Ken Wyatt (Hasluck, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Is the Prime Minister aware that the Senate has today voted against the government's carbon tax repeal bill? What is the government's reaction to the Senate's decision?

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am aware that, this day, members opposite's colleagues in the Senate, and the Greens, have voted to keep the carbon tax. That is what they have done. They have voted to keep the carbon tax that they told the Australian people before the last election they had terminated. They said before the last election that they had terminated the carbon tax and yet today they voted in the Senate to keep that selfsame carbon tax. All of us would remember the former Prime Minister, Mr Rudd, running around the countryside saying the carbon tax was terminated. Hundreds of thousands of Australians got these brochures saying that the carbon tax—

Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Speaker, on a point of order: you have repeatedly informed members, including the Prime Minister, that props are not to be used in question time. That is what the Prime Minister is doing.

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no point of order. I inform the member for Isaacs that if the Prime Minister proposed to use the piece of paper as a prop and hold it up has been objected to, as distinct from reading it—

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He was holding it up.

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You will resume your seat.

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Why?

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is no point of order.

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I haven't raised it yet.

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Because I have anticipated. The Prime Minister has the call. He may read from his aide-memoire but not use it as a prop.

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very happy to read from this document: 'Kevin Rudd and Labor removed the carbon tax'. Well, the carbon tax was so removed that they supported it—they voted to keep it in the Senate earlier today. But it is not just the deception pre the election; the deception continues to this very moment. Remember, Madam Speaker, just an hour or so ago, members opposite—the Labor Party—voted in the Senate to keep the carbon tax. This would come as a shock to the people of Western Australia who opened up their West Australian newspaper this morning, 20 March. What do they read? Answers from Joe Bullock, who I understand is the Labor Party Senate candidate: 'Labor is scrapping the carbon tax.' Well, they are so scrapping the carbon tax that they voted today in the Senate to keep the carbon tax.

The truth is you just cannot trust members opposite to tell the truth and you cannot trust them anywhere near an economy. The carbon tax is an act of economic vandalism that this government will remove and that members opposite will keep defending while there is political breath in their bodies because, whatever they say to the people, when it comes to this parliament they support the Greens. The unholy alliance between the Labor Party and the Greens: it is disowned in public but it is adhered to in this parliament. We are keeping our commitments and the Labor Party cannot help themselves—they are breaking theirs.