Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is not often that I disagree with my very good colleague Senator Bernardi, but I must admit that today I need to do so. He said that Senator Wong was intending to attack Australians because they were not slackers—that she was going to slug them with a carbon tax because they were not slackers—and he asked how this was repaying them. I disagree with Senator Bernardi, because I think that the intention of Senator Wong, the Prime Minister and the Labor government is to turn Australians into slackers before they slug them with a carbon tax.

If you look at the figures that came out yesterday from ACIL Tasman, you will see that 3,000 jobs will be lost in the coal industry in New South Wales and 1,100 jobs will be lost in the coal industry in Queensland in just the next three years if a carbon tax is implemented. What is more, 23,000 jobs are forecast to be lost in the steel industry, and, over 20 years or so, the steel industry in Australia could be forced to close down. Let us look at those lost jobs and think about where the people made unemployed might go. There is nowhere for them to go, because the only thing that is holding the Australian economy together right now is the mining industry. If you look at every other sector, there is no growth; there is only dismay and lack of confidence.

A National Australia Bank survey which came out yesterday said that in May confidence levels for business outside the mining sector fell back to confidence levels before the dismal dead-cat jump of last year's Christmas sales, followed by the appalling floods and other problems. Without the mining industry there is no Australian economy, and Senator Wong will do a very good job, if she implements her carbon tax, of creating a nation of slackers, because there will not be any jobs to be had. She can happily impose a tax on those people and on those industries.

I was very amused by the comments of Senator Marshall and Senator Hutchins. They seem to think that only the so-called big polluters will pay the carbon tax. These so-called big polluters use coal to manufacture steel. Steel is used to erect buildings—commercial, residential, the bridges that we drive on, the whole gamut. The so-called big polluters produce cement, which is used to make concrete and which goes into every building in this country. The so-called big polluters use coal to generate electricity, which is used by every person in this country. So we are all polluters, and we will all pay. No wonder the Australian people are concerned about the idea of this tax and about the levels of compensation. The responsibility for creating pollution cannot be quarantined off to a couple of hundred big polluters, whatever the Labor Party thinks that phrase means. Everyone in this country who uses energy and the materials produced by energy contributes to the pollution and the emissions that cause climate change.

This is something that we are in nationally and needs to be considered nationally, yet we had the announcement from the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, Mr Combet, today, which has been confirmed by Senator Wong. Senator Wong tells us that it is not a $12 million advertising campaign but a $12 million public information campaign. Could she tell us if the public information will include what the cost per tonne of carbon tax will be? No-one knows what that will be. Could she tell us if the public information will tell us which industries will be affected by this tax? No-one knows which ones they will be. I guess that we would all think that $12 million was cheap to get an answer to some of these questions, which have been asked for months and months with no response for this government because they simply cannot get a plan implemented. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.