Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

Of Senator Cameron, who represents the zombies in this place, I ask, I wonder who said this:

I think when you go to an election and you give a promise to the Australian people, you should do everything in your power to honour that promise. … We want Australians to be able to say well, they said this and they did this.

The same person—there is a hint for you, Senator Cameron—also said:

If the reputation of this government is that we are stubborn in the delivery of our election promises, then we are stubborn in keeping our word to the Australian people. Then I’ll take that. I’ll take that as a badge of honour.

Who said that? None other than your Prime Minister. There she is on the record, absolutely ruling out a carbon tax, absolutely telling the Australian people how fundamental and important it is to have honesty and integrity in the delivery of an election promise. So I say to the Prime Minister and to the Labor Party: if you want to honour your election promise of no carbon tax, we in the coalition will support you all the way. We will assist you in that, because you and we were both elected on the same policy of no carbon tax.

Considering the vote that the coalition got and the vote that the Australian Labor Party got in comparison with the 10 per cent or so that the Greens got, the Australian people are asking, ‘How is it that the will of 90 per cent of the Australian people can be so shamelessly discarded?’ The reason is that Ms Gillard and Labor will do whatever it takes to cling onto power. That is their modus operandi. There is no morality in this. Let us not try to dress this up as some environmental policy, because it is not. It is a tax grab, but they are trying to give it a green veneer. It seems, in recent times, that, no matter what Labor is confronted with, the immediate reaction is tax. If there is a flood, let us have a tax; students, let us have a tax; resources, let us have a tax; alcohol, let us have a tax; carbon in the air, let us have a tax. These people are absolutely addicted to tax, even in circumstances in which they know it will hurt their base.

People like Senator Cameron and others who once were proud trade union leaders and who once were proud defenders of the Australian manufacturing sector are now sitting in this place selling that sector out. One indeed wonders why Senator Cameron had to go to all the trouble of knifing out Senator George Campbell from this place. Senator Campbell had become too weak; the Labor Party was deserting the workers. And now we have Senator Cameron following suit. We have in this one action by the government a window into how this government will behave.