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

That is Senator Cameron, for all of you out there listening. He interrupts all the time. They talk about unilateral action as if Australia has to do something by itself. Is the Labor Party now saying that they are going to take unilateral action against the atrocities in Zimbabwe? Is Australia going to conduct unilateral action against the Janjaweed in the Sudan? Is Australia going to conduct unilateral action against the junta in Burma? Is Australia going to conduct unilateral action in removing nuclear weapons from North Korea? What other sorts of mad unilateral action is the Labor Party implying we need to take? The fact is that these actions have ramifications. It has huge ramifications for our nation when you are so conceited and so self-indulgent that you would go down a path without taking the globe with you. That is what the Labor Party is doing, and every time they get into a corner the minister pipes up with some calamitous statement to try, with guile and cunning, to take the Australian people away from the scientific facts that I have just given you—that we cannot change anything by ourselves. We have to be part of a global solution, if a global solution is what you want.

The minister talks about the scare campaign on this side of the chamber. Who has been the grand architect of scare campaigns, of fear mongering? It has been the Labor Party. Who has been telling you the stories about Greenland thawing and then trying to imply that Australia’s new tax is going to fix it? The Labor Party. Who has talked to you about extended droughts and then implied that its tax would fix it? The Labor Party. Who has talked about bushfires and then implied it has some connection to Labor’s massive new tax? The Labor Party and Minister Wong. Who has talked about icecaps melting and then tried to imply to the Australian people that its massive new tax will have any hope—whether it is correct or not correct—of ever changing it? The Australian Labor Party.

It is the Australian Labor Party who have been the grand architects of a fear campaign, and they are doing it to try, with guile and cunning, to get the Australian working family to accept this massive new tax in their lives in perpetuity—because that is one thing that will not change. This tax will be there forever. It will become a property right and you will not be able to compensate those who have purchased the property right. So the tax is there forever. The climate will go along on the same trajectory regardless of this infliction of self-indulgent, unilateral action by the Labor Party, brought on board by the left wing of the Labor Party—because we know that within the Labor Party itself there are many in the right wing who just do not believe in this.

It is not a case of believing or not believing in climate change. That is another debate entirely. It is a debate for the scientists. This is a debate on economics and this is a debate on reality. It is a debate on the economics of whether the nation can afford this. Are we prepared to put these people out of work? Are we prepared to put these costs on pensioners? I note with interest the Labor Party’s modelling. But we have been pulling holes in that already. The Labor Party’s modelling is hopeless. Their modelling as it stands, as espoused by Frontier Economics, is $2½ billion wrong right now. With the amendments it is $3.7 billion wrong. The Labor Party modelling has holes all through it, and these holes will become more present. You would have noted through this debate with the Labor Party that when they cannot answer a question the minister just sits down. She does not bother getting up to answer it; she just sits in her seat and lets it go through to the keeper. She does not believe that the Australian people deserve the respect of an answer. So when the questions are too tough she just ducks for cover.

Let us ask the minister some very simple questions. Minister, what amount in parts per million will the Australian scheme reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by? I will ask again: what amount in parts per million, Minister Wong, will the Australian scheme reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by? Now, you watch while the minister does not answer this question. She cannot. She is the one who says that the mantra of her debate is one of science. Surely we would expect the minister to be able to answer a simple question like that. She will be able to tell you how much the tax is going to be. She will be able to tell you how much the permits are going to be. She will be able to tell you how much money she is going to rip out of your pocket. But she cannot tell you how many parts per million this scheme will reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by.

Let us ask the minister: how much will the Australian scheme cool the temperature of the globe by? There are many things I could say about the minister. I respect her as a person. I think she is a decent person. But her premise is that this is an argument about global warming. We would all agree on that. Therefore, I ask the minister this: how much will the Australian scheme reduce the temperature of the globe by? Surely we should be able to answer that. But you wait and you listen very closely to her answer. She will not answer that question. It will become yet another answer like this: ‘I’ll give you the answer. It all depends. The fact of the matter is that there are other nations that are part of the scheme. If A becomes B and B becomes a carrot and we all go home on Friday afternoon and go to the beach on the weekend, things may be different, but that depends.’ That will be the answer. But there will not be the decisive answers that these questions require.

They lack the decisiveness to give answers. That is the Labor Party’s problem. They are very good at the guile and cunning, the art of the serpent, to try and inflict you with a sense of moral outrage, to inflict you with a sense of turpitude and to inflict you with a sense of impending cataclysmic disaster—which somehow the Australian people are solely responsible for, and therefore, we must solely be afflicted with this tax that the Labor Party will place on us to fix it. But, as I said before, the gig is up. The Australian people have woken up and said: ‘Minister, you cannot answer the decisive questions and Kevin Rudd cannot answer the decisive questions. You can give us speeches of soaring rhetoric about the inflictions of climate change and you can roll out the reports of all the calamitous things that are about to happen, but you cannot answer the decisive questions, the core questions.’ How many parts per million will the Australian scheme reduce carbon dioxide in the globe by? No, they will not answer that. How much will this reduce the temperature of the globe by? They will not answer that. Surely the Australian people would have to think that is the crucial question that must be answered to give validity to the Australian Labor Party’s massive new tax. But these things do not happen.

They go back to the issue of our policy at the election. Might I remind the Australian people and the Australian Labor Party that we lost the election. Therefore, if the premise of the election was our ETS, it was not accepted by the Australian people. I might say that it did not do much good, because we lost the treasury bench. When you lose an election, surprisingly enough, you change your policies. That is not unusual for a party that loses an election. But I concur with you. If you believe that the premise of our election was an ETS and that was a vote by the Australian people then it would follow that the Australian people have voted against the ETS. It would stand to all reason.

The Liberal Party and the National Party have changed our positions. We recognise the mistakes that we have made. We made a big mistake. We recognised that. We have changed. We recognised the great mistake of the self-indulgent policy of inflicting a massive new tax on Australian working families, on pensioners, on people who are struggling and on business and putting Australia at a disadvantage. That is what an ETS unilaterally imposed on Australia would create. So we reacted and changed.

The minister talks about the modelling. Do you know that we have not had one day on modelling? There is an $8.5 billion increase in costs and a $5.5 billion increase in savings in these amendments—and those savings came off households; they came off working families. That is where the $5.5 billion came from: the money that they were going to give in compensation to pensioners. That is where it is coming from. But we have not had one day of an economic inquiry into this—not one; not one hour. With $8.5 billion worth of extra costs and $5.5 billion worth of savings—a quantum of $14 billion that we should investigate—we have not spent one hour in an economics committee to look at it. Acting like that is a profligate waste of the money of Australian taxpayers. You cannot do that.

Why do we have to pass this now? We are merely days away from Copenhagen. We have the capacity to have an inquiry. But they do not want an inquiry. Do you know why they do not want an inquiry? So they can stand behind and say that the figures are right. But we have never gotten the chance to check the figures, because they will not allow us to check the figures. They vote against the inquiries; they vote against getting truth, honesty and transparency into this debate. But in approximately 2½ minutes, you are going to hear another rendition of statements on galactic calamity. They are going to come. At the back of them will be the idea that the Labor Party must inflict on you all this massive new tax. We need to keep the Labor Party honest and drill down to one thing: will their tax change the temperature of the globe and, if so, by how much? If they cannot answer that question then they are not being honest with you. That is the position.

That is why the National Party from the word go has been so vigilant in trying to protect the Australian people from this. That is why our Liberal Party colleagues have been coming on board with us. That is why we will have absolute unity here on the coalition side of politics as we hold the Labor Party to account and deal with this issue. We are quite happy with whatever dice you decide to roll. If you go to the Australian people in an election, we will use Paul Keating against you. We will say, ‘If you don’t understand the tax, don’t vote for it.’ The Labor Party cannot tell you exactly how this tax is going to do anything to the temperature of the globe by itself. They aspire to grab America and China. There is a very good argument for us to do this if America and China bring in something—not a statement or targets but a legislative outcome. You have to remember that, of all the people who signed up to Kyoto, hardly any of them abided by it. It is all very well to make soaring rhetorical statements; it is something completely different to abide by it. What happens if they do not is that we will go way out on a limb where the people who will be afflicted will be Australian working families, Australian farmers, Australian pensioners and Australian small businesspeople. We cannot do that to them.

In closing, I ask the minister two very simple and decisive questions: what amount in parts per million will the Australian scheme reduce carbon dioxide by and how much will the temperature change as a result of the Australian Labor Party’s emission trading scheme?