Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Hansard source

Senator McEwen, what I am going to do is quote OneSteel. I would not want to misrepresent their position at all. In terms of One Steel looking at their forward outlook and 'factors that could cause actual results or perform­ance to differ materially', they highlight 'legislative changes, regulatory changes or other changes in the laws which affect OneSteel's business, including environmental laws and the carbon tax'. They certainly see in their risk factors, in their profile for the future, the carbon tax looming large. That is unsurprising given that in the presentation they released today it states that the carbon tax, as we now know, will be $23 a tonne. It would be nice if the government did some Treasury modelling on that price rather than a made up price of $20, which the carbon tax is not. That is a different matter. OneSteel go on to say, 'Based on FY10 production expected tax for scope 1 and 2 emissions would be $18.4m'—$18.4 million off the bottom line. You would have to reconsider your employment and your outlook when you face an $18.4 million hit coming down the line at you. It is little wonder, especially in these times of such international uncertainty, the high dollar and the weakness in parts of the Australian economy. All of these things combine with an utter lack of comprehensive global action to demonstrate that this is the worst possible time to be contemplating something like this and inflicting it on companies like Qantas or OneSteel or anybody else within Australia.

Senator Crossin wanted to paint a rosy picture of international action. Here is a challenge for the government: does anybody in the government believe that when they go to the Conference of the Parties in Durban later this year to discuss climate change there will be a new legally binding agreement? Will there be something to replace Kyoto when it expires in 2012? That is right: the current legally binding agreement expires next year. The jig is almost up; time is almost out. Does anybody in this government actually think, after the debacle of Copenhagen, that they are going to get anything more than the flimsy pledges that are made, which are hardly worth the bits of paper they are written on given the utter lack of action by governments around the world to back them up? Most governments around the world could not even bring themselves to meet the allegedly legally binding com­mitments they made under Kyoto, so lord only knows what they are going to do when it comes to meeting these pledges that have been made to date.

Senator Crossin decided she wanted to highlight India putting a price on emissions in the coal industry or the use of coal. She said it is going to raise half a billion dollars. Isn't that exciting. It is going to raise half a billion dollars.