Mark Furner (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, I was recapping on the position of Mr John Howard, the former Prime Minister, on climate change and greenhouse gas emissions. I generally do not quote this man because I have some issues associated with his mannerism and also the way he introduced Work Choices and extreme industrial relations laws into this country, but we have been fortunate as a government to be able to turn them back and introduce fair and reasonable industrial laws. But back in 1998 he made a point on plebiscites and referendums. On ABC Radio in Perth—in your home state, Mr Acting Deputy President—he said:

… unless you resort to a method of having plebiscites or referendums on each individual issue. And I think the Australian public will get very angry and tired about that. They would say: what's wrong with you fellas, we elected you for three years, you go away and take all the decisions you want to on individual issues and then when those decisions have been taken at the end of your three year period if we don't like you we'll vote you out. I don't think you can run it any other way.

That is clearly contrary to what Mr Tony Abbott, his protege, is doing in this bill before us today.

Those are not the only coalition members who have supported a price on carbon. On 20 May 2010 Joe Hockey said, 'Inevitably we'll have to put a price on carbon … we'll have to.' And on 1 December 2009 the former Tasmanian senator Guy Barnett said:

I support action on climate change; I support a price on carbon emissions. As a community we should give the earth the benefit of the doubt.

Then on 24 February this year the member for Moore, Mal Washer, said: 'If we don't price carbon both sides of politics will be guilty of putting up stupid feelgood progra­ms that are not cost effective. Taxpayers end up paying exorbitant prices for little reduction in CO2.'

The Gillard government are committed to supporting our working families. We understand the cost of living pressures and we are determined to deliver policies which will assist our families and the environment. Our track record has been consistent. We always have and we always will look out for working families. Since the Labor government was elected in 2007 we have provided tax cuts and assistance to small businesses. We have increased the pension and the childcare rebate and introduced the education tax refund. We abolished Work Choices, the Howard government evil policy which took away workers' rights; it took away leave loading and overtime rates and it was ultimately the undoing of the coalition government. For the first time in history Australia has a paid parental leave scheme, allowing working parents to stay at home and bond with their new additions without having to worry about the cost-of-living pressures, and this is on top of their employers' existing paid parental leave scheme. We accomplished all this within our tight budget. We will be delivering an increase of $4,000 in family tax benefit part A. We will extend the education tax refund to include uniforms and provide the option for families to receive the child-care rebate payments fortnightly. All our incentives are costed and fully funded. We are committed to a stronger economy and more jobs for Australians. We are investing in the future of our nation through infrastructure and investing in skills.

If those opposite really cared about our working families they would never have introduced Work Choices; they would never have taken away workers' rights. But the people spoke, they lost government and then Mr Abbott told everyone Work Choices was 'dead, buried and cremated'. A great analogy can be drawn with the recent election at the opposition's party council when there was a ballot for presidency between Mr Peter Reith and another gentleman, whose name escapes me at the moment. I want to refer to some of the comments made in an article in the Age where Mr Reith said:

Labour market reform is too important to be left in the Liberal political closet.

Even though I have spent many years as an activist promoting labour market reform, I promised Opposition Leader Tony Abbott I would suspend my interest in this if I became federal president of the Liberal Party. I thought that was the best way I could support Abbott and the team and quietly encourage great policy.

Mr Reith questioned Mr Abbott's commit­ment, saying:

It was good that Abbott publicly called for the business community to make the case for reform. I hope he means it.

I wonder what he means by that statement 'I hope he means it'? Is he questioning Mr Tony Abbott's genuineness in this area of reforming industrial laws?

Despite having given Peter Reith his commitment to vote for him, Mr Abbott instead voted for Mr Stockdale and then showed Mr Stockdale the outcome of his decision. We know this because it is in the press; the television cameras were rolling. Apparently he turned to Ms Bishop and said, 'Hell, I thought Reith would have won.' Certainly you can imagine the shock on Ms Bishop's face, because she understood that there was an arrangement and that a deal had been done. She responded, 'Yeah, well, he lost by one vote, Tony.' This is the disin­genuousness of this person, whether it be in important elections for the president of the opposition party or a commitment to put a bill such as this to a plebiscite on such an important matter. You really question whether this person is genuine enough to accept an outcome. He has clearly demon­strated that that is not the case; he would not accept the outcome and this is typical of the form of this particular person.

We know that the only position we can take is to make sure that we deliver a policy—and educate constituents to make sure they understand what is ahead of them—that will work towards effectively putting a price on carbon in the cheapest, most effective way, in a way that will support businesses and in a way that will not affect households, to provide a transition to a cleaner economy. (Time expired)