Mary Fisher (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to this government’s lack of understanding of cost-of-living pressures, particularly on Australian families, as a result of the government’s proposed carbon tax. After all, how can you understand the impact of cost-of-living pressures when you do not even understand the details of your own policy, when you have not set a price on carbon, when you have not said who is going to have to pay the carbon tax, when you have not said who is not going to have to pay the carbon tax, when you have not said who you are going to compensate, when you have not said who you are not going to compensate? How can you possibly understand the impact of cost-of-living pressures from a tax of that nature? For example, how can you possibly understand when carbon priced at $26 per tonne is estimated to increase electricity prices by some $300 a week—due to the carbon tax alone—and is estimated to put petrol up by some 6½ cents a litre and to increase gas prices by some 10 per cent? How can you possibly understand if you have not done your figuring, if you have not done the details of your plan?

How can you possibly understand the impact of a carbon tax on the farming community? How can you possibly understand even if you have said that for now agriculture will be exempt from a carbon tax—which, of course, begs the question: for how long? But just assume that agriculture is exempt from the carbon tax: how can you possibly understand the impact of a carbon tax on that sector when you do not understand that farmers will pay indirectly the costs of a carbon tax through their inputs? Doesn’t the government realise how dependent the farming community is on energy? Some 45 per cent of their inputs are dependent upon energy related things. What about petrol to transport goods from farm, to drive machinery such as headers and seeders? What about electricity to light packing sheds and to drive machines like rotary milkers? What about the cost of fertiliser, which is 30 to 40 per cent responsive to the cost of energy that goes into it? How can the government possibly understand the impact of those costs on farmers when they have not even bothered to start to understand the detail of their policy?

Professor Garnaut talks about how agriculture is more trade exposed than other sectors from the threats that would result from the imposition of a carbon tax. All of that is totally okay because Minister Combet says it is. On 9 March, Minister Combet told Lateline’s Tony Jones: ‘Yes, it is okay to float a policy intention because we will consult. It is responsible.’ Tony Jones is probably here in the building today for the ABC presentation; maybe he can remind Minister Combet of what he said about reassuring Australians that it was responsible to announce a carbon tax framework with no details, before consulting with industry. That of course begs the question that you will consult with industry. Tony Jones said: ‘Is it a good idea to announce a carbon tax with no details?’ Minister Combet replied: ‘It is a perfectly valid way to develop an important policy like this to allow stakeholders to have solid input as to the detailed design of the policy.’ When I say ‘stakeholders’, I mean important members of the business community who have an interest in this tax. Those important members of the business community, at least three of whom are members of the government’s business roundtable, told the media today that they have not heard a thing from the government. Mr Kraehe from BlueScope Steel said:

... the business roundtable has been a sham ... There’s no real consultation.

               …            …            …

The consultation between government and business is appalling.

Jock Laurie, another member of the business roundtable and boss of the NFF, said:

There were ... discussions at the business roundtable about how there was going to be consultation—full consultation—and everybody would be included. ... A lot of people have been taken by surprise.

Peter Anderson, the boss of ACCI and also a member of the roundtable, said:

... the Government has ... established a business advisory group for ... meaningful input—

but instead the government has used—

the multi-party parliamentary committee.

Politicians like me may be well intentioned but we do not know the impact of the carbon tax on business. This government should do as it has promised and consult with the members—(Time expired)