John Forrest (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is apparent that this government is not listening to the constituents around this great country and it is obvious that Australians are waiting to exercise their judgment on a broken election commitment in regard to the carbon tax. Never in my career here in this place have I seen the Australian populace so disaffected by a government now renowned for its broken promises and bad decisions.

In my Mallee electorate people are properly disillusioned and quite fed up. They know the impost of a carbon tax is not just the cost of electricity; it is an embedded tax that will increase the cost of everything they use, do or consume. At least with the GST, it is refunded if involved in the value-adding step. In that way a GST is not cumulative.

This tax is the opposite. Every stage of manufacture, every stage of enterprise, will add the carbon tax and this impost will snowball because this tax sits at the beginning of all things with more added with every input or component. It is not just the big emitters who will pay, as the government alleges. They will pass on their costs as imposts. Every business input and every household item will bear a component of this tax. My constituents know that a carbon tax, even if not an upfront cost to them, will flow through every stage of their production or enterprise inputs, growing like Topsy and eating into the very fabric of their day-to-day business profitability. Here we are as a nation asking businesses for greater productivity, yet adding an impost that their international competitors do not endure.

This is especially the case in primary production. Advice from my water supply authorities servicing irrigators is that there will be an estimated 11 per cent increase in energy costs which can be linked to the tax. When passed onto growers for irrigation use on top of the additional input cost rises of their own, it adds to growers' reduced productivity and they know that this carbon tax will erode their capacity to continue making worthwhile contributions to their superannuation to be set aside for their retirement. Talk about being between a rock and a hard place! Ordinary working small business Australians are loath to publicly express their fears about the impost of this tax and to put a dollar number on the cost of a carbon tax, because if they do they stand to bear the full wrath of the ACCC, which will be brought down upon them as if they are the gross villains. It is the government here who are the villains.

All of my nine local government municipalities report substantial additional landfill costs, all of which have to be passed on to the already struggling ratepayers. People are hurting out there and this carbon tax is adding insult to injury. The timing is just completely wrong, and the absolute absurdity is that it will not save one single polar bear.

It seems this government cannot honour any commitments. Ask my people in the small community of Joel Joel in the Wimmera who have just had their proposed National Disaster Relief and Recovery category C funding request refused. These disaster relief payments are agreed under COAG and should be honoured. The shires of Northern Grampians and Pyrenees are adversely affected by this latest failure to honour this clear commitment and the government stands condemned for this, alleging that it has some new-found fiscal responsibility. There are people living out there who are struggling to get their lives back together and there is no help from the government to clean up the impacts of a massive flood which happened on 18 December last year.

The carbon tax simply adds to an ever-accumulating list of broken commitments by this government. Australians are impatient for an opportunity to judge this government, which stands condemned. This is especially the case with the good hard-working constituents of Mallee, recovering from 10 years of drought. Their enterprise is supported by primary production and the timing of this impost on their productivity is poor—very poor—and they wait for an opportunity to judge the government as a result. (Time expired)