Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you. I will address the amendments, but I want to ask: what is the cut-off point that Senator Wong considers middle income? I think that is a very important point. I understand it is not a very high figure. Is that household income? Is it a primary earner or a combined primary and secondary earner making up a total? I would like you to recommit—not ‘recommit’, because you have not committed at all—or to explain your position to the Senate in relation to the hundreds of thousands of people who are living in aged-care homes or forced into hospitals. I would like you to advise the Catholic health organisation, and any other non-profit organisations, how they access this climate action stream. It seems it is a magic pudding, that it will fund anything that you want—but where does it say in the legislation, ‘If you are impacted by these increased costs, this is how you address that’? Can you explain that to me, to the Senate and to those hundreds and thousands of people who continue to be worried about this, particularly those people who are in these non-profit organisations that have to pay their bills on a yearly basis? They are particularly worried about this.

I will address Senator Milne’s amendments. We cannot support these amendments because they do not allow the use of forest by-products. As Senator Macdonald correctly said, when you saw a log into planks, you create sawdust. That by-product—the sawdust, bark or whatever it is—goes to refire the generators of Visy, who are trying to do what they can to get their carbon footprint down. What do you do with it? I want to draw your attention to a situation I am aware of. I actually reported this in the Australian. At Eidsvold at Allies Creek there was a little saw mill—in fact, it was a little village. It had 18 houses, two-men single quarters, big machinery sheds; it was a home for probably 30 or 40 people. Some people had lived there for 40 years. One guy had even retired, but it was his home. The owners of the mill said, ‘You’ve been a good and faithful servant for 40 years; you can stay in the home as long as you want to.’ So he pottered around the mill and he would not retire. But along came—her name escapes me at the moment, but she is embedded with the—