John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I note that Senator Cameron said that those on the other side use misinformation and fear campaigns. Senator Cameron, please do not leave the chamber. Stay here: I have some messages for you. He talks about carbon pollution. But what is it? Why is it when you go on to Google and you search for a list of pollutants carbon dioxide does not come up? 'Carbon pollution', Senator Cameron says. But 60 per cent to 70 per cent of the food that we eat is carbon. Did you enjoy your lunch of pollution today, Senator Cameron? Under your description, that is exactly what it is. That is misinformation, deception and propaganda.

One year gone since the big promise from the Prime Minister, Ms Gillard: 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.' She said it twice. And who was that backed up by? The Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer, Mr Swan, with words to the effect that the accusations by Tony Abbott and the coalition that if Labor were re-elected they would introduce a carbon tax were 'hysterical'. The highest elected office in the country is Prime Minister. And what did she do? She betrayed the Australian people. The second highest elected position in this nation is Deputy Prime Minister. Mr Swan is also the Treasurer. He betrayed the Australian people as well. There are 150 members over in that other chamber, the House of Representatives. I know of 145 at least who went to the last election saying there would be no carbon tax. But now what is the government doing to the Australian people? Senator McLucas shakes her head. Well, there are 72 Labor members over there who said there would be no carbon tax. There are 73 coalition members. That makes 145. That was the policy of 145 of those elected members of parliament prior to the last election: 'There will be no carbon tax.' And what have we got? It was a big false claim. There was a backflip.

This is what is wrong with this government. The Australian people have lost trust in this government. They do not trust it to manage the money. We have seen the waste of money. They do not trust it to balance the books. We have seen debt—I looked at the website of the Australian Office of Financial Management last Friday—of $197 billion. That figure is renewed on the website every Friday. The Australian people do not trust you with money. They do not trust you in the way you spend it. They do not trust you in your borrowing and wasting of it. They do not trust your promises about no carbon tax. That is why the Labor Party, the Australian Labor Party—I should clarify because we have another Labor Party in this chamber now, the Democratic Labor Party—has a 2 in front of its primary vote in the polling: because the Australian people do not trust you. It is as simple as that. There is mis­management and waste and the government says: 'We will have the budget in surplus come next year. Next May there will be this big surplus budget.' But now it is backtracking on that. Surplus budgets are something that the Australian Labor Party does not understand. In the last 17 years of government under the Australian Labor Party, there have been four government budget surpluses. The ALP only sees red print all over its budgets.

But I will go back to this argument about the carbon tax and the cost to business. The cement industry are going to get a 94.5 per cent discount. That means they are only going to get taxed about $9 million. This is an industry that is facing huge competition from cheap imports from places like China. We have just seen the announcement of the closing down of the Kandos factory, with the loss of 98 jobs directly plus the truckies' jobs and all the other jobs that rely on it. They are gone. And you are going to put $9 million on that industry, which can hardly even afford to remain financially viable because of the high Australian dollar—brought about, I might add, by the high interest rates brought about by government waste and spending. Here is the government, foot on the accelerator, stimulating the economy, and the Reserve Bank has got its hand on the handbrake, pulling on it hard, with seven interest rate rises in a row—and we wonder why the Australian dollar is way above parity with the US dollar. That is one of the main reasons: our interest rates, including the 4.75 per cent official cash rate.

What is the cost to business? The cement industry, which is already in trouble, will be in more trouble. In our Senate Select Committee on Scrutiny of New Taxes, chaired by the very capable Senator Cormann, we have heard about Bindaree Beef, an abattoir in the local town where I live, employing 630 people. I believe it is the biggest employer in the seat of New England. I hope Tony Windsor actually thinks about that one day before he votes on this tax. There will be a cost of $2.74 million to that abattoir in the first year. We can go around the countryside and show you the abattoirs closed down. You can go to Broome, Derby, Katherine, Coonamble, Guyra, Gunnedah or Byron Bay—you can go around and see them closed everywhere. And what is this government going to do? It is going to put taxes on these businesses. Do their competitors in America have to face a tax? No, they do not. It is just another nail in the coffin.

Then we have the cost to the transport industry. On 1 July 2014 there will be another 6.21c tax on the truckies' diesel—in other words, there will be less rebate for the truckies. The government has already taken 3½c off their rebate. The return to the truckies per litre of diesel was 18½c when Labor won government in 2007. Now it is down to 15c. The truckies use eight billion litres of diesel a year, so the government has already charged the trucking industry over $240 million. As Tony Sheldon told our committee, this carbon tax is a death tax. Truckies will be forced to work harder, work longer and drop the maintenance on their vehicles. That is what your Transport Workers Union colleague and supporter said. Senator McLucas may shake her head, but the evidence is in Hansard if you want to read the transcript of the committee hearings. It is all in Hansard. He referred to it as a death tax because he is showing common sense about the effect on the transport industry.

Now we get to the most amazing thing of all. What is this going to do for the globe? When we get to the committee stage of this legislation, when it gets to this place, I will have a question. We know there are about 380 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere now. I want to know how much this tax will do to reduce those parts per million. That is what I want to know. The fact is that by 2020 our CO2 emissions will have gone up 43 million tonnes a year in Australia. We are not going down; we are going up. We have heard the figure today from Senator Cormann. China is going to go up by about eight billion tonnes to 17.9 billion tonnes. So we are going up. What are we going to do then? With some of that $72 billion taxed from the 500 largest emitters, we are going to buy carbon credits. This is when it is going to get really interesting. We are going to buy those credits from places overseas like Nigeria—they might be selling carbon credits—Brazil and Argentina. Who is going to check and police those carbon credits, to make sure they are for real and are not fake, fraudulent? This is opening up a whole new game around the world to transfer money off to other countries. That is what this is about.

In Australia, we are going to have the carbon cops. Bob Carr and Kim Yeadon, when he was minister—Kimberley Maxwell Yeadon, the jumped-up shop steward, as John Laws used to refer to him—brought in the tree police. A farmer who pushed over a tree faced a fine of up to $50,000. They talk about property rights. We are going to have the carbon cops. If a company puts in the wrong information, there will be a fine of up to $1.1 million or 10 years jail or both. They are going to be going around policing our companies. But what is going to happen with these credits we are buying from overseas? We will have no idea, but the billions will flow. I think the greatest statistic of all is that the emissions trading scheme that has been in place in 27 European Union countries plus three other countries—30 in total—for more than 5½ years, covering about 500 million people producing 14 per cent of the world CO2, collects approximately $500 million a year. That is $1 per person—$1 for producing 14 per cent of the world's emissions. We are going to tax Australians almost $400 per person—400 times the amount—for producing one-tenth of the emissions, 1.4 per cent. Is that justice? Is that fair? Emissions are going to go up. I am a firm believer in climate change. I believe the climate has been changing for millions of years and will continue to do so. They say the sea levels are rising. Why has Deb O'Neill MP bought a house down near the beach? Why is Minister Carmel Tebbutt moving down near the beach? If the sea level were going to rise, that would be the last place you would be going. They do not even think it is going to rise. I will check those statistics out, but that is the information—that is two Labor MPs who have moved down close to the waterfront, having total faith that the sea levels will not rise. This is a farce. In this inquiry we are having in the committee that Senator Madigan is part of, the more we dive into this whole carbon tax plan, the more ridiculous we can see the whole plan is. (Time expired)