Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Materiel) Share this | Hansard source

I would need a lot of persuasion, Senator, to vote for this legislation, and the more I see of its holes, its flaws and its defects, the less inclined I am to do it. But you might persuade me today by showing me that you have thought through the implications of these policies.

I can understand that those opposite might be in a quandary at the moment, because they have migrated so often through so many policies that, understandably, they could be slightly confused as to what their policy right now actually says. Senator Cameron has just told us that we should be supporting a price on carbon, that the right thing to do is to have a price on carbon. But Senator Cameron needs to remember that it was not very long ago that that was not the policy of the Australian Labor Party. Not long ago—within the space of the last couple of years—the policy of the Labor Party was that there should be an emissions trading scheme. This emissions trading scheme was dumped at the beginning of last year, in a move that the then Prime Minister has subsequently described as a mistake. The then position of the Labor government was that there should be no discussion about carbon pricing or emissions trading schemes for a period of three more years. Senator Cameron calls for courage on pricing carbon, but that was not the case 18 months ago, when the policy of the Labor government was: 'We shall not talk of this policy for a period of three years.'

Then we had the promise to have a people's assembly of 150 members that would sort the problem out for the government. That policy was so ridiculous that it collapsed under its own weight after a short period of time. Then the government said that, whatever it did, if re-elected it would not have a carbon price. 'There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead,' the Prime Minister notoriously said. Then she said that there would be no progress on carbon pricing until she had built a deep and abiding consensus through the Australian people—another policy that has fallen over. And today we have got yet another version—it must be iteration 5 or 6 from the government. It now wants a carbon price, leading to an emissions trading scheme in a few years time. So it is not surprising that the government cannot answer basic questions today about what it actually sees this new plan doing to people on disability pensions, carers and charitable and not-for-profit organisations, how it will deal with those people. There have been so many iterations of its policy that it is having trouble itself keeping up with what its latest version of its policy is.

The coalition senators in this debate have outlined the critical question before the Australian community. We have four million people in this country with disabilities and 2.6 million people who are caring for other people, usually family members. That is 6.6 million people for whom life is generally very difficult and for whom provision needs to be made. Almost without debate we know that all of these people will be affected by the higher prices which the carbon tax will lead to—the 10 per cent hike in electricity prices and the nine per cent hike in gas bills in the first year of this carbon tax and of course the escalating cost which people will have to deal with year after year as the carbon price increases with market movements. As that goes on, people of the kind we mention in this matter of public importance will be under greater pressure. They will need to be able to establish a basis on which to provide, as a carer, services to the person that they care for. They will need to have a capacity to survive when there are extra costs associated living with a disability in this country.

As this very legislation is being debated in the other place, it is reasonable to ask this question: 'What arrangements have the government made to deal with the extra costs that these most disadvantaged, most vulnerable Australians are going to have to face?' The answer resoundingly appears to be—on the strength of the debate so far—that they have not thought of what to do about those people. We have heard that there will be an increase equivalent to 1.7 per cent in the maximum rate of the pension, in the form of a clean energy supplement, for some people on disability support pensions and some people on carer payments. But we know that most people with a disability in Australia are not on disability support pensions and that a substantial number of carers do not receive carer payments. Those people will be meeting higher costs associated with the carbon tax, but there is no provision made here by the government to deal with those higher costs. It is reasonable to ask: 'What have you done to ensure that these people are able to face the future with some sense of security that their standard of living will not be eroded seriously by this new tax?'

I remind the government that whatever provisions it might make by way of increases or supplements to existing pension payments, inadequate as they must be because they cover only a minority of Australians in the categories we are talking about, the value of that provision will not last. The carbon tax and the carbon price will rise. As those things rise and people pay more to use services and goods that relate to the carbon tax, to which the carbon tax has a bearing, the more those people will find themselves unable to meet those higher costs. The carbon price depends on certain sorts of goods and services becoming more expensive because they relate to the use of carbon, and it follows that, as those costs rise, people will need compensation unless there are affordable alternatives that they can turn to. That is by no means clear at this point in time.

The other point made by coalition senators in this debate was, what provision is being made for voluntary organisations, particularly those supporting people with a disability—bodies like Disability Enterprises and organisations running day programs? What provision is being made for them to meet the higher costs of carbon pricing? For them, there is no compensation package whatsoever. As individuals, the people who make up such organisations might receive some form of compensation, but are we expecting that a householder who receives a certain number of dollars in compensation from the government's plan—the tax cuts that ministers were talking about today in question time—will carry that windfall, if there is one, over to the organisations for which they work and give the money to them to help those organisations with their higher costs through this more difficult period? If that is the case, then the government might like to tell us that. Senator Stephens is going to speak in this debate after me. She could let me know whether that will be the case. Where will these organisations, facing 10 per cent higher electricity costs in the first year alone, turn to deal with those higher costs?

I conclude by observing that the costs imposed on Australians through this carbon tax are not an isolated example of the policies of this government. The trend of this government and previous Labor government has been for policies to be rolled out and implemented, leading to a lower standard of living for Australians. Standards of living have been declining under successive Labor governments and the measures in the carbon tax will again reinforce that trend. It has happened in the first four years of this government and if the carbon tax, the mining tax and the other tax increases the government has imposed continue then we can see a further erosion in the standard of living of ordinary Australians. That is a fact that the government needs to face up to and is not yet doing.