Judith Adams (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of the answers by Senator Wong. Before I do, I was most perturbed that as Senator Jacinta Collins was leaving the chamber she made a catcall and also a gesture. I am very disappointed that she left the chamber doing that sort of thing. Perhaps if Senator Jacinta Collins is still watching this broadcast she might come back and apologise to the chamber. It was very discourteous.

Honourable senators: Hear, hear!

On taking note of answers: Labor is continuing its pattern of misleading the community on the carbon tax. This week we marked one year since the Prime Minister's pledge: 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.' I do not know how many times we have heard this repeated, but the Prime Minister has since said that she will be awaiting community consensus. I wonder if she was informed and really understood the message of the 4,000-plus crowd who attended the rally on the Parliament House lawns yester­day. I had a carbon tax petition at a recent local show and within a day I had 1,000 signatures on that petition—it was absolutely amazing. Normally when you are at a show with a petition everyone runs and hides but this time people were asking whether they could sign the carbon tax petition.

The community is very agitated about the carbon tax and some strange things are happening, especially for the so-called 500 polluting businesses. First we started with 1,000 businesses which were going to have to pay the carbon tax. Then we went to 500. Then we went to 400. Now we are back to 500. It is outrageous that the Labor govern ­ ment, which is championing the import ­ ance of a carbon tax, has told the supposed 500 big polluting businesses that the businesses will have to work out what to pay.

To understand this, the shadow minister for climate action, environment and heritage, Greg Hunt, wrote to Minister Combet requesting the list of the 500 companies, but Minister Combet has responded by creating more uncertainty, saying that ultimately it will be the responsibility of business to determine whether they are liable under the carbon-pricing mechanism, using commer ­ cial information specific to the operations of their business.

That is very confusing. How can the Labor government implement such a major policy without a defined list of which companies have to pay? How can they be sure of their revenue projections? We know there are some carbon cops out there—or there will be. Who are they going to go after?

The Labor government is creating enormous uncertainty for business. The exposure draft of the legislation has only just been made available for public comment, and I am told it closes next Monday with some of the bills still to be released. Yet businesses are expected to have analysed and assessed whether they are one of the supposed 500 on Labor's carbon tax hit list, and that does not include the extra 60,000 businesses which will be impacted under the diesel fuel rebate changes. I really think we could not be more confused and the supposed 500 businesses that have to pay must be very confused.

With the current global economic uncertainty, the high Australian dollar and the slump in retail trade, this is the worst possible time for a new tax to be imposed on Australian families and businesses. We should be doing all we can to ensure the financial security of Australians is being protected, yet Labor are blindly pushing ahead with a carbon tax. They do so with complete disregard of the negative inter­national economic situation and the local indicators which clearly show Australian businesses are already doing it tough. For the sake of Australian families, to ensure their job security and keep business doors open, I would demand— (Time expired)

Question agreed to.