Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

The people of Australia do not want this carbon tax. The Prime Minister promised them before the last election that there would be no carbon tax. Now the Prime Minister wants to rush this bad carbon tax through the parliament, because she realises that the more time the parliament and the people of Australia have in which to talk about it—the more time they have in which to scrutinise it—the more unpopular this bad tax is likely to become.

History and the people of Australia will judge the Prime Minister harshly for the deceit inflicted on them before the last elect­ion. History and the Australian people will judge every single Labor Party member and senator harshly for supporting a tax which clearly is not in our national interest, which clearly is going to inflict a lot of harm on household budgets and on the economy without doing anything to help reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

The reason people are as opposed to this tax as they are is that they actually 'get it'. The government is speaking the truth when it says that we have been having a debate in this country for some time now about this whole concept of pricing carbon. The longer this debate has gone on, the more people have realised that there is absolutely no prospect of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions through a price on carbon in Australia if none of the other major emitters are going down that same path. To ask people in Australia to accept a price on carbon when China, the US, India and a whole range of other countries we compete with are not going down that path will just push up the cost of everything here in Australia. It will make us less competitive internationally, it will cost jobs and it will put our energy security at risk—all without doing anything to help reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

The people of Australia were entitled to believe, after three years of debate on this—between 2007 and 2010—that the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, had come to the same conclusion. We had a very intensive debate in the parliament and across Australia over the last three years. That debate was in the context of, and in the lead-up to, the so-called Copenhagen conference. At that time, people thought there was a prospect that countries around the world might reach agreement on an appropriately comprehen­sive global arrangement to price carbon. That did not happen. In this chamber we voted twice against the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme legislation proposed by the Rudd government. The Senate voted twice against that legislation, with coalition and Greens senators joining to defeat a piece of legisla­tion that was clearly seen by the Senate as inadequate. But what is on the table now is at least as inadequate, if not more inadequate, as what was on the table before.

After the debate that went on between 2007 and 2010, in the last parliament, we now know that Ms Gillard went to see Mr Rudd and said, 'Kill the CPRS; don't go ahead with it.' It is a matter of public record that the Prime Minister went to the last election promising that there would be 'no carbon tax under a government I lead'. We also know that the Prime Minister went to the last election saying that she would do everything she could to build community consensus around the proposition of pricing carbon. She clearly has given up on that. She clearly is trying to ram this legislation through not just this parliament but against the express wishes of the Australian people. After the election, when put under pressure by the Greens and in an effort to hold onto government by Senator Bob Brown's finger­nails, she went out in February and said there will now be a carbon tax. But she also said, 'I'm going to do everything I can to convince people that this is a good idea.' Guess what? The judgement is in, and people do not like it and do not want it. People understand that it will not do anything to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They understand that it will push up the cost of electricity, that it will push up the cost of everything, and that it will cost jobs and put Australia's economy under pressure for no good reason.

We were told back in February: 'Don't you worry. People might not like the carbon tax now but as soon as all the detail is out, as soon as people know about the compen­sation, as soon as people know about the transitional assistance, it will be okay and people will like it. Once people see the detail, people will like what they see.' Guess what? The detail was announced and people still did not like it. We were then told that the Prime Minister was going to wear out her shoe leather. The Prime Minister was going to walk up and down every main street of every town and convince people, one by one, that this carbon tax is a good idea, that this carbon tax is all Australia needs. After two weeks of that, the carbon tax was more unpopular than ever. Very quickly the Prime Minister gave up on that as well because she was confronted by real people on the streets of Australia and real people in the shopping centres of Australia who called it for what it was. We well remember the Prime Minister in a shopping centre in Queensland being confronted with the question: why did you lie to us? Why did you tell us before the last election that there would be no carbon tax only to turn around after the election and say that there will be one?

During that two weeks of meeting with real people who were telling her the truth, what the Prime Minister realised was that the worst thing the government could do would be to allow too much debate and too much scrutiny of this dud tax. I have been chairing the Senate Select Committee on the Scrutiny of New Taxes for the last 12 months or so. When we put on the agenda for the commit­tee an inquiry into a carbon tax, the Labor members of the committee said, 'How can you put that on for this committee, because there will be no carbon tax?' This was actually after the election. In hindsight that is quite funny. When my committee wanted to have a look at the carbon tax to be introdu­ced by the government, or at any other pricing mechanism on carbon or at an emiss­ions trading scheme, Labor members of the committee in September or October of last year said, 'How can you possibly put that on the agenda for this committee, because there won't be one?'

The detail was announced on 10 July and the legislation, a thousand pages of it, was released on 29 July, but through my committee we have only been able to scratch the surface. Treasury and Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency officials appeared before a number of hear­ings and were unable to answer a whole series of very important questions in relation to this very bad tax. This government does not want officials of the Treasury or of the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency to be exposed to too many quest­ions. The secretary of the climate change department, for example, was asked where the figure of 500 big polluters came from. He said, 'It won't be 500; it'll be way less than that.' He said that it would be about 400 or something like that, only to be told by the minister within three or four hours to correct his evidence, because the government's adve­rtising campaign was of course built around the proposition of 500 big polluters. Far be it from the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency to allow the accusation to stand that this was misleading advertising from the government, based on evidence from his own departmental secretary.

Treasury was not given time to properly model the carbon tax package that was actually announced and Treasury never actually assessed the impact of the carbon tax on jobs. We have been told by the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, that the carbon tax will have no impact on jobs, and he relied on Treasury modelling to make that assertion. But, when you look at it, Treasury never assessed the impact on jobs at all. Treasury assumed that there would be no impact on jobs. They included a rule in the model to say there will be no impact on jobs and then the Treasurer dishonestly went out and said, 'Look at this Treasury modelling, it shows there will be in no impact on jobs.' There is lie after lie after lie in that Treasury model­ling and, of course, we have had people appear before us—very credible economic modellers like Frontier Economics—who have said quite bluntly that the assumptions that are used by Treasury in their modelling, presumably at the direction of the govern­ment, are not plausible, are not realistic and are not real-world assumptions. The impact of that is that the Treasury modelling severely underestimates the impacts that the carbon tax will have on the cost of living, on the economy and on jobs and severely overe­stimates the impact that it will have on reducing emissions. Now the truth of the matter is that, even on the government's own figures, it is a pretty bad tax because elect­ricity is going to go up by 10 per cent in year one and go up and up after that as the carbon tax continues to go up. Even on the govern­ment's own figures, emissions in Australia are not going to go down; emissions in Australia are going to continue to go up from about 578 million tonnes to about 621 million tonnes.

So then the government says, 'Oh, but emissions are going to be lower than they otherwise would have been'—interesting, so where are those emissions going to go? Those emissions are going to go to manu­facturing businesses in China, India and the US and all the other places that manufact­uring businesses in Australia compete with, but the businesses in those countries will not be facing that same cost. As we make overseas manufacturers more competitive and help them take market share away from equivalent businesses here in Australia, all we will be doing is shifting emissions overseas, arguably into places where envir­onmental standards are lower and where emissions are going to be higher. All we will be doing is imposing a sacrifice on people here in Australia without actually making any difference to the environment.

We are told that the carbon tax is going to stop the floods, stop the droughts, stop sea levels rising and save the kelp beds off the coast of Tasmania. If only we had known that a carbon tax could fix all of those ills! We should have come up with it a long time ago. But, guess what: I do not believe that a carbon tax will save the kelp beds off the coast of Tasmania; I do not believe that a carbon tax will stop the droughts; I do not believe that a carbon tax will stop the floods; and I do not believe that a carbon tax will have any impact on rising sea levels. A carbon tax which will shift emissions overseas, a carbon tax which will reduce emissions in Australia in a way that will increase them by arguably more in other parts of the world, is not effective action on climate change; it is a deliberate act of economic self-harm.

This is exactly the point that the Australian people understand. The Australian people understand that not only were they lied to before the last election but they are still being lied to now. They are being asked to believe that somehow putting on a $23 a tonne tax on carbon is going to stop sea levels rising. They are being asked to believe that this $23 a tonne tax on carbon, which is going to push up the cost of their electricity, is somehow going to save the kelp beds off the coast of Tasmania. Well, guess what: it will not. It will hurt people's hip pocket, it will increase cost-of-living pressures and it will put jobs at risk, but it will not save the kelp beds off the coast of Tasmania to the extent that they are actually at risk.

I look at this whole issue and wonder. If the Prime Minister was really committed to pricing carbon, if the Prime Minister was really committed to a carbon tax and if she really thought it was such a good idea, why didn't she tell the Australian people before the last election? Why did she stop trying to build a community consensus? Why did she stop wearing out her shoe leather? Why does she now want to ram it through this parliament without having taken this proposal for significant economic change to an election so that the Australian people could pass judgment? The reason is this Prime Minister knows that the Australian people do not want it and that, given an opportunity to pass judgment, they would chuck her out of office. That is why she is trying to rush this through. That is why she never told the Australian people the truth before the last election. That is why she did not even try to build community consensus. This Prime Minister has divided Australia in her incredibly irresponsible and reckless push to impose a carbon tax. She has divided Australia rather than build community consensus. She has united a large part of Australia against this government in her attempt to ram through this carbon tax.

The single reason why the government are moving this motion here today is they do not want on the committees with the job of scru­tinising these sorts of pieces of legislation senators who will ask the hard questions, because they do not have the answers. Incidentally, when I look at the composition of this committee in this motion, I see a significant outrage as far as the Senate's representation on it is concerned. It is funny that from the House of Representatives there is to be representation from the opposition, from the government and from the Greens and there is provision for one non-aligned member to be appointed to the committee, which is to consist of 14 members—so four members to be nominated by the government from the House of Representatives, three members to be nominated by the opposition from the House of Representatives and one Greens member and one non-aligned member to be nominated. But look at who is in this motion to represent the Senate. From the Senate all we get are two senators from the government, two senators from the oppo­sition and one Greens senator. What about Senator Xenophon and Senator Madigan? There is no representative from the cross­bench. Both Senator Xenophon and Senator Madigan have taken a very close interest in this carbon tax issue. Senator Xenophon has done so at great personal expense on occasions. Senator Madigan is a very hard­working and very active member of the Senate Select Committee on the Scrutiny of New Taxes. He happens to be the true labour representative of working families across Australia—the only labour representative of working families across Australia in this chamber. The Australian Labor Party has sold out working families across Australia. But because Senator John Madigan, who represents the DLP in this chamber, does not agree with the Australian Labor Party on its push for a carbon tax, he has been comple­tely ignored. He has been cast aside. The government effectively has three senators represented on this committee; the opposit­ion has two; and the crossbench, consisting of Senator Xenophon and Senator Madigan, has been completely ignored.

The carbon tax is a bad tax. The carbon tax is a tax which we were promised we would not have. The people of Australia do not want this tax. The people of Australia were promised they would not get this tax. The people of Australia will judge the Prime Minister harshly at the next election for having lied to them at the last election. The people of Australia will judge every single Labor member and senator in this parliament harshly at the next election because they are all part of this deception. Instead of doing the right thing and allowing proper scrutiny of this legislation to proceed, instead of doing the right thing and taking it to an election after it is properly scrutinised, they want to ram a bad piece of legislation through this chamber, which they well know the Austra­lian people do not want, and the Australian Labor Party stand condemned for it.