Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

It is indeed a pleasure to speak to a letter put to the Senate by Senator Fifield. It is true: there is a crisis of confidence throughout the business and consumer sector. I do not think there is any doubt about that. All the indi­cators demonstrate that there is crisis of confidence throughout the business and con­sumer sector. There is absolutely no question that the introduction of a carbon tax is a sig­nificant element in that crisis of confidence.

We have seen in recent weeks the complete crisis that runs through the manu­facturing sector at this moment. In fact, Mr Paul Howes, one of the four people respon­sible for choosing our Prime Minister—or deciding that the last one should be dethroned—said that Australia's manufactur­ing is in its deepest crisis since the Great Depression. If that is not an issue of crisis of confidence, I do not know what is. The published polls also talk about the crisis of consumer confidence and business confi­dence. In fact, in my home state of Tasmania confidence is the lowest I have seen it for a long, long time.

We see now the spectre of this country, under the governance of the Gillard govern­ment, being considered a global sovereign risk. We all know that finance is very mobile. It will pick its best point to go to. I have not heard since the early 1990s, when the Labor-Greens government came into power in Tasmania, the strength and the vehemence of concern being expressed by business and the community around the sovereign risk that relates to government. Not only do we have that crisis of confidence in Tasmania but, unfortunately for Australia, we now have it nationally. We have global financiers looking twice before they invest in this country because they are concerned about this country's sovereign risk.

We have seen the issues around this carbon tax that the government proposes to introduce providing considerable confidence concerns to industry. We know that indust­ries overseas are not going to be subjected to the globe's biggest carbon tax. This carbon tax is going to raise something on the order of $9 billion just in its first year. It is going to increase power prices by 10 per cent in the first year, and they will go up by more than that afterwards. It will increase gas prices by nine per cent just in the first year, and it will be more and more every year after that.

I do not know what has specifically been happening in other states, but in my home state of Tasmania we have had a 40 per cent increase in energy prices over the last two years. That is projected to increase another 20 per cent in the next 12 months. The government is going to impose a 10 per cent increase in energy prices over and above that. Tell me why there would not be a crisis of confidence. Tell me why there should not be any concern in the local community about the capacity of people to pay their power bills. Why is it that the elderly are staying in bed rather than paying their power bills, so that they can keep warm? Why is it that consumer confidence is so low? Why is it that business confidence is so low? It is because of the performance of this govern­ment and governments like this, particularly governments that are dependent upon the Greens to stay in power, such as the govern­ment in Tasmania.

That is why the economy is so soft. That is why manufacturing and consumers are so concerned that at a time when things are tough, particularly for manufacturing, the Gillard government is giving us an additional cost—a carbon tax that is applied across the economy, that trickles down right through the economy and will cost $9 billion a year. Yet the actual cost of abatement is less than $2 billion. Applying a $9 billion cost to the economy when the real cost of abatement is less than $2 billion does not make sense, and the community understands this. The business community certainly understands it. That is why it is saying it is concerned about investment and about the future of manu­facturing. And that is why Mr Paul Howes says that Australian manufacturing is in its deepest crisis since the Great Depression.

When manufacturing is in that sort of crisis, why would you add the additional burden of a carbon tax? It just does not make sense, but it reinforces the fact that this gov­ernment is so far out of touch. I was on King Island for a couple of days last week, talking to the community over there and hearing their scepticism about the promised impact of the carbon tax. The Prime Minister dropped in there on her way to Tasmania a few weeks ago. When confronted in the street she said, 'But the impact is less than one per cent.' She forgets that the impact in a remote regional community like King Island is actually magnified because of the addi­tional costs of living in that community. She forgets that the only way for those commun­ities to get on and off the island is to fly, and 30 per cent of the overhead costs of the airlines that service the island is for fuel.