and that is the Prime Minister’s job. What price will we pay? Thousands of Australian jobs will be exported overseas and thousands of Australian businesses will go to the wall. For what reason? For the reason that this is a desperate minority government and a Prime Minister who will do ‘whatever it takes’, in the words of Graham Richardson, to grease up to the Greens and give them what they want so she can hold onto that mantle of power.

The more desperate the minority government becomes, the more desperate the Prime Minister becomes in trying to save her job, the greater the lack of judgment we see. We see scores of members on the other side wondering: why when making this announcement did she allow the Greens to colonise the Prime Minister’s courtyard and effectively show the Australian people the reality of the desperation of this minority government? There is one thing I can guarantee you: the more desperate this Prime Minister becomes, the more she will fail in her judgment and the more, unfortunately, Australians will suffer.

We heard her speak before about people being misleading. Let me tell you: the person who has more front than a mall full of shops is this Prime Minister. The mother of all untruths in the whole of political history has to be the one she told on the eve of an election. She was a woman desperate, a woman being leaked against, a woman being knifed with a former Prime Minister out to get her, and she was saying anything—in the words of Graham Richardson, ‘Whatever it takes.’ She said whatever she thought she needed to say: ‘There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.’ She also said, ‘There is a great divide in this parliament.’ Yes, there is. On that side they are interested in one job: the top job; the PM’s job. On this side of the House we are inundated by calls from communities desperate for financial security, desperate to make ends meet and desperate to hold onto their jobs and businesses. We know there are small and medium-sized businesses that do not have the clout of big unions or the entree into the government, and they have told us they are hurting. They cannot afford another cost to seriously jeopardise their already thin margins.

That is the big divide: there is one job that is important on that side—the job of the Prime Minister, which will allow the Labor Party to hold onto power. They are desperate because they are about to lose power in New South Wales. They are about to lose the heart of the Labor Party, and it is going to hurt them, big time. So they need to hold onto this one job.

We hear the Prime Minister quoting this CEO and that CEO. Behind the scenes, when people talk about what they really think, manufacturing and businesses are not happy at all. But the Prime Minister, of course, with her very tricky words, would like us all to enter the fantasy land she lives in on top of the faraway tree, where everyone out there in business wants this carbon tax and that it is the answer to all the problems. We know that is not true. She arrogantly dismisses the concerns of BlueScope Steel and she told us during question time, ‘They’ll just get on with it; they’ll just find something else to do’—effectively she said, ‘Tough: you’ll just have to put up with all the pathetic decisions we make, every decision that drives up cost and every decision that makes Australian businesses uncompetitive in the face of imports.’

We have seen their mining tax. We have seen them go back on all sorts of promises, whether it was cash for clunkers and the Green Car Innovation Fund or securing our borders. But the mother of all deceptions was the promise not to introduce a carbon tax. She will keep her job for a short time, but during that time what will it cost Australians and what will it cost the Australian economy? She has reversed the public good. Usually we ask people to sacrifice a little of themselves for the greater good; on this occasion it is Prime Minister Gillard and the Labor Party asking thousands of everyday Australians to sacrifice their livelihoods and their standard of living for her job. What an arrogant Prime Minister. What an out-of-touch Prime Minister. What an absolutely delusional Prime Minister.

As the shadow minister for industry, it is my solemn duty to inform the House that this backflip is on the back of so many reversals and contradictions that have had an extraordinarily bad impact on Australian businesses. I note from some of the Prime Minister’s statements that she thinks the implementation of this job-destroying new tax is going to result in businesses using less energy. But what she does not acknowledge is that in many cases the lights are going to get switched off forever and that this will be the industrial sunset for much of Australian manufacturing.

Already in the past three years Labor has presided over sustained contractions in Australian manufacturing that have been the worst ever recorded by the AiG and the PricewaterhouseCoopers index. More than 87,000 jobs have been lost in Australian manufacturing during that time. And just to add to this depressing picture, insolvencies across Australian businesses have hit record levels in each and every one of the years of the Rudd-Gillard government. We have been lurching backwards in a period when manufacturing has been consistently expanding in places like the US, Italy, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. So much for trying to help working families or even the newly unemployed families and so much for moving forward.

Not content with crippling a sector to which they have made all sorts of promises and whispered all sorts of sweet nothings just to get elected, the government now want to tax Australian manufacturing out of existence. As the shadow industry minister, I am constantly impressed by the resilience, the determination and the innovation of Australian manufacturers, but at the same time I hear the constant refrain from them—from one end of the country to the other—that they cannot afford to stay in business if they are forced to compete with imports that do not have the cost of a carbon tax placed on them. Already, they have to compete against imports which have been manufactured by countries with cheaper wages but which do not the same environmental occupational health and safety laws as we have. This one additional cost is going to drive many to the wall.

We have not heard from the government what they are going to do with government procurement. Are they going to say when they put out a government contract that they will put an extra tax, the carbon tax, on those who tender from overseas or are this government going to continue the practice of favouring foreign companies that are not subjected to the same laws, regulations and costs as those in Australia? Are they going to say that they will favour cheap tenders and give Australian taxpayers’ dollars to foreign companies that are not subjected to a carbon tax? I bet you that is what is in their plan because that would be utterly consistent with their secret plans, like the secret plan to send Army camouflage fabric to China. If they can get away with it, the government will.

Is it any wonder in this current environment that we have Managing Director and CEO of BlueScope Steel, Paul O’Malley, saying that this government is engaged in economic vandalism, that it has an anti-manufacturing focus and that it displays complete ignorance? There is no shortage of industry leaders and bodies lining up behind him to make the same points. If the Prime Minister thinks that industry and workers out there want this tax, she is utterly and thoroughly deluded. She would stand there and say black is white until she was blue in the face just to keep her job. She will say and do anything. Everyone knows, even the people who sit behind her, this Prime Minister has worked all her life to get to the top job and she will do anything, sell anyone and sacrifice as many Australian jobs as possible if it means that she keeps her job.

This carbon tax will make our industries less competitive against imports and will not only export Australian jobs overseas but also export carbon overseas to countries that use more energy and put more emissions into the atmosphere by making the same things that we do. As long as they have a competitive advantage over us and no carbon tax, the incentive will be for them to produce more, to make more, whilst they retain that competitive advantage. It is not only a policy that will destroy Australian jobs and send them offshore but also a policy that will result in even greater emissions. In an act of trademark Labor stupidity, it is helping to increase the amount of carbon in the world’s atmosphere, but that breathtaking stupidity means nothing if it means that the Prime Minister will hold onto her job.

I realise that the Greens are hell-bent on taking us back to a pre-industrial era, and we see the Labor Party complicit in all of that, but it is no surprise when they have a Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research such as Kim Carr who has rightly filled the business community with dread, given that his close to two decades in parliament have produced barely a whimper of economic literacy and only resulted, in government, in disastrous policies that have threatened to remove the incentives to innovation. The Prime Minister stood there in question time and said ‘Oh, manufacturing will be fine; they will just innovate.’ So what have they done? In government they are trying to rip out the most important incentive to innovation, the R&D tax incentive. The Prime Minister is all talk. She also talks about looking into the future and transforming the Australian economy.

Industry and workers know that the future under a carbon tax means almost no manufacturing. The future under a carbon tax is tens of thousands of people unemployed. The future under a carbon tax is the single greatest disruption to the Australian economy and the destruction of Australian jobs that we have seen. If you do not believe me, Prime Minister, instead of just speaking to the big end of town, why do you not go out there to small- and medium-sized businesses who invite you to go and speak to them, small- and medium-sized businesses who have mortgaged their house and taken the risk to compete out there in the marketplace, who are as efficient as they can possibly be, who are working on very small margins?

Why don’t you have the guts, be woman enough, to go and speak to them, look them in the eye and tell them this carbon tax is good for their business? Tell them that this carbon tax is going to create more jobs and then you will see—from real people who have spent real money and made real sacrifices to carve out a living, to get some independence in their lives—the incandescent anger right around Australia. If this Prime Minister cannot see how angry people are, if she does not understand that they are being pushed to the wall with the ever-increasing cost of living and the insecurity about whether or not they are going to keep their jobs, then she is truly the most delusional person who has ever occupied the position of Prime Minister. As much as Labor might—

David Bradbury (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Bradbury interjecting

Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The honourable member for Lindsay will have his say shortly, I suspect.

Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry and Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As much as the Prime Minister might want to believe her own words, the truth out in the real world is very different. The last thing industry and businesses need is an arrogant, interfering government—not to mention the Greens; a gaggle of Greens—who do not care about Australian jobs. I am sure the Greens would want a lot of jobs to disappear and a lot of Australians to go and live somewhere else, so they could get rid of those smokestacks and big factories that create jobs.

But on this side of the House—

David Bradbury (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Bradbury interjecting

Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry and Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is a big divide. On this side of the House we want Australian industry to grow, to be competitive. We do not favour foreign companies at the expense of Australian companies. We do not want to say to Australian manufacturers: ‘We will put a carbon tax on you, and you know what? We’re still going to buy from overseas companies. As an Australian government we will favour foreign companies.’ This Prime Minister will destroy Australian jobs in every single corner she travels to in Australia. As her marginal seat members will tell her, there is that great concern. People are afraid. Forget about the faceless men; the faceless men are starting to look pretty attractive compared to the Greens. The Greens have taken over and now, with the faceless men losing their power base in New South Wales, they are going to be very sad indeed.

This Prime Minister will import not just products and manufacturing but jobs, and should be seriously condemned from every corner of Australia. (Time expired)

Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence Materiel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to have this debate about jobs, the most important thing in Australia. This is a debate about jobs, and every time we have a debate in this place about jobs the opposition get it wrong. We had debates in this place in 2008 and 2009 about jobs, about what it would take to make sure the economy did not go into recession and to protect Australian jobs. We took the action that was necessary to stop a recession and to protect Australian jobs. The opposition took the opposite position. They decided to oppose the stimulus package, which would, if we had accepted the opposition’s advice, have cost 200,000 Australians their jobs—that is two Olympic stadiums full of people, or two electorates represented in this parliament.

In that debate, back in April 2009, the member for North Sydney, the shadow Treasurer, said:

… 300,000 Australians are going to lose their job in its—

the government’s—

first term.

What happened? Because of the action that the government took, faced with the greatest economic crisis in 75 years, more than 700,000 more Australians have a job today than when the government took office just over three years ago—despite the GFC.

They have made the same mistakes when it comes to the mineral resource rent tax. The scare campaign has been running now for close to 12 months. We keep hearing the story about how miners are going to lose their jobs. Since the government has announced the mineral resource rent tax, employment in mining has already grown by 10.3 per cent. Despite the Liberal scare campaign, companies are still investing in mining because they know it has a strong future. There are 18,690 more mining jobs today than before that tax was announced.

If you want to go into history to have a look at how the Liberal Party performs when you have great economic structural debates about how to improve the economy, you need go no further than the debate that this parliament had in the early nineties about compulsory superannuation. I went back and looked at those debates to see what the Liberal Party said then.

Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Ramsey interjecting

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What about the GST, Jason?

Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence Materiel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is what some of your comrades said back in the nineties. David Connolly MP said compulsory superannuation was ‘absolutely abhorrent’. He said, ‘Australia does not need, and cannot afford, these proposals at this time.’ That sounds similar to what we are hearing now. Wilson Tuckey—well missed!—said that superannuation was ‘stupid and dishonest’. Senator Alston said it would ‘be little short of lunacy to introduce a massive new cost burden on employers’. Remember Senator Panizza? This is a good one:

The worst case scenario is the loss of 100,000 jobs …

                        …                   …                   …

Businesses and organisations will simply not be able to afford it …

                  …              …              …

Small businesses will be closed down …

                  …              …              …

… 100,000 jobs are on the line …

                        …                   …                   …

I can see those 100,000 jobs quite easily going out the door within a very few years.

Senator Watson said there would ‘be rising unemployment as a result of this levy’. Senator Crichton-Browne said compulsory superannuation was yet another threat to Australia’s future economic prosperity. Allan Rocher said it would ‘have a disastrous impact on business’ and it was ‘a tax on jobs’.

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Buchholz interjecting

Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The honourable member for Wright will return to his seat or remain silent.

Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence Materiel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What happened—did compulsory superannuation destroy the Australian economy? No, people did not get sacked. New businesses and new jobs were created and it proved to be one of the most important economic reforms of the last century. It created new industries, and it now funds more than a trillion dollars worth of funds under management, making Australia’s superannuation savings the fourth-largest capital pool in the world. It created new jobs and more jobs. A report that was released in 2009 by the Association of Superannuation Funds estimated that 60,000 people are now directly employed in the superannuation industry. That is structural reform of the economy, creating new jobs.

The same scare campaign that we heard then, in the early nineties, is back and running again on climate change. The member for Indi, in her contribution to the debate, started with, ‘1,000 Australian jobs exposed overseas’. Then she ramped up the tempo and said that there would be no manufacturing left. But that was not good enough; as she got towards the end of her contribution she said that 10,000 Australians would be unemployed. Then, just before the end—

Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry and Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise on a point of order. Perhaps the member should check Hansard before inaccurately—

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The honourable member for Indi will resume her seat.

Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence Materiel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am sure Hansard will prove this quote is correct. You went on to talk about the biggest destroyer of jobs in Australian history. Forget the Great Depression! That is right up there with comments about Gaddafi. Absolutely ridiculous!

Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry and Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You should speak to Australian businesses.

Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence Materiel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is that right? The contribution was about the biggest destroyer of jobs in Australian history. You just have to go back to quotes from previous debates to see how ludicrous those comments were in the past and how ludicrous these comments are today. They should be dealt with with the derision they deserve.

Economic reforms—structural changes to our economy—create new industries and new jobs. That was the lesson of the eighties and the nineties. Remember the fear campaigns about tariff reductions and other reforms of the Hawke and Keating governments. It was said that those governments were selling out, that industries would be destroyed, that jobs would be destroyed and that businesses would close. What did those reforms do? They did the reverse. Big economic reforms in the eighties and nineties made Australian businesses more competitive by forcing them to innovate.

The lesson for us here, when we are contemplating these reforms, is that economic reform and structural reform create new jobs. The Hawke and Keating reforms set the Australian economy up for this century, to compete in new markets like China and East Asia, to make sure that we did not become the poor white trash of Asia. Creating new jobs is all about identifying the challenges of the future and acting upon them to give businesses the certainty they need. This reform is not easy; we do not say that it is. It is going to require a lot of hard work by all of us, but the longer we wait the more this will cost. If carbon pollution is going to be capped in the future businesses want to know what the rules are as soon as possible. They want certainty. The sooner that we set the rules the sooner they can make long-term investment decisions that will create the jobs of the future.

If we fail here the cost of our indifference will be paid by our children and our grandchildren in their jobs, because the longer we take the more it will cost and the harder it will be to cut emissions and transform our economy to a low-carbon economy. The cheapest and most effective way to do that is by putting a price on carbon. That is what the member for Wentworth has said on many occasions. He has tried to convince his party of that. That is what John Howard, the former Prime Minister said on many occasions, and tried to convince his party of. That is what the member for Flinders said when he was at university. In his honours thesis he said:

… a pollution tax is both desirable, and, in some form, is inevitable …

He said:

… even if some of the Liberal’s constituents do respond negatively, a pollution tax does need to be introduced to properly serve the public interest.

Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry and Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I would like to draw your attention to the state of the House.

The bells having been rung—

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Mitchell interjecting

Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise on a point of order. I draw your attention to offensive statements made just then by a member who is out of his seat. I ask that you ask him to withdraw that offensive statement.

Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What were the offensive statements?

Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am not of a mind to repeat them but they related to the member for Indi. I think they are out of order. I took offence and he should withdraw them.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I did not hear the remarks. If I am not told what the remarks are obviously I cannot have them withdrawn. If the member did make an offensive comment I would ask him to assist the House but unless I actually know what was alleged to have been said I cannot take any action under the standing orders. I thought I was listening to him. He certainly should not have been interjecting from outside his seat but I did not hear anything that was unparliamentary.

(Quorum formed)

Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence Materiel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As you will recall, I was just quoting from the thesis of the member for Flinders. It says that a pollution tax is desirable and that even if Liberals respond to it negatively a pollution tax needs to be introduced to properly serve the public interest.

I think that if he were true to himself he would admit that today. Unfortunately, because of the extremists that have been involved in getting rid of the member for Wentworth and taking over the Liberal Party, he has now got to put together another plan, which will cost taxpayers $10 million, and to be effective would cost $30 billion. It would mean that the taxpayers that we represent would end up paying an extra $720 a year on their bills because of an ineffective, badly designed, carbon pricing mechanism.

What is clear—and you only need to see what the member for Wentworth said on Q&A the other night—is that no-one supports the opposition’s plan on carbon pricing. He was asked if there were any economists that support it and he could not mention any of them. No wonder economists do not support the opposition’s plan, because it is a carbon plan designed by One Nation. The same people who sent the emails to the Liberal MPs about the flood levy and Indonesian schools are from the same One Nation that sent emails to try to scare the pants off the Liberal Party to get rid of the member for Wentworth.

If you go to the One Nation website and you hear them talk about times when Greenland was ice free and now you can grow melons in England and in the 1600s London’s Thames River froze over, and then you go to 2009 and you see Tony Abbott saying the same things, what is clear is that they are now more One Nation than they are one Liberal Party. That is why when they were interviewed by Phil Coorey they were saying that they were now being run by One Nation. Another member said that they were in the thrall of right-wing nut jobs. That is what they are saying about their own side to the journalists. Robert Menzies would not recognise this party if he were alive today, and one thing you can be sure of, Malcolm Fraser would not vote for it. It is a party so right wing now that it makes John Howard look like Che Guevara. John Howard did a lot of things but he never took advice from Pauline Hanson.

Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry and Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise on a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker, on relevance.

Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no point of order.

Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry and Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He has not mentioned—

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Indi will resume her seat. This is a wide-ranging debate.

Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry and Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mrs Mirabella interjecting

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I warn the honourable member for Indi!

Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence Materiel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They do not like it. They can hand it out but they cannot take it, can they? The truth hurts. They are more One Nation than one Liberal Party. As your own colleagues say, you are now run by a band of lunatics and right-wing nut jobs. (Time expired)

Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Competition Policy and Consumer Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What a revelation we have just had. You must really feel for the hundreds of thousands of Australians that are worried about their jobs and the households worrying about how they are going to pay for the increased cost of everything when they get what is nothing more than a rant. This is supposed to be a matter of public importance about the impact of Labor’s carbon tax on jobs. Did we hear a word about that from the melodious member who just spoke? No. We heard lots of volume but no content, a completely vacuous contribution about something that goes to the heart of the living standards and the opportunity for people in this country to secure a livelihood through employment, and the reckless way in which the government, to hang onto power, is pandering to a Greens agenda to introduce a carbon tax it cannot explain, an impact it does not understand, consequences for households it cannot even articulate, and a concern of business and for employment it does not even bother to talk about. What is going on here? We have heard all of these stories from those opposite and a complete inability to address what is going to be one of the most fundamental impacts on people’s existence in this country, and they cannot even bring themselves to talk about it.

This is a tax that does not just land once. This carbon tax will land over and over and over and over again on every stage of production, on every part of activity, on every element of what is consumed in this country and then, on top of that, there will be a GST. The consequences of that are clear. This carbon tax risks visiting carnage on small businesses across this country.

And do you know what is most concerning? The small business community have had to sit by and listen to Labor talk about how clever they are while 300,000 jobs have been lost in small business since the election of Labor. If that atrophy within small business and the economic strength that small business brings to the economy is not enough, those people in small business have to cope with this apathy, this indifference, this complete disinterest in what should be the engine room of our economy. When the Howard government was last in office, 53 per cent of Australians in the private sector got their job in small business. It is now down to 48 per cent and diminishing—300,000 fewer jobs—and here we have a poorly conceived plan and a change that the government cannot even articulate.

It comes in here with a couple of agreed bullet points that have been workshopped with the Greens, and then argues that it is some blueprint for enormous reform within the Australian economy. When we ask about consequences, we get no answers. When we ask about the level of the tax, we get no answers. We ask about the compensation package and we get no answers. And the small business community gets no interest. They are never mentioned. They are not involved even in these workshopped slogans that masquerade as some kind of considered argument about a carbon tax. They do not even crack it for a mention. It is as though the small business community does not matter.

It is the same dismissive, disinterested attitude we got under Prime Minister Rudd’s CPRS. Everyone was queuing up for compensation, and you know who got none? Small business. And what were they told? Suck it up! Suck up the extra costs or pass them on to consumers. That is what the small business community was told. This again illustrates how this Labor government does not understand what is going on in the economy. It comes in here and boasts about growth at the big end of town and in big mining and big minerals, but it does not see the harm and the hardship its policies are causing small businesses right across this country. If this economy is patchwork, it is threadbare for the small business community. There are no sloppy margins. There are no easy profits. There is no optimism that the government is even remotely interested in their circumstances or the tens of thousands of people in every community around the country who get their employment in small business.

What have we got here? A carbon tax that is going to hit every stage of every piece of activity of every part of production on every input because cost of living pressures in the household represent cost input pressures in business and they just cannot pass them on. They cannot pass them on because Australian consumers are anxious, nervous and frightened about what is going to come next from this government. They are looking for bargains. They are worrying about balancing their own books. They have got rising costs everywhere they turn and they are also concerned about the impact of this carbon tax on their jobs, their livelihood, let alone their ability to balance their own budgets.

They are not mirroring this government that does not seem to care about paying its way. Households do care, they live within their means; they have to. But small businesses do not have these great, sloppy profit margins to be able to say, ‘Suck up this extra charge.’ This is a charge that will go on and on building at every stage of activity. Wherever there is energy consumed, wherever there is fuel being used, this carbon tax will be embedded in those input costs and they will cascade through and snowball, and add to the cost of those goods and services, and then the government gets a large lick at the end of the day from larger GST revenue. They just love it. Do you think that this government cares? Of course they do not. They could not bring themselves to talk about this very issue.

The surveys are quite interesting. There have been some surveys out there where having heard the Prime Minister say, ‘There will not be a carbon tax under the government I lead’—you know small business people, they take people as they find them—they thought, ‘The Prime Minister of this country said that, we might be able to believe it.’ Do you know, 80 per cent of small businesses in a recent survey said they had made no provision for a carbon tax because they took the Prime Minister at her word? Such is the democratic deficit we now face today. They are now thinking: ‘What is this? Is this Guatemala or something where these undertakings from civic leaders just do not count?’ You are going to run your own show and when things get tough, you just tell everybody, ‘You’re happy, you’re happy, this will be good for you.’ Everyone will go, ‘Yes, that’s right, is it, Leader?’ It does not work like that in Australia. If political parties make commitments, they should stick to them—that is what honourable people do.

There is little wonder as you travel around this country that you see the nation’s leading cartoonists have familiar themes. You have the Prime Minister sitting there as Bob Brown’s puppet and the Prime Minister interestingly is characterised as Pinocchio. You know what is really interesting, though? Where would Geppetto be? Would Geppetto be manufacturing these Pinocchio puppets in Australia? No, he would be pushed offshore. If he were manufacturing these Pinocchio-like puppets mimicking our Prime Minister, he would have to go offshore because all of the energy costs would be embedded, all the costs of getting the timber to his workshop would have carbon tax loaded into every part of that transport task. The energy that he would use, even the machinery that he would use, would have your carbon tax in there, so he would be buying in these puppets from offshore. I wonder what the likeness would be like.

Is that what is really going on here? Is manufacturing so non-bourgeois that you do not want it in this country? Why on earth would you burden our competitive industries that day after day have to be world class and take on competitors right around the globe with a carbon tax that builds up, snowballs and adds lead in the saddlebag every step of the way when their competitors do not have to worry about it? What a cunning plan not to have to worry about small business—wipe them out. When you ask this government to explain the impact on business, who do they revert to?

Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry and Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Bob Brown.

Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Competition Policy and Consumer Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They revert to the big companies. They might get their economic advice from Bob Brown because we saw yesterday that the Treasurer has NFI—no fiscal idea—at all about what is going on, none whatsoever. The keeper of Australia’s taxes was asked about the impact of this tax and he could not even answer the question. Then he referred to a document where the carbon price was $45 a tonne. For people listening, that is not a $300 a year increase in your energy prices, that is $600 a year. Then you look at what is going on over in the UK where they surveyed some of these funky things that the government wants to facilitate that will create jobs and you find they cost 3.17 jobs for every job created in Australia.

Something has to happen here. Labor has to take small business seriously. It cannot keep treating them like some second-class productive trash in this economy. Small business used to provide more than half of the workforce opportunities in Australia—it is now diminishing as days go by. They do not factor in your policy and decision making; your minister is the Marcel Marceau of the frontbench. Who knows what the small business minister does? Even at COAG do you know what got cut the other day? It was the Small Business Council. You do not even care to have a chat about it now. Come on, guys, you have got to lift your game. You have got to be interested in the impact of this tax, you cannot describe the impacts you dare not utter and the consequences for our economy and jobs without factoring in the very real concerns of small business. Small business will find their voice, believe me. They were inspired by your ignorance about the impact of the paid parental leave pay clerk role. They will find their voice. I just wonder whether there is anyone listening because Labor just does not seem to care that this carbon tax is going to damage employment in the engine room of our economy. The men and women of small business deserve better, they create wealth, they create opportunities—(Time expired)

Peter Slipper (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I call the honourable member for Page, I consider it is skating dangerously close to reflecting on the chair for the member for Dunkley to refer to my ignorance in the process of his debate. He ought to direct his remarks through the chair.

Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to be able to speak about jobs in this debate because that is what the government is on about. That is what a Labor government is always on about—jobs, jobs and jobs—creating jobs and protecting jobs. If the coalition want to talk about jobs they should start with the Leader of the Opposition. He was looking after his own personal, political interest and blew up a bipartisan agreed approach to introducing an emissions trading scheme so that he could get his current job. So in talking about jobs, the coalition ought to have a look at what they have done first.

We on this side care about jobs. We want to make sure, not just in one year, in two years, in three years, in five years, but in 10 years, in 20 years, that we have an economy that keeps nurturing, adapts and transforms and makes sure that we have jobs for the future—so jobs for the day and jobs for the future.

I listened to the member for Wannon earlier, in question time and beyond, talking about wanting to protect jobs in his electorate in the steel industry. I say to him that he can join us and do the right thing. He can support the price on carbon. He can support moving to an emissions trading scheme. That way, he will actually protect the jobs in his electorate. The approach that is being taken by the coalition, by the opposition, is irresponsible. It is reckless. It is set to scare people. It is not about jobs. It is about their jobs as they see them—their own personal jobs—but not about the jobs that we want for people in regional New South Wales in particular.

I draw your attention, Mr Deputy Speaker, to a report that came out this week from the Climate Institute. I will quote a little bit from it. It starts off by saying:

Australia is in the early stages of a clean energy boom, with tens of billions of dollars set to be invested in renewable energy in regional areas over the coming decades.

I care about regional areas because that is where I live; that is where I come from. A lot of members care about regional areas. We in the Labor government do and we want more jobs there. We also know that the national 20 per cent renewable energy target that was introduced by the Labor government—by this government—is expected to drive investments of around $19 billion, projecting out to 2030. That is what we are looking at: transitioning the economy to a clean energy future. That is where we are heading. That is where we will go.

Since I have been in this place, I have heard every fear campaign. I have heard every scare from the coalition. When we were protecting the economy in the global financial crisis—(Quorum formed)

Debate interrupted.