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

Transport—most decidedly. All of the things that support agricultural industries in Australia will be taxed and will be subject to the direct and indirect impacts of the Rudd government’s ill-thought-through emissions trading scheme.

We could all say: ‘Yes, if we’ve got to, we’ll bear some pain to save the world. We don’t like it, and perhaps we could do it a better way’—and I am sure we could—‘but we’ll have a second thought about it.’ But what we are going to do is export all the jobs in Australian meatworks and agriculture to foreign countries that will not have an ETS. We know Indonesia is not going to have an ETS. We know South America is not going to have an ETS. Who knows what the United States is going to do? We have heard a lot of heroic words from President Obama, but we will see what happens there. The Indian and Chinese economies are not going to be subjected to the taxes that Australian industries will be, so Australian industries will simply become unprofitable.

And what of all those good members of the AWU, with Big Bill Ludwig and the AWU leadership up in Queensland supposedly looking after them? Why aren’t they out there? I do not want to malign Mr Bill Ludwig, who has said a few things about this. Didn’t he call Professor Garnaut a wacko?