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

This morning we received 1,300 emails, personally written by members of working families, Senator Polley, saying: ‘I can’t afford this. Why are they doing this to me? Why have they enmeshed me in some political debate? Why do I, as a member of a working family, now have to pay for some new Labor Party scheme, to fit their agenda?’ The Australian people are awake to this. This is not about the climate. This is about conceit, about bloody-mindedness in policy. We in the National Party and other colleagues have to make sure that we do not put ourselves in a position of somehow supporting the Labor Party in their overarching desire to foist on the Australian people a massive new tax, a tax that is so insidious. This is the tax that you will pay even if you are a pensioner, you are unemployed, you are an invalid or you are broke. This is the tax you will pay because you cannot get out of it. This is the tax that is delivered to you from the power point, in the food you buy, in transport costs and in the price of a bag of concrete. Yet you never have the option to say, ‘I can’t afford this tax’; you just have to pay it. And what happens—does the nature and the course of the environment change? Do global temperatures change? No, they do not. They stay on precisely the trajectory that they were already on.

The Labor Party, in their deceitful approach to this, have enmeshed in this debate cataclysmic events, saying the Great Barrier Reef is going to die, there are going to be droughts and the polar ice caps will melt. That would imply that this tax will change those outcomes. But when you drill down and look for the reality, you find that it will not change those events—it will not affect them one iota. If you believe in the Greens’ proposition you have to go far further. It is just a ridiculous approach to take. It will be amazing to see how the Labor Party pull this one off. They are going to say, ‘We look after working families by delivering a massive new tax to those who can’t afford it.’ That is an interesting trick!

All the time the rhetoric was about the environment, the environment, the environment. But what is this, at the end of the day? It is a massive new tax—$70.2 billion in the first six years. Does that kind of money grow on trees? No, it does not. So that money is going to come out of someone’s wallet. The Labor Party said at the start of the debate, ‘After we’ve taken the money off you we’re going to give some of it back.’ But only four of their amendments are described by legislation. The rest are just regulatory instruments or Hansard commitments—they are not even written into the legislation. Of course, this gives the Labor Party the opportunity in the future, when the nation’s finances get into a parlous state, to reach into that bucket, pull out the environmental money and use it to prop everything else up.

Are they going to use this $70.2 billion for renewable energy? No; it just goes to general revenue. What are the Australian people saying—what have we have garnered through our emails, through blogs and through the petitions? They are saying one thing: ‘Do not launch this massive new tax on our lives.’ It is for us to determine and work out a mechanism that prevents this. We are not going to support the Labor Party railroading this through. We cannot. We are quite happy to go through this piece by piece until Christmas, if that is what it takes. We do not care because we have to clearly ventilate the issues. If the Labor Party wants to ultimately take us to an election where their mantra will be: ‘Vote for Mr Rudd and you will get a massive new tax,’ then I will happily participate in that election. I will say on behalf of the National Party and, hopefully, our coalition partners: ‘Vote for us and you will not get this tax and we will not completely redesign the economy of this nation.’

It is peculiar in the extreme that in a matter of just days before Copenhagen the conceit of the Labor Party—or is it the concern of the Labor Party—is so enlivened that they are now in a bun rush to get this through. They do not want this issue ventilated. Well, I am afraid that we are going to do everything to make sure this issue is ventilated. We are going to do everything in our power, day by day, minute by minute, hour by hour, to tell the Australian people exactly what you are up to with this massive tax.

The one thing I know in politics is that things change so quickly. Sentiments change so quickly. At the start of this debate, when we said we were not going to support the ETS, it was said that there was a rump—a crazy minority—representing only five or eight per cent. Now it is in excess of 50 per cent and growing day by day by day. As the Australian people become awake-up and ask questions, the penny drops. They say: ‘This is peculiar. The National Party does not support it. A vast number of other people in the Senate do not support it. The Independents do not support it. The Greens do not support it. Who does support this massive new tax? Who does want this massive new tax? Maybe it is just a fluke of nature or an alignment of the stars. Or maybe this policy is, for a whole range of different reasons, completely and utterly flawed.’

Let’s go through some other issues. We have got a massive turnaround in these amendments. There is an extra $8½ billion in concessions and a $5½ billion cut to household compensation. That is a $14 billion turnaround. It is one of the largest appropriations in modern times—except for your ridiculous stimulus packages. And what sort of examination do we get? Who is asking the questions here? Is this house financially sloppy? Are these the actions of an economic conservative? How is that for an economic conservative? Fourteen billion bucks and he wants to do it in a couple of hours. Is this where it has got to?

Sooner or later the scales have to start falling off people’s eyes. Have a look at Mr Rudd and what he is doing—really drill down into this. Ask about the rhetoric and the reality—ask about the grandiose rhetorical statements and then ask about the reality. The reality is: a massive new tax. The rhetoric is that Mr Rudd single-handedly and unilaterally and omnipotent-like—godlike—is going to change the temperature of the globe. Mr Rudd, without anybody else, is going to change the temperature of the globe. Incredible! I will believe that after he makes it rain. The day after he makes it rain I will start believing that he can change the temperature of the globe. Until such time I am not going to be part and parcel of launching a massive new tax on the Australian people.

Going beyond that, Mr Rudd says: ‘I am an economic conservative. I wring my hands and in a parsimonious fashion I watch the money around me.’ Then he brings in an amendment, which he has known about for five weeks, and presumes that the Senate will in a matter of hours make a decision on $14 billion. I find this an amazing statement. Maybe we will go along with the charade. Maybe the media will keep saying, ‘Oh, yes, he is an economic conservative. It is just that he can drop $14 billion on the ground and does not need to pick it up.’ Well, as an accountant, if I drop $20 on the ground I will pick it up. I see our parliament about to change the expenditure on one side of this program by about $8½ billion and then on the other side cut the compensation to households by about $5½ billion, and we are not supposed to ask questions about that. What, then, are we doing here? The process of this chamber is to review and amend legislation. On that ground, I would have no problem with the extension if it were to further engage in debate. But the tactic of the Labor Party with this extension is to try to railroad the legislation through. So I say to the Australian people that the Labor Party is now in the process of railroading through a massive new tax on your life. They do not want the Senate to properly examine this. They are now bringing about tactics to try to truncate and circumscribe the debate because they know the Australian people are hearing this out there and saying: ‘Hang on. I am awake-up to this. This is a massive new tax and I do not like it. I do not understand why I, in my “weatherboard and iron” or my “brick and tile”, have to pay for this massive new tax when a broker ultimately will be making billions of dollars of commissions on this.’

And what is it all for? Does this mean that after this tax passes we wait for the impending floods as the Murray-Darling Basin becomes inundated with water? Do we tell people to evacuate Greenland because it is about to freeze over again? Do we throw a celebration for polar bears because their lives have changed? Do we say to those in the Antarctic: ‘You had better get out of there. The place is about to freeze over because Mr Rudd has passed the ETS. That is why it is all going to change.’ No, they are not that foolish. The only argument the other side comes up with is, ‘Would you just sit back and do nothing?’ No, we would not sit back and do nothing. We will come back and do the right thing—not anything, not something and not this ridiculous thing; we will do the right thing. And you do not define the terms of the ‘right thing’. The right thing will be defined more by a process that goes beyond just a massive new tax.

My colleagues and I intend to follow a process of trying to ensure that the Australian Labor Party does not foist this massive new tax on the Australian people. We will be supporting measures to stop it, which means that we will be supporting measures not to have this railroaded through tonight. We will not be supporting an extension of hours.