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

Most of the legislation the Labor Party has brought to this chamber has been so hopelessly drawn that it has had to be amended not long after its introduction. It has been brought in without proper scrutiny of all the elements. That is why we are spending time looking carefully into the bill before the committee at the moment. Senator Ludwig talked about filibusters but he just took 12 minutes to tell us practically nothing. If anyone is doing the filibustering, for some reason it is Senator Ludwig and the government. Senator Ludwig even raised issues that were not part of the debate, but as he has raised them it behoves me, in fairness and for an honest debate, to respond to them.

Senator Ludwig said that we want to abolish the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency. Yes, we do. We are looking for a lot of savings, and there is one very big saving. Which government was it that started the Greenhouse Challenge Plus Program? It was the Howard government. Which government put in place a number of initiatives that meant a reduction in Australia's greenhouse gas emissions? It was the Howard government. Did we need a new department of climate change to do that? No. We did it with the department of the environment. Clearly, that is where it can be done—without the huge expense that the Labor Party always wants to impose upon the Australian taxpayer by setting up another group of bureaucrats, another group of public servants, another group of people to push paper around. The department of the enviro­nment is perfectly able to handle this, and it can do that under an Abbott government just as it did under the Howard government.

Senator Ludwig also expanded the debate by talking about people not believing in climate change. I can only speak for myself, but I think most of my colleagues accept that of course the climate is changing. The climate has been changing for millions of years. Many scientists say that man is the cause of climate change but an equal number of highly qualified scientists, or more, do not agree. I am not a scientist, I am a mere politician, so I do not know. I take the view that when everybody else takes action, we will too. Certainly I accept that the climate is changing and I would be surprised if anyone did not understand that 20 million years ago the world was covered in ice. It is not covered in ice now, so of course the climate is changing. Millions of years ago the centre of Australia was covered by rainforest. It is not now; it is quite arid. So of course the climate is changing. Is it warming? That is a different question. The facts seem to suggest that in the last couple of decades the climate has either cooled or has not changed at all. They are matters beyond this debate, and I only mention them because Senator Ludwig raised them even although they are extraneous to the issue we are dealing with.

Senator Ludwig spent some time denigrating the coalition's direct action policy, a principal part of which is to put carbon into the soil. That was something the coalition was advocating and promoting long before the government ever thought of it. And you can reduce emissions, you can improve the quality of the soil, through the proposals that the coalition has put forward. You do not need a great big new tax on every Australian—a tax that will have no worldwide impact whatsoever on climate change—to get a reduction in emissions. The direct action proposal of Mr Abbott and the coalition will bring a reduction in green­house gas emissions. In fact Ms Gillard, the leader of the Labor Party and current Prime Minister, thought a year ago yesterday that no new tax would be needed when she said there would be no carbon tax under a government she led. The Labor Party leader made a solemn promise that, if her party was elected to government, there would not be a carbon tax.

At about that time Tony Abbott told Australians that, as sure as night followed day, once you got a Labor Party-Greens alliance they would be after a carbon tax. Mr Swan, the deputy leader of the Labor Party and the current Treasurer, accused Mr Abbott of being hysterical for daring to suggest that the new Greens-Labor govern­ment would bring in a carbon tax. Mr Swan said that Tony Abbott's suggestion that the government was going to bring in a carbon tax was hysterical; it was not true. That was then followed up by Ms Gillard, the leader of the Labor Party, saying, 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.' Indeed, she also said that if any action were to be taken on climate change initiatives it would only be done after there was a consensus of those in parliament. A year ago—just 12 months, 366 days ago—there was consensus. The Labor Party, the Liberal Party and the National Party all agreed that there would be no carbon tax.

So there was consensus just a short 12 months ago. There was unanimity in the Australian political scene. Everybody agreed there would be no carbon tax. People voted for Senator Feeney, Senator Ludwig and Senator Brown on the basis that, if the Labor Party were elected to government, there would be no carbon tax. Why did they think that? Because the leader of the Labor Party put her hand on her heart and said, 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.'

It was not as though she did not know she would need to get into bed with the Greens. We all knew before the last election that the Senate was going to change. We could not maintain in the Senate the enormous success we had had in Queensland. Six years ago the Liberal Party had a magnificent success in Queensland when we got an unheard of four out of the six Senate positions. We knew that could not continue. Everybody knew it could not continue. Ms Gillard knew that if she formed government after the election it would have to be with the imprimatur of the left wing of the Labor Party—that is, the Greens. So she knew that was coming, yet in spite of that she promised us there would not be a carbon tax. Wayne Swan, the deputy leader of the Labor Party, reinforced that. Ms Gillard said, 'If we're going to do anything about climate change, it will be on consensus.' I repeat myself to make the point again: there was a consensus 366 days ago, one year ago, and that consensus was no carbon tax.

I raise those matters only because Senator Ludwig has broadened this debate, in what seemed to be a government-initiated filibuster, by bringing in these extraneous matters. I want to return to the question I asked Senator Ludwig about the banana industry. We know how very essential that industry is to all the banana eaters around Australia. As Senator Ludwig rightly said, Cyclone Larry first of all and Cyclone Yasi most recently devastated the banana industry. The banana industry has shown resilience and is back in play now. Coming from the area, I can assure Australian banana eaters that the supply is coming good, that prices will fall and everyone will be happy again—except that to get the banana product from Tully way up in Far North Queensland to Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra requires huge transport trucks. Those huge transport trucks, as Senator Sterle will tell us and as Tony Sheldon from the Transport Workers Union will tell us, use a helluva lot of fuel—a helluva lot of diesel and petrol.

Under the Gillard government's carbon tax those long-distance heavy transport vehicles are going to be slugged. You can imagine what that will do to the banana industry and to the price of bananas for the ordinary Australian public. There will be no compensation that I am aware of. That is why Tony Sheldon from the Transport Workers Union is so violently opposed to this toxic carbon tax being introduced by the Labor Party and its leader, Ms Gillard.

I hope the members of parliament who are in this place due to support from the Transport Workers Union will do the things they were elected to do and the things that their union sponsored them into this place to do—that is, to oppose this toxic tax which will mean such devastation for the heavy transport industry and, by extension, the industry I am talking about at present, which is the North Queensland banana industry. Banana growers are going to be slugged by the carbon tax on fuel introduced by this government, which promised that it would not introduce it.

The banana industry also uses a lot of electricity in their storerooms, coldrooms and ripening areas. It is not even argued about now. Even the government's own figures say it is 10 per cent, but we know what the government's modelling is like. More and more we are suspicious of modelling done by this government. The New South Wales government says that electricity prices will go up more like 15 to 20 per cent. That modelling is more believable because it is was done by independent economic analysts. That brings me back to the question I asked and the amendment we are dealing with: what impact will the Carbon Farming Initiative have—in a positive way, hopefully—on ameliorating the huge additional cost the banana industry is going to have to meet as a result of Gillard's carbon tax?

I have been distracted by Senator Ludwig's broadening of the debate, his filibuster. I did want to ask about the sugar industry as well, which is also very important in the north, but I have run out of time to do that. I would like to repeat my question: what tangible financial results will this particular carbon farming initiative give to the banana industry to help ameliorate some—a very small part, I would think—of the impact of the carbon tax on that industry?