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

The National Party’s view has been from the outset that we should use whatever mechanisms are available to us to make sure that this package of legislation, the emissions trading scheme, the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme—even that term we find obnoxious—is prevented from being foisted on the Australian people. It is nothing more than a massive new tax. And as a massive tax it comes hand in glove to try and garner support, with the bankers and the brokers saying, ‘We are going to make a motza out of this; therefore, we’ll lend our shoulder to your wheel and say it has business support.’ But it does not have actually have business support.

More to the point, it does not have working families’ support. It is working families that are going to be held over a barrel. I cannot work it out. The Labor Party went to an election saying they were for working families, they were for easing the squeeze and they were going to be mindful of the problems of working families. And the greatest, the most substantial piece of legislation they put up is one that walks right over the top of working families. Somebody at the end of the day has to pay, and that will be working families. Are we to be part of this process of putting the government’s hand into working families’ wallets and ripping the money out to hand to stockbrokers and bankers? Are we to go to the coalmining areas of the Hunter Valley, the Illawarra and Mackay, to those areas of good blue-collar working-class people and say, ‘What we are delivering to you on behalf of the nation is a massive new tax and a sword of Damocles over your job’?

There is one thing that, though coming from completely different sides, the National Party and the Greens agree on—that is, this is not going to change the temperature of the globe. This will be completely ineffectual. If you believe what they say about global warming, chapter and verse, then you are way off the mark. We have a different proposition. We believe that the ETS is, as far as dealing with an environmental issue goes, peculiar and obnoxious. I know that in the Labor Party there are people who, if you took them to a confessional and asked them for the truth, would say that they do not believe in the ETS. It is just that to keep the dignity of the Senate, this collegiate place, we do not express publicly the views that have been expressed to us privately. That is one of the great things about the Senate. The Senate is a different house to the other place. Here people can privately express different views without our breaking their confidence. Quite obviously, our good Liberal colleagues and close friends have an overwhelming sentiment, a strong view, about this. But let’s put this aside.

The Labor Party tacticians have decided that they have to try to truncate this debate and force it through so that they can get the item off the agenda, because the Labor Party are hurting. We got over 15,200 signatures on our petition, which will be lodged today.—