John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I take the interjection from Senator Feeney. BHP want a carbon tax but not on anything that affects their exports. It will have no effect on their bottom-line profit—very clever by Mr Kloppers. Imagine if Australia, producing 1.4 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gases, abolished all its greenhouse gases. Imagine if Australia emitted zero gases. Of course that is impossible. When you breathe, you inhale 380 parts per million of carbon dioxide and you exhale 50,000 parts, so we cannot bring our emissions to zero. But if we bring our emissions to zero and produce 550 million tonnes of CO2 a year, or if we reduce our emissions by 500 million tonnes and just produce 50 million tonnes of CO2a year, what effect will that have on the world by 2020?

We know that India is going to go from three billion to five billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions a year by 2020—that is up by two billion tonnes. China is going to go from seven billion to 10 billion—up another three billion by 2020. Those two countries will produce another five billion tonnes of greenhouse gases a year by 2020. If Australia cuts it greenhouse gas emissions by 500 million tonnes a year, that is an extra five billion tonnes. But you are not going to change a thing. The amount of greenhouse gases is going to continue to rise. While India, China and the United States are producing 50 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gases and are not going to do a thing about it, you want to take us down a road of taxation and put electricity prices up for everyone—including aged-care facilities, local governments, our exporting industries, our abattoirs, the people who live at home and even Senator Sterle’s own household. And you think you are going to save the earth by doing this!

This is just outrageous. This is what we are going to face: we have a government that is in bed with and dominated by the Greens. The Greens will want their pound of flesh, they will dictate to the government what they want and the government will simply go along with them. There will be more of the same. What will the Greens policy of ‘Let’s raise the registration fee for B-doubles to $23,000 a year and take away their 16c rebate on fuel’ do for the price of everything that is transported around regional Australia? What will that do for the prices of food going into the towns and for the export of grain et cetera going out to the wharves? This is what the government will be facing. The Greens will have leverage on them with a 10-foot crowbar, leveraging the government until they get their demands. That is what we have in front of us in Australia—a Labor government, a minority government, dominated by the Greens.

This government will do the same thing to our nation that the disgraceful government in New South Wales has done to the state of New South Wales. The New South Wales government has driven people out of their state at a rate of 500 a week. That is why we lose seats. That is why the seat of Gwydir was taken from us and the seat of Flynn was formed in Queensland. That is why another seat is gone. We have just had the seat of Wright formed in Queensland. People are being driven out of New South Wales because of the Greens-Labor coalition in that state, and this is what Australia is going to face.

The government will see how many jobs will be cut, how many industries will suffer and how many industries have been moved overseas because of its carbon taxes. The cement industry will be the first one gone. This is the direction the government will take our country. Come next election, do not worry about minority governments, because the people of Australia will see that Independents like Tony Windsor and Robert Oakeshott from the conservative seats just turn their backs on their electorates. The public will not forget that next time, and we will see a big change. (Time expired)