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

However, no-one, it seems, has ever met the people who have these green jobs. They are out there somewhere. It is like Alice in Wonderland. Somewhere out there is a person with a green job, but we never bump into them.

Where are these green jobs—the tens of thousands of green jobs that are apparently going to be created? You are going to replace the jobs of your working families and the jobs of your hard-working blue-collar workers with jobs for people who do what—build footpaths around duck ponds? There will be subsidised jobs for people who change light globes. We are seeing this sort of nebulous reconstruction of the numbers to try and proffer the government’s case, but where, exactly, will these people actually have work?

We have heard that apparently the coal industry is evil and must be killed, that we will remove it from our nation and that apparently everything to do with mining is evil. The whole premise of this debate is the need for a pricing mechanism for carbon and to price carbon out of the market. Unfortunately, our major export is carbon, but let’s put that aside. Let’s not worry about that. Let’s not worry about the reality of economics.

This comes from the Prime Minister who said that he is an economic conservative. What has the economic conservative done lately? The economic conservative has foisted this massive new tax on the Australian people without so much as one hour of an inquiry on the amendments—not one hour of a Senate Economics Legislation Committee inquiry on the amendments. That is what the economic conservative has done. With a $14 billion turnaround, we have not had one hour of an economic inquiry. Why—because he needs it to go to Copenhagen.

Let me summarise what Senator Wong has said. Her first argument against us in the debate was that it is a denial of the science. We do not deny the science. We do not even engage in the science. It is not a debate about science, Minister. It is a debate about the economy. It’s the economy, stupid. That is what this is about. It is about whether we can maintain working families in work, whether we can maintain pensioners in their homes, whether we can maintain family farmers on their farms and whether we can maintain Australian small businesses in business.

Next, she said that it is about delay. We are just delaying, she said, yet she is not prepared to wait a matter of days until Copenhagen. How conceited and arrogant the Labor Party have become. They are not prepared to wait a matter of days until Copenhagen. Then we heard the minister talk about ‘13 inquiries’, but never once did she mention the fact that, with a $14 billion turnaround—an $8½ billion increase in costs and a $5½ billion reduction in costs—she is not prepared to have one hour of an economics inquiry.

The final argument was that the coalition’s position was premised on a scare campaign. In fact, the mother of all scare campaigns has been mounted by the Australian Labor Party. Every time you get yourself into a corner where you cannot answer the economics questions, you revert to questions about Greenland, questions about the Arctic, questions about the Antarctic, questions about drought and questions about global warming, but you never answer the fundamental question: how many parts per million does your scheme reduce emissions by? You will not answer it.

This is a poorly thought out scheme. It is too poorly to be implemented. It is going to leave our nation poor. I thank you, Minister, and I thank the Labor Party for having the capacity to come up with such a ridiculous scheme. Now it looks as if you propose—and we can only hear what you are saying—to go to an election on it, possibly. I welcome that opportunity and we on this side welcome that opportunity. We welcome the opportunity to go to the Australian people to clearly spell out to every man, woman and child that what the Australian Labor Party proposes for the future of our nation is a massive new tax.

This is their grand vision—a massive new tax on every corner of Australian life. This is a massive new tax which you cannot get away from. From every power point of your house comes a massive new tax. When you watch your television, there will be a massive new tax. When you iron your clothes, there will be a massive new tax. When you cook the dinner, there will be a massive new tax.

You cannot get out of this massive new tax. This massive new tax, once it is in place, is a property right. You have to live with it. As far as Australia is concerned, once the massive new tax of the Australian Labor Party, known as the ETS, is in place, it is there forever. We cannot get rid of it. It is a compensatable property right and we do not have the capacity to pay for it.

Under this massive new tax of the Australian Labor Party, they will be signing us up to an agreement as a result of which we will be borrowing money from China to pay the interest to China to send back to China to develop China. That is one of the examples, in minutia, of how patently absurd this scheme is. Under this scheme of the Australian Labor Party, we will be borrowing money from China, from Japan and from other nations to send to Robert Mugabe. Why? I do not know. They just conjured it up. This is part of the scheme of the Australian Labor Party. This is what they want to do. This is how they are helping you, Australian working families.

This is what they are going to do and, every time, they will say it is in order to reduce the temperature of the globe. Surely that is what this debate is about, yet never once has the minister been able to quantify and be decisive in her answer. She has absconded from the reality of the answer.

02/12/2009Wednesday, 2 December 2009

The PRESIDENT (Senator the Hon. John Hogg) took the chair at 10 am and read prayers.

I think I am still sweating from last night, so I will make this brief—because I have to. In this crucial economic debate—one of the most crucial economic debates of our times—to stop this massive new tax being imposed by the Australian Labor Party on working families, pensioners and farmers, there are a number of people who need to be thanked for being able to change the sentiment of this parliament. First of all, I would like to thank my colleagues Fi, Wacka, Bozzie and Nige—wherever you are—and also everybody else for the support we have had from them. You cannot do it without a team, and they have been unrelenting in their support.

Most importantly, I think we have to thank the Australian people. The response from the Australian people was absolutely awesome. It was overwhelming. From talkback radio to the papers to the blog sites, it is the Australian people who have spoken and changed the direction on this, and it is absolutely humbling to see the tens of thousands of emails we have received. The Australian people are going to be the greatest winners on this, and I thank them for their support.