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

I hear the minister encouraging me to speak, so thank you, Minister. Regrettably I have an important meeting at midday, so should anyone else want to follow me I will only be nine minutes. I want to support what Senator Boswell just said. He and I sat on the Select Committee on Climate Policy, which was looking into this legislation. I was also involved in Senator Mathias Cormann’s Select Committee on Fuel and Energy, which was looking into the same issue. I have come to the conclusion, from watching the Labor members on those committees and from watching the approach of the government, that the government desperately want us to defeat this legislation. They do not want to have to face the workers that Senator Boswell spoke about if they have cost them their jobs, but they do want to be able go to their green constituency and their Greens second preference voters in the capital cities and say, ‘We tried to do something but the nasty coalition, Senator Xenophon and the Greens all conspired to knock the legislation off.’ That is what I think the Labor Party want to be able to say. They know, as Senator Boswell says, that this legislation will cost the jobs of workers.

I live in North Queensland, not far from the Bowen Basin coalfields. I know the number of people who work in those areas and the wealth they generate. I also know the mortgages that they have run up in buying investment properties because they have good jobs in the Bowen Basin coalfields. Those people’s jobs will be at real risk, and they know it. Regrettably the ACTU gave very toady evidence to the committee. The ACTU put Labor in government and they want to keep them there, so they will roll over to help the government get through any legislation they bring on board. But the ACTU could not answer the questions about what would happen to the jobs of their members, to the working families of Australia that we heard so much about from Mr Rudd prior to the last election.

It distresses me that what the Labor Party, supposedly the party of the workers—they have long since lost that status, but they still maintain the pretence of looking after workers—are going to do with this legislation is simply export jobs offshore. In the coal area they will go to Indonesia, Colombia and South Africa, places where the people who own the Australian mines already have other mines. They will not invest in Australia when we have an impost that the rest of the world does not have. It is a double whammy: we will lose investment in Australia and the jobs of working families in the Bowen Basin coalfields, but it will not make one iota of difference to the carbon emissions of the planet. Emissions will simply move from Australia to Indonesia, Colombia or South Africa, where they will be even worse. I do not want to speak for them—they are all old enough and able enough to speak for themselves—but it was quite clear that the Labor members on both committees that I sat on in relation to emissions trading share that view. It would be different if you were going to do something about emissions trading or the changing climate of the world, but it will not do anything because the emissions will simply be exported offshore, and in the course of that we will lose jobs.

This is not just in the Bowen Basin coalfields—it is in Gladstone, Mackay, the aluminium industries and the cement industries, and we heard evidence from all of them. In fact we heard evidence from literally hundreds of people. We started at eight o’clock in the morning and finished at six o’clock at night. Some of the green groups would come in and oppose it for a different reason, but witness after witness pointed out the absolute stupidity of this legislation—the jobs it will cost and the loss to Australia’s economy. I recall that in regional Australia the dairy industry gave evidence that, although it does not apply directly to them until at least 2015, this emissions trading scheme will mean a loss of between $6,000 and $9,000 per producer in their industry. We also heard evidence from the Thiess meatworks in Rockhampton which clearly indicated that 400 jobs would be lost in that city.

I wonder what the Labor member for Capricornia, Ms Kirsten Livermore, is doing about that. Is she acquiescing in the loss of 400 jobs from working families in the Rockhampton area? I wonder what Mr Bidgood, the Labor member for Dawson, is doing about all the jobs that will be lost by working families in the Mackay region of Queensland. What are those Labor members doing? I know that they have been muzzled and gagged. What is Mr Trevor doing for all of the jobs that will be lost in his electorate, centred on Gladstone? There will be huge job losses. While we and the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Malcolm Turnbull, were in Gladstone we heard daily announcements of job losses in that city, but not a murmur from the Labor member supposedly representing the interests of the working families in the Gladstone area. Those three members in particular have been gagged by the minister or by Mr Rudd and are not able to raise their voices.

I hope that some of the Labor senators, who clearly know this is a dog of a piece of legislation, will have the courage to yet again roll the minister in her push to destroy Australia without any benefit for the changing climate of the world—and that is the real problem. I know Senator Wong was humiliated by Mr Rudd when he did that partial backflip and put it off for a year. I only hope—and I do not mean the minister any personal ill will—that she is again rolled and that the Labor caucus will eventually say to her: enough is enough. If it were going to do anything about the changing climate of the world or emissions of carbon into the atmosphere then perhaps you could grin and bear it—and I only say ‘perhaps’. However, when it will not do that but destroy the jobs and the economies of many parts of rural and regional Australia, it is just not worth contemplating.

As we were told at the committee, modelling done in relation to rural and regional Australia has not seen the light of day. Why? We can only guess, but I think we can guess pretty intelligently, that the modelling that has been done for the New South Wales government demonstrates quite clearly that this is a dog of a piece of legislation when it comes to rural and regional Australia, and it is a dog of a piece of legislation when it comes to the Bowen Basin coalfields. I talk about that locality in a generic way but there are towns, people, houses, livelihoods and schools there which will all disappear if this legislation goes through in the way desired by the minister and Mr Rudd. There are places like Moranbah, Glenden, Tieri, Middlemount, Clermont, Blackwater and Moura, all of which are hotbeds of unionism. They mounted a fabulous campaign at the last election—and good luck to them; they did it very well—but they are eventually starting to wake up to the fact that this government they put in is hell-bent on costing them their jobs. I would imagine that it will not be long before the grassroots membership of the unions realise that their union bosses, their union leaders, hand in hand with the Labor Party hierarchy, are doing them in the bottom big time. They will work that out. It has been slow, but I think they are eventually starting to realise that this Labor government, which they worked so hard to get elected, is really a government that does not have their interests at heart and will cost them not only their jobs but their houses, their mortgages and their way of life—all to no avail.

At the very least, this legislation needs to be put off until after Copenhagen. The minister, Mr Rudd and—I do not want to malign them—some of those who clearly followed the Labor line for political reasons seem to think that, when we get to Copenhagen, everyone else in the world will say, ‘Gee, Australia’s doing this so we had better follow.’ Again, we had witness after qualified witness who said, ‘Much as we like Australia, much as we think we’re pretty good’—and we are pretty good—’we’re very small players in the international diplomacy field.’ I refer you to the Senate committee Hansard which shows very good evidence given by a consultant who was formerly associated with ABARE. Have a look at that, Mr Acting Deputy President Bishop, and you will see that, at least, we should put this legislation off until we see what the rest of the world does. If the minister is so confident that the rest of the world—China, India, the United States, Russia and, might I add, Colombia, South Africa and Indonesia—will take on a 25 per cent target, yes, let us go for it. If they take on a 40 per cent target, perhaps we should seriously consider it. But we will do that when they do it. Otherwise, all we will do is export Australian working family jobs to other countries for no benefit whatsoever to the changing climate of the world. Tell me: what sort of a government would promote this sort of dog-type legislation? I apologise for dogs. This legislation is infinitely worse than any mangy dingo you would find anywhere in Australia. It is stupid legislation and I would certainly hope that the Senate, and perhaps the government, will take the initiative and delay it at least until after Copenhagen and then have another look at it in the light of what the rest of the world is going to do.