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

Traditionally Sunday in Australia is a day of rest—a day for going to church, mowing the lawn, tending the garden and spending time with your kids. But this Sunday will be known as sell-out Sunday—sell-out Sunday will be the day when the government of this country sells out the people it represents. There will be no greater example of sell-out Sunday, and no greater level of sadness, than in the town of Kandos. At one o'clock today Cement Australia announced that the Kandos cement plant will close. They produce 450,000 tonnes of cement a year. They have been there for 98 years. They will be not be able to compete with cement companies from Asia. They will now have to import cement from Asia because the Kandos cement plant has become uncompetitive. There are other factors that have led to this, but the carbon tax is the straw that will break the camel's back.

Mr Dreyfus interjecting—

If the parliamentary secretary at the table is so confident it is not the carbon tax, he is welcome to accompany me to Kandos tomorrow. At 11 o'clock tomorrow, he can stand outside the Kandos cement plant with me and explain to the workers that it is not his tax that is closing the plant. (Time expired)

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

Unfortunately, the member for Parkes has just given us a snapshot of what we can expect on Monday after the government's announcements on Sunday. The fact is that both sides of the parliament are committed to doing some­thing about climate change. Both major parties in this place have the same target on carbon reductions. The difference is that we have a market based mechanism—the most efficient and low-cost way of addressing this issue—and they have higher taxes to subsidise the big end of town. The member for Parkes has been irresponsible. He knows he is being irresponsible. He knows that that concrete plant has been marginal, at best, for a long, long time. He knows the area well. It is totally inappropriate and irresponsible for him to come in here and try to blame a carbon tax that is not yet announced for the closure of a plant which has been under review for a long, long time, and he knows it. If he had taken the opportunity to read the statement from the CEO of the company concerned, he would know that the company has attributed the closure of this plant to just about everything else bar the coming carbon tax—the age of the plant, the inefficiency of the plant, the isolation of the plant, the skills shortages in the area— (Time expired)