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

Perhaps they might like trying to swim, Senator Ryan, but I can assure you they prefer to fly if they can. But 30 per cent of the overhead costs of those airlines is fuel, which will go up by 10 per cent. The Prime Minister says that if a business puts up its prices by more than one per cent she will send the ACCC after them. Why wouldn't a business be concerned about having the ACCC banging on their door because their business costs have necessarily been driven up by more than one per cent? For those airlines with overhead costs of 30 per cent for fuel, a 10 per cent increase in the fuel price will put up their prices by three per cent. It is not difficult to do the mathematics. But Prime Minister Gillard says, 'If they go up by more than one per cent, we'll send the ACCC around to have a look at them to see what the circumstances are.'

Another small business that I am aware of in my hometown of Devonport is an alu­minium powder-coating business. They have done their numbers and their power price will go up by 10 per cent. They also use gas, which is going up by nine per cent. Their baseline costs will also go up by three per cent, coincidentally. So will that small alu­minium powder-coating business have the ACCC coming in to talk to them? What about the vegetable processor at Forth whose power bill is $600,000 a year? This will cost them an extra $60,000. But what will they get for that? What will be the impact on the environment for that $60,000? There is a vegetable processor down the road a little further whose power bill is $1 million a year, so that will be an extra $100,000 on top of their costs, just for the carbon tax. They also have a $1.4 million fertiliser bill but they have not been able to determine what the additional cost for the carbon tax will be because that information is not available to them, yet here we are starting to debate the legislation in the parliament this week.

There is another major vegetable proces­sor who is about to spend $17 million, albeit with some assistance from the Common­wealth and state governments. After having spent that $17 million to mitigate it, they will still have an annual bill of $1 million on top of their operational costs. We all know that that will most likely go back to the farmers. They cannot charge the supermarkets be­cause they will not bear the cost. I could give you a number of examples. There are dairy farmers who will pay $10,000, on average, per dairy farm and an additional $8,000 to $10,000 in costs coming back from the processor.

There is no doubt that there is a crisis of confidence. All of the economic indicators demonstrate that there is a crisis of con­fidence, and the carbon tax is playing a significant role in generating that crisis of confidence.