Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to express my thoughts on the misleading and dishonest campaign that is being run at the moment in regard to the implementation of a carbon tax in the Australian economy. The words used by the minister today in question time implying that anyone who did not agree with their tax is some sort of denier are deeply offensive. I come from a background of practical environmental care. It is not a philosophical position for me; I actually have the dirt under my nails and blisters on my hands from working towards improving the environment. To be called a denier I find deeply offensive.

The government are also being quite dishonest about their approach to the implementation of this tax. They are talking about a low price per tonne of carbon dioxide. They are talking about compensation to all concerned. This is the drug dealer's method of getting people hooked: 'We'll give you a taste—there'll be no charge. You'll get that warm tingle from feeling something good about the environment, and then we'll reel you in.' Then the price of carbon will have to go up if it is going to work. People must realise that for a carbon tax to have any effect on emissions, it has to make energy more expensive. If you are on a fixed income, if you are a small business person, if you are a pensioner, you have no choice but to go without. If you cannot pass those costs on then you have to absorb the cost or do without the energy. This is going to have a devastating effect across the part of Australia that I represent.

Professor Garnaut, in his opening paper for the government a couple of years ago, stated that the emissions trading scheme that was first proposed, and which this carbon tax is going to morph into, would have a downturn of 20 per cent on regional Australia. He said it would have a downturn in the cities of eight per cent but a downturn in regional Australia of 20 per cent. If the government wants to propose that all Australians take responsibility for this and all Australians bear the same amount of pain, then they might get some support from me. But a proposal that their own paperwork says will cause a severe economic downturn in regional Australia—and the Parkes electorate is a third of New South Wales—will not be getting my support.

This week we saw the reduction in Australia's GDP growth because of the downturn in agriculture, mining and manufacturing and because of the unseasonal weather conditions. We saw just how reliant this country is on the industries from inland Australia. If this tax, combined with the mining tax, targets the profitability of mining and agriculture as well as affecting an electorate like mine which has a large proportion of low-income earners, Indigenous people and pensioners, then this is an unfair tax.

The other thing is that nowhere in this moral debate is the government talking about how this tax is directly going to cool the temperature of the globe. What they are talking about is sending a signal, working towards some point in the future. Indeed, Professor Flannery said that maybe in a thousand years we will see some difference in the climate. The question I would like to ask tonight is: are we prepared to sacrifice the welfare of our lowest income earners—our fixed income earners, our elderly, our small business community and our farmers—to make a grand gesture to the rest of the world? It would be a gesture, given the level of emissions coming out of Australia, that would have no effect at all on the temperature of the globe but a remarkable, huge negative effect on the economy of Australia and, more particularly, the economy of regional Australia, of which I am a representative. The government are not going to get support for this tax from me, and nor will the people of Australia support them on this issue.