Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

It is interesting, isn't it, when you see those opposite reading speeches delivered to them straight from the local propaganda unit in the other place? It is just the biggest scam that this nation has ever seen concocted. This scam started out as global warming. That did not work so then it became climate change. That did not work so now it has become clean energy. If we hang around long enough, it will be 'Saving the pets'. Who knows where this will end up? The question that everybody has on their lips is: by how much will this change the temperature of the globe? Of course, it will not do anything. It is a mere gesture. It is a platitude of excuses to cover up for a gesture that is going to make people poorer. We are allowing the Australian Taxation Office to be the arbitrary collector of the spare cash in everybody's house, via every power point in every corner of every room. That is what is being forced on the Australian people.

It is so absurd and so naive and deceitful to say, 'It's the 500 biggest polluters.' Do you think they are going to absorb the cost? Do you think that Macquarie Generationwill say, 'We'll absorb the costs or we'll shut down'? No; they will just push it off to the punter. They will push it off to the pensioner. They will push it up every street, into every weatherboard and every tile and brick. They are the ones who will pay the tax. They are the ones who will have to cough up the lolly to pay for this deceit of the Australian people as delivered by the Australian Labor Party when they went to the previous election and completely and utterly misrepresented what they were going to do.

Why are we doing this? Now we have this concocted, almost profane, type of approach to the Australian people. The debate has now been truncated in such a way as to get it through because Bob Brown has to go to Durban. Bob Brown is off to Durban. He is going surfing, so we all have to get this piece of legislation through. There will be the equivalent of about one minute per member of parliament for every piece of legislation that there is. This is where we have ended up and this is where the Australian people have ended up. But I can assure you: 'honour and homage, tribute tax and toll', as Tennyson would say. This is the honour and homage, tribute tax and toll to the Australian Greens.

Why are we doing this? There are so many things in this legislation that are so peculiar. By 2020, we will be sending $3.2 billion a year overseas, and it will end up in scams. It will end up in scams in the West African republic: 'If you would just send me your bank account details, I'll send you some carbon credits.' But, no, it does not end there. By 2050, so help me, $58 billion a year from Australia will be just wandering off into the ether, making the world cooler obviously. Think of the hips that would replace, the teeth that would fix, the pensioners that would pay for, the kids who could be lifted out of poverty and the Indigenous people we could help. But, no, we are just sending it off into the blue horizon, off into the haze.

The government say, 'We've got to fight climate change.' So I always refer to Professor John Christy, who is actually the lead scientist on the IPCC. He is actually an atmospheric scientist and he said, 'Yes, there is global warming, about one degree every hundred years.' There is absolutely nothing, in his words, that Australia can do about it. It is going to happen, so this is a gesture. Why are we doing this to our people? Why do we live with this absurd belief that currently carbon is free? Obviously the government must believe that there is no pricing mechanism on power. It is free. They just give it to you with your fuel and your groceries. You just walk out and they hand it to you. You do not have to pay for it.

But there is a pricing mechanism and there are a lot of people now who cannot afford it. So they say, 'We'll compensate you.' You only get compensated when you have been injured, and that is what is about to happen to the Australian people. They are about to be injured by a government that has deceived them, that has let them down and that is continually changing the metaphor and glosses it over so that global warming is now climate change and climate change is now clean energy. No matter what it is, it is a lemon. It is a multibillion-dollar lemon and it is something the Australian people will not forgive you for. We actually know what happens to you next. It is what happened to us with IR and it is going to happen to you with this fraud on the Australian people. You will pay. Have a look at the polls and ask why. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.