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

Let us just deal with the minister’s misrepresentations on behalf of her party. They talk about a 90 per cent reduction in irrigated agriculture. Is the Labor Party’s massive new tax going to fix that? No, it is not. They talk about a 63 per cent fall in agricultural exports—because they just say it. Is the Labor Party’s massive new tax going to fix that? No, it will not. They talk about extended droughts. Will the Labor Party’s massive new tax for pensioners, farmers and working families fix that? No, it will not. They always ignore the science that Australia cannot do anything by itself, and every time they get themselves into a corner they come up with the calamitous statement and the extrapolation to try and justify what is only a massive new tax on Australians.

This is what will be fleshed out. We will ask the questions and it will go on and on and on. Every time you say a calamitous statement, Minister, we will say, ‘Are you going to fix it?’ Because they are not; they are just going to collect the tax. Let us look at it: they are talking about a five per cent reduction, in a nation that only produces 1.4 per cent of emissions, on anthropogenic carbon emissions which are only three per cent—the other 97 per cent coming from natural sources—from carbon dioxide, which itself is only 380 parts per million. So they are going to change the air you breathe by this factor: 0.0000000978 of one per cent. That is why you are going to get this massive new tax that will make your families poorer.

It is interesting to note that throughout the minister’s speech the rest of the chamber was quiet, because we have dignity and we will conduct this debate in such a way—