Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

No-one was divided the other day. In fact, the only people who were left by themselves were the Labor Party. It is one of the only issues that we can get the Greens, the Independents, the National Party and the Liberal Party together on, because it is such a ridiculous new tax. The Prime Minister is going to develop a new tax. I can just see it—yes, there is a bit of blue sky out there—he is going to develop a new tax to change that! It is Kevin from heaven—the Prime Minister from heaven, I apologise, Acting Deputy President—who is going to develop a new tax to change the climate!

It was interesting today to open the newspapers and see: ‘Food prices set to surge under ETS’. Isn’t that amazing? We have been saying all along that food prices are going to surge—and that is just attributable to the electricity component. Wait till 2013-15, when agriculture itself will come in. Wait for the tax when it is on cattle and sheep—the methane-emitting monsters, apparently, in society. Wait for the price of groceries then. Then you will be able to talk to the working families, because you will have Mr Rudd everywhere in your life. You will turn on the iron and there will be Mr Rudd on the power charge. You will get sick of ironing and you will turn on the telly to watch the football. There will be Mr Rudd coming through the TV. You will think, ‘Oh, well, I might as well do some vacuuming.’ and there he will be, with you vacuuming—vacuuming with the Prime Minister! There will be a tax on that. You will think, ‘I’ve had enough of this. I’m going to Cairns.’ But, hang on, the plane runs on aviation fuel. He is in the plane with you! He is going with you to Cairns! Then you think, ‘Well, I’ve had enough. I’m just going to go down to do some shopping,’ and there is Mr Rudd in the shopping trolley, the taxing monster! In every corner of your life: big business, big bureaucracy. What is it doing? ‘Oh, he’s changing the climate.’ I should have been lighting a candle in front of Mr Rudd! I never knew he could do that. He is going to change the climate for us. What an incredible person!

The ETS is nothing more than the ‘employment termination scheme’ for so many working families that you should be supporting in the Illawarra, in the Hunter Valley, in Central Queensland, in Mackay and in Gladstone. What are you doing to working families? You are putting working families out of work—that is what you are doing to working families. If it is not the ‘employment termination scheme’ it is just the ‘extra tax system’—you just have to grin and bear it. You have got to put up with it—like a carbuncle on your backside, you have got to put up with it and live with it. Now they have changed the lexicon because they are worried about ETS. It is now called the CPRS. CP stands for the ‘cunning plan’ to get them to a double dissolution. That is what CP stands for. And RS is what our economy will be if this goes through—that is what RS stands for! That is what we have got. This is the new super-duper plan coming to you from the enlightened, the illuminati, of the Left and the Greens. This is what we have got.

I think the Australian people are waking up. I have just been doing talkback radio in Sydney and, I tell you, they are awake up to you. It is a new tax. You know it and they know it. It is another moralising tax. It is always the same: ‘Teenagers drink too much. Let’s tax them.’ Did it stop teenagers drinking? No. They are drinking more than they did before. Then it was: ‘The world is going to end, so Mr Rudd is going to give you a tax.’ That is all it is, with this moral bulwark at the front of it—always the same moralising bulwark. What are they doing? They say: ‘But we are going to collect the money and then we’re gonna give it back to other people. That’s what we’re going to do—collect this $11 billion and give it back to other people.’ Because they know best! They know who to give it to. They are going to give it to all the people who voted for them; that is who they are going to give it to. This is the rent-seeking mentality that comes into play. We have been consistent on this. The National Party said right from the word go that we would not support this—and the Liberal Party are saying they will not support it, and the Greens are not going to support it and the Independents are not supporting it. No-one is supporting it except the Labor Party.

Who will be the benefactors of this? It was interesting to see that the Business Council of Australia have split between the paper pushers, who stand to make an absolute goldmine out of commissions, and the people in our nation who actually produce things. The people who produce things do not like this. The people who just collect a commission on the way through love it. But I am afraid Australian working families cannot eat commissions. They can eat beef, they can eat mutton, they can eat vegetables and they can have a job, but they cannot eat paper contracts, because that would be the biggest thing that we will get out of this—a mountainous bureaucracy, a bankers’ and bureaucrats’ bonanza given to you by Mr Rudd. (Time expired)