Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Climate Change and Water (Senator Wong) and the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research (Senator Carr) to questions without notice asked by Senators Abetz, Trood and Boswell today relating to employment and the proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

We have now learnt from question time today the enormous bureaucracy that will be set up to administer the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. If there are to be any jobs at all made out of the emissions trading scheme, quite clearly they are going to be in the Public Service. Senator Trood’s question very skilfully highlighted the enormous bureaucracy that will be built up around the emissions trading scheme. As we have come to expect here, the Minister for Climate Change and Water was simply incapable of answering any of the questions today, as she has been incapable of answering any questions in relation to the climate change legislation. It is quite clear that the correct amount of work has not been done—there has been no modelling on the jobs that will be lost. The minister knows best, so she thinks, but those of us who get out and about in public understand that there are real job losses in this legislation.

We have heard the Labor Party in the Senate this afternoon rabbiting on about Work Choices, the Fair Work legislation and building up jobs. The emissions trading scheme proposed by the Rudd government will cost more jobs than any other single event that has ever occurred in Australia’s history. I mentioned before that at Senate committee hearings we have been told that up to 216,000 jobs in the mining industry could be put at risk by this emissions trading scheme. I ask Labor speakers who might follow me to tell me where the benefit to Australia is when Sun Metals, a zinc processing company in Townsville, have to close down because of the taxes put on their industry in Australia that do not apply to any other industry anywhere else in the world. They will close down. They will dismiss all of those workers that are currently employed there. They will move offshore to a country which does not have an emissions trading scheme. They will then emit even greater greenhouse gases. Tell me where the winds are.

We have sacked, done without or thrown on the employment scrapheap hundreds of workers in one city alone, and has it made any difference to the changing climate of the world? Not one iota. Go through the facts wherever you look in the state of Queensland. I am particularly concerned about the state of Queensland, and I am particularly concerned that the Premier, Anna Bligh, has not stood up for Queensland workers by taking on Mr Rudd, Mr Swan and Senator Wong in relation to the job losses in Queensland from the emissions trading scheme. At any number of Senate inquiries we have had evidence from the cement industry, the coal industry and the aluminium industry—companies involved in providing real jobs for Australian workers—that this scheme will cause their demise. Why? Let me give you the example of the cement industry. You can import cement into Australia. The Australian cement industry will have to compete with that. The cement comes in from Indonesia. There is no CPRS or emissions trading scheme there, so the Australian industry is lumbered with a $20-a-tonne tax. How can the Australian industry possibly compete with the Indonesian cement industry in Australia when one is subjected to a $20-a-tonne tax and the other gets away scot-free?

The biggest competitor of the Australian black coal industry is Indonesia. As the Australian coal industry has tax after tax from the CPRS imposed upon it, our coal will become uncompetitive. Where will the buyers go? To our competitors in Indonesia, which does not and never will have an emissions trading scheme. I cannot understand why the unions and the Labor Party members here do not stand up for those workers in the Queensland coal and mining industries. They are about to lose their jobs because of this Labor government, and it is about time the unions and Labor Party members had some courage and stood up to the Prime Minister and Senator Wong over a flawed scheme that will cost jobs.