Bruce Scott (Maranoa, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to call upon the Labor Party to join with the coalition in repealing the carbon tax before Christmas. The legislation has passed the lower house. If Labor will support us, it would be the best Christmas present this parliament could give to the Australian people—and we could deliver it before Christmas. We are serious about our election commitments. We want to make sure that we can repeal this carbon tax legislation and that is what we have already set out to do. The carbon tax is a tax on everyone—families, farmers, small businesses and seniors—particularly in rural and remote Australia, where the tax cascades across the economy at every point. When the Deputy Prime Minister was recently in my electorate opening the new Sir Thomas Mitchell Bridge over the Maranoa River, he said at every point where people purchase a product—food, electricity, car registration and fuel—the carbon tax will be impacting on their everyday living costs.

It does not matter whether you are the owner of a petrol service station along the Warrego Highway or in the far remote parts of my electorate in the Diamantina Shire—where, I might add, today's temperature is predicted to be 42 degrees—if you have got refrigeration or air-conditioning you will be paying the carbon tax. It does not matter whether you are the Tarcoola retirement hostel in Tara, when you turn on the air-conditioning to keep the residents cooler and more comfortable this summer, you are going to be paying the carbon tax. You cannot even take your rubbish to the dump in my electorate without being impacted by the carbon tax. Local governments have been hit by the carbon tax on their rubbish dumps.

The Prime Minister visited the Maranoa electorate earlier this month. He wanted to be out there to discuss key issues impacting on the area, including infrastructure, drought, floods recovery, the booming resources sector and how the carbon tax affects the two council-owned aged-care facilities in my region. What the council told us out there was that the electricity bill for the two Tarcoola aged-care facilities they run is between $120,000 and $127,000 a year. That is the impact of a carbon tax on an aged-care facility. That is what they have to pay just to keep their residents cooler and more comfortable in summer. So who pays it? It gets passed onto the community.

Councils have been labelled as big polluters. Now, that is an insult to the people who work for the local councils and the communities out in my part of the electorate. It is an insult to those communities—the Western Downs and the Maranoa regional councils have got to pay the carbon tax on their rubbish dumps. Food producers and families will also be hit with this carbon tax. The carbon tax is not cleaning up the environment, but it is certainly cleaning out the wallets of Australian families and businesses. I call on Labor to support the coalition in repealing this tax before Christmas. (Time expired)