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

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

The social and economic impact of the carbon tax on regional Australia.

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—

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

Within just a few days the government will be announcing a great big new tax on all Australians. The government themselves say that this is the biggest economic change in history and yet they are waiting until after the rising of the parliament to make this so-called important announcement. They would not answer any questions during this week on the nature of this great big new tax. They wait until everybody has left Canberra so that their announcement cannot be subject to the scrutiny that parliament should be providing. This is no small tax. This will be the biggest carbon tax in the world. It will add to the cost of everything we do every day of our lives. It will make our businesses in this country less competitive. It will cost jobs. Yet the government do not think it is important enough for this to be debated and considered in the federal parliament. This tax will have an enormous impact on all Australians, but its impact in regional areas will be particularly severe because there are higher costs already in regional commun­ities. This tax will add to every single one of them. On top of that, most of the jobs that will be lost in the first round of this tax are in regional communities. So this will have a devastating impact on our nation but, in particular, it will have a devastating effect on people who live outside the capital cities.

This is a carbon tax that the Prime Minister said we would never have under a government she leads.

Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

She's not leading the government.

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

The lady who will come out and announce this new tax is the same one who told the Australian people repeatedly before the last election that there would be no such tax. That was an untruth. A few days ago she said she did not mean to mislead. That was another untruth. She waited until she was in the Lodge and she had the keys before she told the truth to the Australian people.

Now she asks us to believe that she did not really mean to mislead. If she did not mean to mislead why did she not correct the newspaper headlines in the days that were available before the election? Why did she not ring up the television news services and say: 'You got it wrong. I did not say that at all'? What she said before the election was 'there will be no carbon tax'. There was no lack of intention to mislead. Let us make that absolutely clear.

That is not the end of the untruths that the government has told us already about this tax. For instance, it repeatedly says that only a thousand big polluters will pay. Everyone knows that is untrue. If you want any greater expert to make that observation, just ask Professor Garnaut or read his last climate review. This is the man who the government paid for several years to give it advice on this question—their trusted confidant—and he said, 'Australian households will ultimately bear the full cost'. Of course, that is the real truth. What the government told us about there being only a thousand payers is an untruth.

An opposition member: 22 million Australians.

Ordinary families will cop the carbon tax in the neck.

An opposition member: They will cop the lot.

They will pay the lot. Their electricity bills at a carbon tax rate of $25 a tonne will go up by around $500; gas will go up by 10 per cent; there will be increases in fuel costs; groceries will be up by at least five per cent—everything will be slugged. New South Wales consumers are likely to wear a thousand-dollar-a-year extra costs. The South Australian Council of Social Service said a few days ago that it expected the cost of living in South Australia to rise by $1,200 and a significant proportion of that would be the carbon tax.

That is only the start. The Greens have made it absolutely clear that they want a carbon tax of at least $100 a tonne so that people will change their behaviour. It would close the coal fired power stations. They want a much more severe tax than whatever number is announced on Sunday. That is not a scare tactic. This tax is supposed to hurt. It is designed to hurt so much that people will stop doing the things that they normally do. They will leave their car at home rather than visit their sick mother on the other side of town. They will walk to school or walk to work, or sell their house and buy a new one near their job so that they will keep their vehicle at home. They will switch off their heater on a cold Canberra morning, or they will not turn on their cooling system on a hot summer's day. This is a tax that is designed to hurt. It is designed to hurt so much that people will change their very behaviour.

The Prime Minister has said that we have got to do this because we are being left behind by the rest of the world. That is another untruth. The Productivity Commis­sion report commissioned by the government made it absolutely clear that Australia's efforts in this regard are about average, similar to what other countries are doing. Another untruth that the government keeps telling us is that—

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

Order! I am reluctant to interrupt the Leader of the Nationals but I do want to draw to his attention the provisions of standing order 90. To accuse the Prime Minister of an untruth is skating very close to a personal reflection.

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

What I am saying is that the statements made by the Prime Minister and indeed by others are incorrect. They are wrong. For instance, her statement that this tax will start small is incorrect. It is untrue. The reality is that this will be the biggest carbon tax anywhere in the world. Evidence given to the Senate Select Committee on Scrutiny of New Taxes on 9 June stated the proposed Australian carbon tax would raise more money in its first three months than the European scheme raised since it began 5½ years ago.

It is only going to take us three months with Labor's proposed carbon tax to raise the same amount of money as Europe has raised since their scheme started, and it is supposed to be the example of the nation that is tough on carbon emissions. The Australian emis­sions trading scheme will raise more revenue in its first month than the US scheme has raised in the two years that it has been operating. It will take only one month to raise more money than the North American scheme has raised since it began.

We are also told, incorrectly, that Australia is the biggest emitter in the world. China is only going to take about seven or eight months to increase its emissions by the amount that we have promised to reduce ours by 2015. That assumes that China actually meets its commitment to only increase its emissions by 496 per cent. The reality is that the government's statements about this are completely inaccurate.

It is also not true to say that we are the biggest per capita emitter of carbon in the world. It is quite clear that because we are a major energy producing country we have higher emissions than some other places, but if you want to look around at who are the biggest per capita emitters in the world you cannot go past Qatar, which has double our emissions, or countries like the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, even Luxem­bourg. They all emit significantly more than Australia. The government is misleading Australian consumers if it makes this claim that we have to do this because we will be left behind by the rest of the world. Here is another really sad untruth inflicted upon the people of Australia. This is really sad and perhaps the sorriest of the misleading statements being made by the government: that we have to have a carbon tax to boost jobs. That is simply untrue. It is ridiculous to suggest that a tax like this is going to make extra jobs. Access Economics predicts the number of job losses at 126,000—

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker Slipper, I rise on a point of order. I tried to give the Leader of the Nationals free rein but when he is surrounded by people who are interjecting out of their seats constantly—

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

Order! The minister will resume his seat. The minister does make a valid point. Honourable memb­ers ought not to interject from outside their seats, and that includes the honourable member for Dawson. The Leader of the Nationals.

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

ACIL Tasman has said that 16 coal mines will close costing 10,000 jobs. But the Greens, who are driving this agenda, want every mine closed—every single mine closed. That will cost hundreds of thousands of Australian jobs. In addition to that we have the extra costs that are going to be imposed on every business in this country, meaning they will be less competitive. There will be sectors right across the country that will have to bear bigger costs—agriculture for instance—even if Labor exempts agriculture at the first point. Professor Garnaut has made it clear that he wants agriculture in within two or three years. Australian farmers will be the only ones in the world to pay a carbon tax on the production of food for our nation.

In addition to that, of course, there is the processing of food. It seems that Australian dairy processors are to be the only dairy processors in the world to be paying a carbon tax. How does that enable them to compete with New Zealanders and others on world markets? When we look at the cost of transport and the cost to farmers of fertilisers and inputs, they are going to be less competitive and that, of course, means more lost jobs in regional areas. If you need any further advice about where the government's policy is heading, just take the words of Senator Hanson-Young whose advice to everybody was to close down the OneSteel plant at Whyalla—it will only cost 4,000 jobs—'and we will replace them by building windmills'. Let us have windmills all over the place because we will not have any other jobs.

Another statement that the Prime Minister made, which she has simply failed to honour, is the promise to compensate people for these extra costs. The government have already said that only half of the money raised will be used as compensation. But no-one can compensate people for the loss of their job, for the closure of whole industries and therefore, potentially, whole towns. There will be no compensation for those people. In fact, if you are not being paid anything because you have not got a job, no compensation will make up for the higher prices they have to pay.

Let me make another point, which I think is very important, the Prime Minister made another promise before the election. She promised that she would build community consensus before doing anything at all. Maybe she has not broken that promise. There is community consensus and the Australian people have made it absolutely clear that they have made up their mind and they do not want a carbon tax. The latest poll suggests over three-quarters of Australians do not want the tax. There is a community consensus and the government should listen. Call off Sunday. Do not have this big announcement. They have not achieved the consensus or, if they have, the consensus is there should be no tax at all.

Is it any wonder that ordinary Australians feel shut out and betrayed by what this government have said. They have not been consulted in the process. This has all been put together by some so-called multiparty committee, which is in fact an alliance between the Greens and the ALP with a couple of Independents as cheerleaders. The reality is that the Australian people have not been given the opportunity to have their say. The government did not tell the truth with the Australian people before the election. Now they are having a tax imposed on them that they had made absolutely clear they did not want, and they are not being consulted or given a chance to have any say.

What is going to be the benefit of this tax? The parliament secretary let the cat out of the bag when he said in a letter that this tax will make no difference even in 50 years' time. Professor Flannery, another one of the Labor Party's favoured sons in this particular area, went further. He said that if the whole of the world stopped emitting immediately it would not make any difference to the temperature for a thousand years. Yet this government believe that for Australia, which produces 1.4 per cent of global emissions, a tax is going to change the world. That is complete nonsense.

I ask the government: on Sunday do not tell us how much you are going to tax us and how you are going to distribute that money around the place, but tell us how many polar bears you expect the tax is actually going to save. Tell us how much better off the Barrier Reef is going to be because of the $25 a tonne Labor imposed tax, or whatever the price might be, on Australian consumers. Tell us how often the Murray will fill because this tax has been imposed.

I have never seen a tax in my life that changes the climate. Sometimes it makes people get hot under the collar, but to suggest that a new tax is actually going to make our planet cooler is clearly a nonsense. If taxes made the country cooler, under a Labor government we would be frozen over from west to east. There are plenty of taxes already. The government have no mandate for a carbon tax. They have no legitimacy for government. They said they will not have a plebiscite. If you will not have a plebiscite then you must have an election to decide this issue. (Time expired)

Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If I have ever heard a speech of so much negativity delivered with crocodile tears, that takes the cake. Let me take the crocodile tears for a start. First of all, they said they wanted to ask questions about the impact on regional development. The shadow minister who spoke, the Leader of the National Party, is shadow minister for regional development. Not only has he not asked me a question this week in parliament about regional development, he has not asked me since we have been returned. Not only that, in the Leader of the Opposition's speech in reply to the budget, there was not one mention of regional development within that speech. The regional rorts program that they presided over was an absolute disgrace and we know why. The Howard government in office was on the record as saying that it never saw a clear rationale and a constitut­ional basis for Commonwealth involvement in regional development. So do not give us this cant and hypocrisy about your concern for regional development. Look at the history.

The history of this country is that it has been Labor governments that have always been the dynamic and the momentum for regional development. The Whitlam govern­ment, the Hawke government, the Keating government, the Rudd government and now the Gillard government are the ones that have taken the initiative. When the Howard government came to office, they abolished the Department of Regional Development and they declared that they saw no clear constitutional rationale for that involvement. Not only is the Labor Party the best party to manage regional development; it is the party best equipped to manage the challenge of structural adjustment. There is no greater structural adjustment confronting this economy than the challenge of climate change. That is why we are facing up to it.

The Liberal Party really seriously need to question its credentials. What we are propos­ing is the movement towards a market based mechanism which we use to adjust for the challenge of climate change. I would have thought that the party that prided itself in the principles of the market and free enterprise would have embraced this but, no, what do what we see from them? They have embraced, through direct action campaign, industry intervention and business welfare. They have embraced a mechanism that will impose on every individual in this country a $720 a year ticket to pay for those business welfare measures. And they have the gall to come into this place and talk about cost of living and impact on consumers—$720 from every man, woman and child in this country per year to pay the big polluters. We actually believe the reverse should be the case.

We believe that the tax should fall on the big polluters. We believe that that tax should move to a price on carbon so that the market clears it and we believe in compensating households for that cost. This is the principle of the compensation: nine out of 10 house­holds will be compensated for the impact on them. Pensioners will get a 20 per cent supplement.

Our measures are designed to get people to change their behaviour, to reduce their carbon footprint and to reduce the impact of climate change. If they follow that behav­iour, they will be get a net gain from the benefit because we are compensating them to stand still but encouraging them to make the changes. If they make the changes, they will be better off. Under the Liberals, of course, with their direct action campaign, they will be worse off—$720 a year worse off. I must say the modern Liberal Party under Tony Abbott has become an absolute disgrace. Not only is it driven by negativity; it has turned its back on all the principles on which it claimed to be formed.

The principle of the market mechanism is terribly important in this equation because, if the market is clearing, the market rewards better behaviour. Let us take the case of coal because there has been a lot of talk about this. In comparison to the coal production of other countries, if the market mechanism is established properly coal to coal there will be a benefit to our coal producers vis-a-vis the rest of the world. That is why we need a market mechanism that is internationally recognised. But if people move to gas, and the market mechanism prices the relativity, then there are benefits to the industry producing the gas. This is rejected by those who sit on the other side now but it was not rejected by them, including by the shadow minister who just spoke, when he sat in the Howard government's cabinet and they adopted the very same approach—a market mechanism. What they are advocating today is not what they sought to implement when they were in government. I ask the public to judge on that basis. They have done a complete backflip in terms of what they were arguing when they were in government compared to what they argue today.

Let me also make the point about the hypocrisy of their position. Their policy, like ours, is to make an unconditional commit­ment to a five per cent reduction in greenhouse gases. That is correct. Both parties have that bipartisan position. The real issue here is: how do you achieve that? We are proposing an initiative—the details of which will be fully released on Sunday by us—and they are proposing their direct action campaign. Not only will their direct action campaign cost the individual $720 a year; it has been ridiculed by all the experts, including Professor Garnaut, whom the Leader of the National Party was so keen to quote in his speech recently, as well as the Productivity Commission. Direct action is not an answer. It is costly, it costs consumers, it costs the public purse and the reason they run the fear campaign is because they do not want to talk about that and embrace it.

In the context of this motion that is before us, which talks about the impact on regional development, let me just make this point: the circumstances that we as an economy confront today suit the agenda for regional development. We are trying to adjust the patchwork nature of the economy and, when you think about it, the regions are the patches. If the argument is that we have to sustain the economy beyond the resources boom, which is the economy in transition, which our budget underpinned, it is essential that we get local input and local engagement from the patches and embrace that transitory nature that challenges us. So we are an economy in transition. The regions need to respond and they need to respond in a way that also factors in the impact of the climate change debate. We are better placed than any country in the world for two reasons. First of all, we are the only developed country in the world to have avoided going into recession during the global financial crisis meltdown—there are a number of reasons for that, which I do not have time to go into here—and we are the envy of the rest of the world. Every time I have attended international confere­nces, countries have come up to me and said, 'How did you do it? How did you avoid it?' The second point that is in our favour is that we engaged, because of previous policies by both governments, but initiated by the Hawke and Keating government, with Asia at a time when it was not popular to do so. We engaged with Asia, which is now the fastest growing region in the world. Not only have we avoided the recession, not only have we got this engagement with Asia, that is what is continuing to fuel our resources boom. But the resources boom will not last forever and that is why we need to position ourselves and ensure that the economy diversifies. The best way to get that diversification is to engage the regions and that is why the policy prescription that we have set down, including in the budget, is all about doing that.

Climate change is part of the transition. We are seeking to take advantage of the market mechanism we are working to estab­lish to better position ourselves to make that transition. Cleaner coal, gas and renewables are all commitments that we are making. But it is not just us arguing that; the regions themselves are embracing this. I say to the member who has already spoken in this debate and to those who follow him: when they talk about the threat to regional Australia, they should get out properly in the regions instead of spreading their fear campaign and ask the regions how they are facing up to this challenge.

It is very interesting that, through the regional development structure we have established, just about every one of the regional development organisations in this country is embracing the challenge of climate change and looking to undertake initiatives that do develop green jobs and do give them cleaner living environments. Some examples of that are developing a renewable energy strategy in far west New South Wales, collaborating with neighbouring regions on climate change on the mid North Coast, supporting the uptake of alternative energy sources in the Northern Rivers, reskilling of existing occupations on the Central Coast, immediate development of a green economy strategy in the Murray region and environmentally sustainable housing design and construction in Ipswich and West Moreton. They are not proposals that we have suggested. These are proposals that the locals themselves have been developing.

I will mention a couple of good examples very briefly because I visited the Gascoyne region of Western Australia and Geraldton. Geraldton has committed itself to becoming a carbon neutral city. They want to source through renewables the energy base upon which the iron ore development in that area, which will become a second Pilbara, is powered. The region itself is coming to grips with it. The Leader of the National Party talked about windmills replacing things. He ought to get down to the Eyre Peninsula and see the wind power initiatives that are already down there. That region wants to turn itself into a renewable energy sourced region.

I say to the member who spoke: do not just go out and run the negative argument. We know how well negative arguments can work. We have practised them before. But in the end, truth comes to bear. In this case what we are seeing is the opportunity out there. The regions understand not just the threat those on the other side would have us believe is going to come from our initiative but they see opportunity. That is where we should be challenging regional Australia, not scaring them. We should actually be encouraging them to grasp the opportunity, take the initiative, seize the moment and diversify their economic base. All of the regions should be tasked with this initiative by us saying, 'You identify how you want your patch to work better.' The vast bulk of the regions are embracing the renewable energy strategy, the green jobs strategy and the challenge of climate change.

Members opposite should support their regions in meeting the challenge. They should support their regions in grasping the opportunity. They should stop the fear campaign. By the way, once the full details are out on Sunday, they will be looking like very hollow people indeed. The fear campaign can only work for a certain distance. The truth of the matter is that the detail out there, the compensation measures, the industry support measures, the commit­ment to actually leading on this, the understanding of our intrinsic strength, the understanding that we do need to diversify the economic base and actually prepare the regions and support them in doing it, will win through. In the end, as I said at the beginning, the only party that has ever had this commitment to regional development is Labor. Labor will again do it and we will also ensure that the structural adjustment is done in such a way that people are helped to make the adjustment, not be threatened by it.

Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We have just heard a speech from the Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government, a man who claims he travels so much around Australia. He might have travelled around Australia but he has not listened to regional Australia, because regional Australia, by and large, says no to a climate tax.

The matter of public importance before the House today is:

The social and economic impact of the carbon tax on regional Australia.

This tax will hit regional Australia harder than any other area. It will hit regional and rural Australia harder than it will hit those who live in the capital cities. We know because we go there; we come from there. We have more members in regional and rural Australia than the government and that is why we understand the arguments.

Australians have faced massive increases in the cost of living under this Labor government. Electricity has gone up by more than 50 per cent in their term, gas is up 30 per cent, the cost of water and sewerage is up 45 per cent, health costs are up 20 per cent, education costs are up 24 per cent and food is up 14 per cent. The cost of paying these bills and doing the weekly shopping has become so much higher under this Gillard government. Why does the Labor govern­ment want to make everything so much more expensive? Why do they want to make things even more expensive with a carbon tax? It is because the Prime Minister is beholden to the radical agenda of the Greens.

Quite frankly, the Greens do not give a stuff about people living in regional and rural Australia. This carbon tax is one of those poorly thought out, fringe party policies that seeks to please the few by harming the majority. It is an embarrassment for this Prime Minister and the Labor Party that not only has a carbon tax become the policy of a major political party, it has become the centrepiece of their government. As the Productivity Commission, a statutory author­ity of the Commonwealth, found recently, there is not a single other country—not one—which is planning to impose an economy wide carbon tax. There is a reason for that—it is not good policy.

I was contacted recently by a small-business owner who employs 10 staff as the operator of a 24-room motel in the Hunter electorate. The member for Hunter's constituent wrote to me and said:

Our electricity price has been progressively increasing. As we are a motel, our guests often do not really care how much power they are consuming, as they do not pay the bill. We have increased our room tariffs, however, looking at this year's financial figures to date our operating costs have increased more than we have been able to recoup through price increases. What worries me is that particularly being in a regional area, it is difficult to keep increasing rates, as people are only prepared to pay so much. I fear the uncertainty of this proposed tax, and worry that it could spell the end of many small businesses, who will find it difficult to pass on the increases, and simply do not have the capital to invest in alternative power solutions.

Why does the member for Hunter support Labor's carbon tax when it will have such a devastating impact on his constituents?

I was contacted today by Joe Sepos from JS Transport Group in the member for Newcastle's electorate. JS Transport are a major livestock, chicken and general cargo transport operation. He said to me that he is concerned that Labor's carbon tax will push up the costs of his trucking business and that that will flow through to the everyday costs of everything on supermarket shelves, everything we buy. He believes the carbon tax will put up prices by at least five per cent because that is what he thinks it will increase the cost base of his business by.

As I said, those costs will flow through the supply chain right to the kitchen table. What this government does not seem to understand is that the tyranny of distance means that Labor's carbon tax will hit the kitchen tables in regional Australia so much harder. Goods are transported by trucks everywhere across Australia. Everything we use and everything we consume is transported by trucks. This government's decision to put a tax on the diesel used by heavy trucks will drive up prices—and they are going to be so proud of that!

What makes Labor's carbon tax on regional Australia even more offensive is that it will come with no environmental outcome. Between 2000 and 2008, the cost of electricity in Australia rose by 55.9 per cent. Over that same period, consumption rose by 10 per cent—from 10,194 kilowatt hours per capita to 11,217 kilowatt hours per capita. So where is the link between pushing up the price of electricity and reducing consumption? It is not there. These are statistics; these are not lies or inferences. You cannot cut back on the essentials of life and this insidious Labor tax grab will not reduce emissions one iota. It will only reduce affordability for people living in regional Australia.

Labor members in steel electorates, coal electorates and in motor and other manuf­acturing electorates know that jobs will go under this tax, but they are too frightened to admit it. Businesses have warned them and the unions have warned them, but they are too frightened to admit it. One day, however, they are going to have to front their electorates and explain why jobs have gone. They will have to answer the questions that their electorates will ask them about the electricity price hikes, the food price hikes and the grocery price hikes. The whole point of the carbon tax—and let us be very clear about this—is to drive up prices to reduce consumption.

In question time today, the member for Forrest asked the Treasurer about the cost impact of the carbon tax on a dairy farmer, Graham Manning, in her electorate. Do you know what? The Treasurer would not answer the question. She asked about the increased cost of electricity because electricity is a major cost for a dairy farmer—in refrig­eration and in operating their dairy facilities. The only thing I can see happening with this carbon tax, in regional Australia in particular, is jobs being driven away from our region.

There are some people who need to come in here and explain things to this parliament. The member for Capricornia has 2,000 coalminers in her electorate to explain to, the members for Corangamite and Corio have 1,300 car workers to explain to, the member for Hunter has 2,700 coal workers to explain to, the members for Throsby and Cunning­ham have 2,000 coal workers to explain to, the member for Throsby has a further 5,300 steelworkers to explain to, the member for Wakefield has 2,700 car workers to explain to, the member for Lingiari has 850 aluminium workers to explain to and the member for Bass has 560 aluminium workers to explain to. Those 17,410 workers in regional Australia do not have a voice on the Labor side. They are taken for granted.

I want to reassure those in the gallery of one thing: the coalition and the Labor government have the same target—five per cent by 2020. The difference is that the government wants to penalise and tax and shift money around.

Ian Macfarlane (Groom, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Energy and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tax and spend.

Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, tax and spend, whereas the coalition government want to incentivise, educate and deliver by direct action. As I said earlier, if increasing the price of electricity was going to change habits then we would not have seen a 10 per cent increase in consumption per capita while electricity prices rose by 55 per cent in that same period. It was the former Prime Minister in 2009 who said, 'Climate change is the greatest moral challenge of our time'. I put it to you, Mr Deputy Speaker: the greatest moral challenge that we face in this nation today is the honesty and integrity of our Prime Minister, who said just days before the election: 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.' To address the greatest moral challenge we now face, it is very clear what should be done. This Prime Minister, if she had an ounce of integrity or honesty, would go to the polls and seek a mandate. This Prime Minister has not listened to the people, because if she had listened to the people she would have heard very clearly that they do not want a carbon tax. People in the gallery: do you want a carbon tax? Do you want to be penalised? These are the questions that need to be answered, because the Prime Minister will not get out there and talk to people like you.

Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The member for Paterson should not misrepresent the people in the gallery. They have no opportunity to respond.

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

There is no point of order.

Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Here we have another member of parliament who refuses to listen to people just like the good people here in the gallery. He refuses to listen to people—like all Labor members, it is all tell and no listen. What you have to do, if you want to embark on the process, is take people on the journey with you, and they have not done that. (Time expired)

Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is appropriate that we have heard just now a reference from the member for Paterson to the bipartisan target of five per cent reduction in emissions below 2000 levels by 2020. The only problem is that those opposite have no plan that will enable our country to reach that target. The only thing they have put forward is a plan which will cost billions and billions of dollars of taxpayers' money. Under their plan, Australia will not reach that emissions reduction target or anything like it by 2020. If we proceed down the path that the coalition is proceeding on, it will commit Australia to purchasing international permits at a cost of billions and billions of dollars to the taxpayers of this country.

We also just heard the member for Paterson read out a long list of electorates. He asserts that the members of those electorates should explain their position on action on climate change or action on pricing carbon to the people of their electorates. I would call on all members opposite to explain to the constituents in their electorates why they have adopted no effective policy on climate change and why they have embarked on a script—and they have all got a script; we heard it today from the Leader of the Nationals and from the member for Paterson—which is basically about instilling fear in the people of Australia and deceiving the people of Australia. Those opposite have been engaging in dumb stunts all over the country, and in no sense have they been engaging in the kind of debate that we need to be having.

Having said that there is a bipartisan target of five per cent cuts of 2000 levels by 2020, we could then go to the fact that those opposite went to the 2007 election committed to an emissions trading scheme. The Howard government, of which the present Leader of the Opposition was part of the cabinet—he has got a bit of explaining to do—adopted an emissions trading scheme as the policy of the coalition before the 2007 election. Until four days before the second time on which the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme was voted on in 2009, it was the policy of the coalition that there should be an emissions trading scheme in this country, as some of those opposite now listening to me know only too well.

The other comment that I would make on the contributions we heard from the Leader of the Nationals and the member for Paterson in this discussion is that entirely absent from anything they have said is any reference to why we are engaging in this policy and why we have adopted as a bipartisan target a cut in Australia's emissions. Of course, the reason is that we on this side of the House care about the future of our children. We care about the future of our children's children. We care about the future of the planet. We know the best target that we can now get to is the stabilisation of world temperatures at around two degrees by 2050 and, to do so, we have to immediately start cutting global emissions, which includes cutting Australia's emissions.

This is said to be a matter of public importance that raises consequences for rural and regional Australia. Of course it is the case that rural and regional Australia will be hit at least as hard, if not harder, as any other part of Australia by climate change. In particular, farming activities and other agricultural activities across our country are going to be hit by dangerous climate change. People in rural and regional Australia understand that only too well, because in many rural areas of Australia they are already experiencing the effects of dangerous climate change. That is why our government is embarking on a carbon price mechanism for Australia, the details of which are going to be announced this Sunday by the Prime Minister.

You would not think that the details were going to be announced if you listened to either of the contributions we heard today from the Leader of the Nationals or the member for Paterson. They were doing what the coalition has been doing for at least the past four months, which is going around and making stuff up—in other words, just invent­ing details about our carbon price scheme before any announcement of its detail. This is part of their scare campaign and misleading of the Australian people. Indeed, it would include attacking anyone who does not agree with what the Leader of the Opposition or members of the coalition might say. We have had month after month of this scare campaign by the opposition and month after month of them making stuff up. The recent attack that the Leader of the Opposition made on economists was someth­ing to behold. It is hard to believe that any responsible national leader in our country could have made the kinds of comments that the Leader of the Opposition made last Friday about economists. But you can perhaps understand why the Leader of the Opposition made the comments if you take a single example. A group of exceptionally eminent economists wrote an open letter on 2 June this year explaining their view about putting a price on carbon pollution. I will read one of their key conclusions and then explain who they are. They said:

We are all of the view that the introduction of an emissions trading scheme is a necessary and desirable structural reform of the Australian economy, designed to change relative prices in a way that provides an effective incentive to consumers and producers to shift over time to more low carbon energy efficient patterns of consumption and production.

It is incredibly clear. They also said:

… a price on carbon pollution, preferably an emissions trading scheme, is the best way to reduce carbon emissions over time …

The signatories to this letter, who have all signed in an individual capacity, included Paul Brennan, the head of economics at Citigroup Global Markets; Chris Caton, chief economist at the BT Financial Group; Besa Deda, chief economist at St George; Saul Eslake from the Grattan Institute and former chief economist at the ANZ Bank; Bill Evans, the chief economist at Westpac; Joshua Gans, Professor of Management at Melbourne Business School; Richard Gibbs, the global head of economics at Macquarie Bank; Stephen Grenville at the Lowy Institute for International Policy; Stephen Halmarick, Chairman, Australian Business Economists; John Hewson, known eminent economist and of course former leader of the Liberal Party; Raja Junankar, professorial visiting fellow at the School of Economics and Finance at the University of New South Wales; Geoff Weir, Director of Financial Sector Services; and Glenn Withers, the chief executive of Universities Australia. They are all eminent economists.

What was the response of the Leader of the Opposition not only to what those economists had to say but to what a whole range of other economists have had to say and, indeed, what Australian business leaders have had to say for months now? This is what the Leader of the Opposition said on 1 July: 'It may well be that most Australian economists think that a carbon tax is the way to go. Maybe that is a comment on the quality of our economists rather than on the merits of the argument.' What a cheap shot! What a disgraceful thing to say! But it is typical of the Leader of the Opposition, who, whenever anybody does not agree with him or the coalition's supposed policies, thinks that the appropriate response is simply to attack them personally.

There was an extraordinary statement made today by the Leader of the Opposition, who at a doorstop criticised the government for going to talk to the Australian people, which he described as—and this is pretty rich coming from the Leader of the Opposi­tion—'carefully choreographing photo opp­ortunities'. Think for a moment about who said that, Mr Deputy Speaker. That was the present Leader of the Opposition. What hypocrisy! The Leader of the Opposition never does anything other than carefully choreograph photo opportunities. All we have had for the last four months, since the Prime Minister's announcement of the broad framework of the scheme, is such carefully choreographed photo opportunities. He refuses to be interviewed, refuses to do anything other than hand out slogans.

I would have thought that today, in this debate raised by the Leader of the Nationals, we might have heard something about the government's Carbon Farming Initiative, which provides opportunities for revenue and jobs in rural and regional Australia, arising from people in the land sector, farmers across Australia, participating in reducing Australia's emissions and, in doing so, to earn income. It is supported by the National Farmers Federation, but of course the National Party in this place and their colleagues in the Liberal Party have decided to oppose this opportunity for farmers across Australia to participate in reducing Aust­ralia's emissions and, for that matter, to earn revenue for themselves. We have had months of them talking down the Australian economy, talking down our skills. We are a clever, creative nation, and it is about time those opposite recognised that and assisted us in designing an appropriate carbon price for Australia. (Time expired)

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You have heard it from the honourable member for Isaacs and there has been a lot of discussion on this issue, none of which the Australian people are much interested in hearing politicians talk about.

Today I want to talk to people like the member for Hunter and the member for Robertson, who are in the chamber. If I could have the indulgence of those in the gallery and the truck drivers on the lonely roads across Australia, whom I know listen to our addresses, today I am going to talk not to you but to those on the other side of the House.

I want to talk about history and I will start with the history now. As the member for Hunter knows, I am the only person in this House who has been defeated twice in elections held on tax. When Paul Keating stood at the dispatch box and I was sitting in the seat right in front of where I am now, he leaned across and said, 'Son, you're gone.' I was. It was not because I had not worked hard as a member, not because I was not highly talented—

Ian Macfarlane (Groom, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Energy and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No.

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No. It was because we had a tax debate and the member for Hotham—and I know he is watching right now—propagated and managed the mother of all scare campaigns ever to be launched in this country against a good taxation change for the benefit of the community, called the GST. It was the mother of all scare campaigns, run by the member for Hotham. By the way, a member who just left the chamber, Alan Griffin, now the member for Bruce, came in on that campaign, which I was thrown out on, in 1993. He is still here. He remembers what happened.

He also saw the amazing scare campaign of 1998. What was it on? It was on tax. What was the tax? A GST. How many seats did the government of the day lose during the tax debate? Nineteen seats. I am saying to the backbench of the Labor Party right now: there is a huge issue. The leaders in your party got you into this mess. Have a look at the percentages by which most of your leadership, except for your Treasurer, hold their seats and ask whether they will be here after the next election. The answer is: yes, they will be here. Will you be here? No, you will not be here. Not just on the current trends—I am talking about when you are arguing to us about a major scare campaign on a tax, having been in that place where you are today, holding your seat, wondering whether you are going to make it, wondering whether you are going to have a wage into the future. It has been hard to get there; it is hard to hold. I am talking to every member of your backbench in this government now, and those that have been around for a while know exactly what I am talking about here. You have one way out of this.

Deborah O'Neill (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You can serve the national interest.

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You can talk about serving the national interest, you can talk about doing the right thing for the environment, but now I talk about the reality and the truth. The truth is that, in relation to this tax, the Productivity Commission, commissioned by the government, asked to return their findings early because they had not much to discover. What they did discover was that there is no country in the whole world that is going to introduce a tax like this—not one country in the whole world: read the Productivity Commission report. It was not a positive report for the tax. It did not put Australia in a good light. It did not say that we should be leading the world. It did not say that we should be putting our workers at disadvantage; we should not be trading green jobs overseas. The member for Hunter knows exactly what I am talking about. There will be green jobs, all right. Do you know where they will be? They will be in China, India and Indonesia. They will not be here for our workers. Is that understood? There will be green jobs. Perhaps the truck drivers across the nation now are hearing this: you will not be carting the stuff that you are carting today, because it will be carted around in China, where the pollution will be greater than in this country.

What I am putting to you is that there is a very strong argument against this tax, whatever the politics of it are. But I will come back and say to those members of parliament who are sitting in this place today, who have a desire for the betterment of the nation, who are concerned about their kids, who are concerned about their future, whose husbands would like to have a job, whose wives would like to have a job, whose kids want a job, whose partners want a job, that we have a nation led by a leader that says, 'I am prepared to trade off those jobs and those opportunities in this country and trade them into another country,' for heaven's sake. I thought the first responsibility of a Prime Minister of this nation was for the health and wellbeing of its people, its economy and its defence.

Deborah O'Neill (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Now and into the future.

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Now and into the future. Thank you, member for Robertson. That is not what is being shown by this Prime Minister.

You know what you have to do. You know that you are completely shackled to this Prime Minister through this carbon tax, about which she has already deceived the Australian people for base political reasons in the middle of an election campaign by saying: 'I am not going to have this tax. Do not worry anybody; we are not going to have a tax.' That is what she was really saying. She was told to by her minders to say, 'We can't have a tax.'

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

She lied.

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

She lied, in that instance. She made a statement to the Australian people in the middle of an election campaign when they were about to vote. She said: 'Have confidence in me. It is all right. I won't put a new tax on you.' Who would be a young person these days, as compared to the generations that have gone before us, when they have the property taxes, when they have the GST, which our parents did not have, and when they have all the other taxes, which the Treasurer, coming into the room, knows all about? It is hard to get ahead these days because of those taxes.

I say to the Labor government of the day, because of my experience in 1993 of being thrown out and my experience in 1998 of being thrown out: it is fine if you have got a big margin, but if you have not got a big margin, you are likely to lose your seat in a taxation election campaign, and that is what is about to happen to many of you in the Labor Party at the next election. It may happen to you anyway—we work hard to get rid of you. But this will go all the way up to the member for Hunter. If you are under that, you are gone; if you have special interests in your electorate, you are gone. If you come from Geelong or the Illawarra or La Trobe Valley and you are a Labor representative, you are gone. What I learned was, no matter how many times I reassured my community that we could compensate them for the GST, the Labor Party sent out one more scare campaign with Alan Griffin's name on it and I was dead again. It was simply a scare campaign.

You have a carbuncle, and that carbuncle is recognisable to you and every other Aust­ralian. I am not criticising the office of Prime Minister. I am saying your party has a carbuncle and that carbuncle is Julia Gillard, who is locked into that tax. What you need to do is rip that carbuncle out of your party and get rid of it.

An opposition member: Like a boil, it needs to be lanced.

I do not need words put into my mouth; it is hard enough getting this out as it is. It is a carbuncle that you have to remove. If you do not remove it, the Australian people are going to remove it for you, along with many of you.

Take it from my experience: it is not a good feeling to go down once, it is not a good feeling to go down twice, it is not a good feeling to go down three times and it is not a good feeling to lose four times, two of them on tax. Just remember that. It is taxation: you will have to know every detail of it. I have lived it; I have worked it. It is very, very hard and it is near impossible to win. I challenge you that you will not be able to win this argument. The member for McEwen has just come in. Mate, I have been there once or twice in this place and the rest of the people do not think much of you when you come back. Coming back is hard.

Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is always a pleasure to follow the member for Paterson, and I will return to him a little later. I am almost disappointed to be following the member for McMillan—I like him, he is a good bloke, generally speaking he makes a sensible contribution to public policy debate and he takes a pragmatic approach—but after his contribution I must attack him on this occasion. The first thing I would say to him is that it is not about you, mate. It is not about me, either, and it is not about the member for McEwen—it is about the national interest. While the member for McMillan takes some comfort in the fact that his losses were never his fault, what we need to be doing in this place is putting the national interest ahead of our own interests. That is exactly what the government is doing with the introduction of this very important public policy reform.

I start by reminding people of what this debate is and what it is not. What it is not is a debate about the science of climate change. The Leader of the Opposition and members on the other side generally have accepted that we must tackle climate change and that human beings make a contribution to the warming of the planet. That is why the Leader of the Opposition and all those who sit opposite have their own policy. Indeed, as the member for Paterson reminded us, they have the same targets on carbon reduction as the government. This is really only a debate about the relative policies of the major parties—what we intend to do and what they intend to do in response to this pressing environmental challenge.

On this side, of course, we are prop­osing—and the details will be announced on Sunday—an emissions trading scheme; a charge on the big polluters who on a daily basis emit their greenhouse gases into the atmosphere free of charge. Have a think about that in economic terms. This represents a big economic distortion. Small businesses who generate waste have to take their waste to the dump—they pay. Large chemical businesses have an expensive process for disposing of their waste, and they pay. You and I, Mr Deputy Speaker, when we do our additional gardening at home, for example, go to the garbage dump—we compost as much as we can, of course—and we pay to dump our waste.

When you have these inconsistencies you have economic distortions, and those distort­ions affect investment decisions. People ask me why we are charging the polluters and compensating them, the people, as consum­ers. Unfortunately businesses, where they can, will pass some of those additional and new business costs onto consumers, and we will protect those consumers. We are not so much seeking to change the behaviour of consumers, considerable merit though that may have; we are trying to change the habits, first, of investors who with a level playing field after the introduction of an ETS will be more likely to invest in renewable tech­nologies, and, second, we are trying to change the behaviour of the polluters themselves, giving them the incentive to invest in new technology, in innovation, to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions. We are using a market mechanism to get there. Many of those who spoke on the other side have referred to the Productivity Commission's report, and I thank them because what that report showed more clearly than anything else was that the most efficient and the cheapest way to address greenhouse gas emissions is with a market-based mechanism, which is exactly what the Prime Minister will be announcing on Sunday.

By contrast, the Leader of the Opposition and all those who sit behind him, including the member for Paterson and the member for McMillan, want to tax people more—they want tax increases in this country to the tune of tens of billions of dollars—and transfer that wealth to the big polluters. They are going to tax people more, hand that money to the polluters and say, 'We are going to help you introduce those new technologies; we will help you get your emissions down.' There are no guarantees; no contracts—they will hand all that money over to the big polluters in the hope they will do the right thing and invest in technologies and reduce their carbon emissions. Let there be no mistake: this is not a debate about the science of climate change; it is not a debate about whether we should do something about climate change—it is only a debate about how we address climate change in this country.

Let me deal with some of the other myths, given that there is such a fondness on the other side for the Productivity Commission's report—something that shocks me. The first myth is that no-one else is acting. The Productivity Commission looked at a number of countries—the UK, the US, Germany, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand. What do those opposite think the Productivity Commission was looking at? What do they think the Productivity Commission would have been studying in those countries if those countries had not taken action on climate change? Of course they have taken action, and they are taking very substantial action. Australia is being left behind. We can get a good illustration of how we are being left behind by reflecting on the fact that the former Prime Minister, John Howard, went to the 2007 election, four years ago, promising to introduce an emissions trading scheme. Here we are, still debating it mid-2011, notwithstanding the fact that, at the time, most members on the other side—including I think the Leader of the Opposition but certainly the former Leader of the Opposition and the former former Leader of the Opposition, Mr Nelson—supported Mr Howard's policy.

The second myth is that this is going to put downward pressure on employment, that jobs are going to be lost in industries like coalmining. That is absolute rubbish. Even the coal industry's own modelling did not show a loss of jobs in the coalmining industry, as some people have suggested. It did suggest—I am not saying I agree with it, because modelling is modelling as we all know—that there would be potentially a growth in jobs if this system were introduced. So let us not have these misrepresentations. I am certainly not concerned about job losses in coalmining in my electorate. I can assure you, thanks to heavy demand in Asia for our resources, that jobs in coalmining in my electorate will continue to grow—and the investment pipeline is already in place. The third myth is that the sky will fall. The sky did not fall in New Zealand, the sky did not fall in California and the sky has not fallen anywhere where carbon abatement has become a serious government policy. The member for Paterson predictably spent a little bit of time zeroing in on my electorate and Hunter region more generally. It just goes to show how totally out of touch he is with community sentiment in the Hunter Valley, where the overwhelming majority of people are now concerned about the environment and the cumulative impacts of industries like coalmining. We have huge land use conflicts. People are saying in increasing numbers that they want to ensure that the coalmining industry—as important as it has been to us but which will maybe last for 30 years—does not impact on sustainable industries such as agriculture, thoroughbred breeding and viticulture. These are industries that have supported us and provided us with an income for many decades and will hopefully sustain us into the next century and beyond.

By applying the true costs of doing business on these businesses we will get a real measure of the negative externalities on local communities and I think that will become an important part of the equation. People working in coalmines in my elect­orate are not fearful that the ETS is going to cost them their job. They have not been fooled by the scare campaign of the opposition, as much as I hate to disappoint the member for McMillan. They want bal­ance and through the minerals resource rent tax they want to get their fair share of the product that comes out of the ground locally. They want to ensure that the environment is protected and that the true cost of the coalmines is reflected in government policy, and that those sustainable industries are not destroyed by the coalmining industry. There is a balance there.

Following the announcement on Sunday, this policy will dominate the media and public debate in the coming months. I hope and pray that the debate is dominated by the facts of this policy, but I feel very pessimistic, given the contributions from those opposite today.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The discussion is now concluded.