George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

Yet again. We waited through two minutes of verbiage, through two minutes of trying to bat the question away, but came there an assurance? No, there did not. ‘Everything is in,’ said Senator Evans, ‘everything is included.’ So if you are trying to deal with the cost of petrol, if you are a member of an Australian family who worries about the cost of petrol on top of the rise in interest rates, on top of the rise in grocery prices and on top of the rise in your electricity prices, all of which will be driven up by the carbon tax, be assured that this government makes no commitment to you whatsoever that the cost of filling your family car will not increase significantly. In fact, at a carbon price of $26 per tonne it will rise by 6.5c a litre at a minimum.

We could look at this from a moral point of view and express outrage that a government could so flagrantly and shamelessly lie to the public just to win an election. We could look at it from an economic point of view. But I suspect that most Australians, while being disgusted at the lies that were told to them by the Labor Party in order to win the 2010 election, will be more immediately concerned about the effect on their hip pocket. They will be more immediately concerned that the price of electricity, the price of petrol, the price of groceries and the general price of living will be turbocharged as a result of this broken promise. Who do we have to thank for this? Of course the government of the day must take responsibility for its decision, and when it is a decision based on a lie the government must take responsibility for that. But we know who the joint authors, if not the real authors, of this decision were— not this lame, hopeless government but their political partners the Greens.

When Senator Brown appeared in the Prime Minister’s courtyard last week abreast the Prime Minister, with Senator Milne, Mr Oakeshott and Mr Windsor in tow, he looked every inch a prime minister. Let the record show that Senator Brown nodded appreciably at my remark. The fact is the person in control of that press conference was not the Prime Minister but Senator Bob Brown, just as the person in control of this agenda was not the Prime Minister but Senator Bob Brown. His colleague Senator Christine Milne—