Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I withdraw my remark that the Prime Minister lied, because it is unparliamentary. But there is no question that the Prime Minister did not tell the truth to the Australian people, just like those opposite are not telling the truth to the Australian people now—and that is characterised by the choice of language that Senator Brown has repeated again today: 'carbon pollution'. This has nothing whatsoever to do with carbon; it is about carbon dioxide. There is a very significant difference, and that is lost on the other side. This is the same crew that say this is somehow pollution, notwithstanding the fact that only last week the US Supreme Court said carbon dioxide is not pollution. I can accept that it is pollution in the sense that they are exhaling it on that side of the chamber—as we all are—but that does not justify the words they continue to use.

This is a tragedy, because the deception that is being played out on the Australian people is being compounded again and again and again. It is characterised by the fraudulent use of language—the misrepre­sen­tation of an environmental scheme that is going to do absolutely nothing for the environment—and the simple fact that the Prime Minister will not reveal any detail.

Senator Brown and other speakers say we are going to have compensation packages and there is not going to be any tax on fuel. But we cannot believe a word the Prime Minister says. She said she would have a citizens' assembly—but that is gone, ditched, out the window. She said there was going to be no carbon tax under a government she leads—but that has gone out the window. She said Kevin Rudd had her full support—oops, sorry, that was right! She convinced Kevin Rudd to ditch the emissions trading scheme and then she knifed Kevin Rudd and did him in as well. The Australian people are right not to trust this government and particularly this Prime Minister because we have been deceived again and again and again. This policy development of the Labor administration is a shoot first, aim later program: 'We need a policy. Gosh, we've got to announce something enormous. We will do that. Oh my goodness, the consequences of what we have done are devastating!' And they continue to shift the target and change it as they go along. How else can we believe that they are going to create 1.4 million jobs by taxing the Australian economy? That beggars belief. It does not pass the common-sense test. How can they say that this is a tax on 1,000 big polluting companies but they do not expect the costs to be passed on to consumers? It is a tax on every single taxpayer in this country.

How can we believe this government when it said all the money—and it did say 'all the money'—raised by this tax was going compensate people for their behaviour? That has been mitigated now to about 50 per cent of the money raised. It has not detailed how much it is going to send off to the United Nations to be redistributed around some of the most corrupt regimes in the world. This is a government that has no idea of the detail of policy development and how it is going to affect the Australian economy. It has no idea because it really does not want to know. Its whole ambition is to cling to power, to keep itself in government, to pedal furiously so that it looks like it is doing something and hope that the Australian people will not wake up to this and the consequences of it before it is too late.

I could give the benefit of the doubt to the government and say that perhaps their intentions are good, but by their own admis­sion—by their own parliamentary secretaries, by their own ministers—they have said that this is not going to make one cracker of a difference to the environment. When challenged, 'How much is the temperature going to drop by?' they say it is not going to drop. Mark Dreyfus wrote a letter the other day saying 'No, it's not going to change the temperature one iota.' Even their own paid spruiker, the alarmist of the year, Tim Flannery, who has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars in consultancy fees from the government, has said that it is not going to make any difference. What are we doing it for? That is the simple question.