Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I wish to make a brief contribution to this debate on the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Bill 2011 and allied bills as well. It is somewhat awing me to follow such an erudite and forensic look at the legislation as was done by my colleague. I agree, to the extent of my limited understanding, with my colleague Senator Nash's very detailed look at the bill in pointing out the flaws in it. Basically, the problem for the coalition is this: we support carbon farming in principle, and have done so for a long time, but the detail is not there. There is simply not sufficient detail in this bill that would give the coalition the confidence to support it.

The Australian Labor Party again is saying, 'Trust us and everything will be all right.' Unfortunately, the people of Australia have trusted the Australian Labor Party too often and they have learnt through sad experience that you cannot trust the Australian Labor Party government with money. It is incompetent. It has no understanding. It does not realise that spending the taxpayers' money is, or should be, like spending your own money. When people in private enterprise, families and households spend money they look carefully at it, because they know if they waste it they will have to do without in the future. But the Australian Labor Party is renowned for spending other people's money without any care in the world for good spending or worthwhile spending. We have only to look at the record of this Gillard-Rudd govern­ment to understand how it simply cannot be trusted with money.

Do I have to mention the Home Insulation Program—the pink batts? The Australian Labor Party spent literally billions of dollars installing these batts because it seemed like a good idea at the time—it would get them a few votes. They came in with a brush to put in all these batts. They wanted them in yesterday, spent billions of dollars on the program and then spent almost as much of the taxpayers' money to dismantle it, to take these pink batts out again. Was it the Australian Labor Party, was it the ministers or was it the union hacks in this government who are used to spending other people's money who had to pay for the misapprop­riation of taxpayers' money? No, it was the poor old taxpayer who had to pay.

If the ministers in this government had to pay for their own failures, perhaps they would be a bit more careful with the money. You can be assured that as long as the Australian Labor Party is in government it is not going to be concerned about spending other people's money. Do I need to mention the Green Loans program or the school halls program? They spent billions of dollars of taxpayers' money on school halls in schools that are now being shut down. If it were my money going into it, I would have made sure that the schools had a long future. We heard the other day that in Tasmania half-a-dozen schools will be closed down after the Labor Party spent billions of dollars of taxpayers' money constructing new facilities in them. The schools are in the process of being shut down. The list goes on—look wherever you like.

You know that the Australian Labor Party simply cannot be trusted when it comes to spending money. They say, hand on heart, 'Look, we appreciate this bill does not have all of the detail in it, but we're going to introduce some regulations.' For those listening to this debate, regulations are laws that are written as subsidiary legislation. They are not actually brought before the parliament. They are done by ministers and public servants. They put the detail into the broad act that the government is asking us to support here in this chamber today.

If you have a look at the report into this bill by the Senate Environment and Com­munications Legislation Committee and look particularly at the dissenting report tabled by Senator Colbeck on behalf of the coalition, you will see that the detail is not there. The government says: 'Don't worry about that. Trust us, we'll make sure it's okay. Hand on heart, hand on Bible'—perhaps not the Bible, as I am not sure that the Prime Minister believes in the Bible—'trust us, we will make sure the regulations do what we have promised they will do.' How could anyone in Australia possibly trust the word of our Prime Minister? Our Prime Minister says, 'Trust me, I will make sure the regulations do what they are supposed to do.' But this is from a Prime Minister who, a few days before the last federal election, when the Labor Party was looking at defeat in the face, got up on the soapbox and said to the Australian people, 'Trust me, there will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.' That was three or four days before the election. The day before the election, the same Prime Minister got up, looked the Australian public in the eye through the means of a television camera and said, 'You can trust me, there will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.' What do we know today, a few short months later? We have the same Prime Minister, with all the hoopla of an American circus, saying, 'Tune in on Sunday and I'm going to tell you about the carbon tax I'm going to impose on you, the carbon tax that I promised you all just before the last election would not be introduced by a government I lead.' So you can understand when, in relation to this bill, the same Prime Minister says, 'Yes, we know the bill is a bit deficient on detail but, trust us, we'll put the detail in with these regulations'—which will not come anywhere near the parliament into the future. This Prime Minister wants us to trust her to write these regulations in a way that will comply with what she has promised. Who in Australia would believe this Prime Minister when she makes those sorts of promises? I hear silence from the other side. I ask the question again: who in Australia would believe this Prime Minister when she promises anything? Is there anyone in this chamber who would believe the Prime Minister?