Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. How is the government easing cost-of-living pressures on Australian families? How much money would the average Australian family save with the repeal of the carbon tax?

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

I thank the member for Herbert for his question, and I do appreciate his concerns to ensure that the ordinary working families—indeed, under the former government, the ordinary forgotten families of our country—get a fair go. If there is one figure that should reverberate around this House every day until the carbon tax is finally repealed, it is $550 a year. That is the additional burden that the families and households of Australia face because of members opposite and their carbon tax.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

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

The member for Jagajaga will desist.

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

What this government wants to do and what we are being prevented from doing by members opposite is to scrap the carbon tax but keep the compensation the families and households of Australia got. We want to do the right thing by the families of Australia. I just cannot understand why, after everything that has happened, after the election last year that was so bitterly contested, members opposite are still siding with the Greens, and against the people, in supporting this toxic tax. I just cannot understand it, because members opposite know just how bad this tax is.

Opposition members interjecting—

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

The member for Moreton.

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

Labor members of the Senate by-election team were proclaiming loudly in Perth last Thursday that they were 'scrapping the carbon tax'. Well, on the very day they said they were scrapping the carbon tax in Perth, they were supporting the carbon tax here in Canberra. You just cannot trust them.

This is a government that is determined to ease the cost of living pressures on families. We will do this not just by scrapping bad taxes and not just by eliminating unnecessary regulation, but by boosting economic growth through sensible free trade agreements with our major trading partners. We are pursuing a free trade agreement with Japan and a free trade agreement with China to complement the free trade agreement we have already secured with Korea. We are doing so for this reason: trade means jobs. Freer trade benefits both countries. It benefits the buyer, it benefits the seller and it is good for workers and families in both countries, and that is what we want. We want a strong and more prosperous Australia, in a stronger and more prosperous world.