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

The Australian Labor Party are deeply embarrassed by this carbon tax which was imposed on them by the Greens political party. It is true that in the last parliament between 2007 and 2010 when the current foreign minister, Mr Rudd, was Prime Minister we did have a series of parliamentary committees scrutinising what was then the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. I pause here for a moment to observe that at least the former Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, was not worried about parliamentary scrutiny. But what was the conclusion of that process of parliamentary scrutiny? What did the Senate do at the end of that parliamentary scrutiny? We voted the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme down because the Senate realised that the Rudd government's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme was all economic pain for no environmental gain.

The Australian people were entitled to believe that the current Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, in 2010 had reached the same conclusion. Why otherwise would she have gone to Mr Rudd and said, 'Let's kill this Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme'? Why otherwise would she have looked down the barrel of that camera and said, 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead'? After all the debate in this parliament over the last three years, given the failure of Copenhagen, given that there is no appropriately comprehensive global agreement, given that putting a price on carbon in Australia when China, the US, India and others are not will shift emissions, shift jobs and shift manufacturing to other parts of the world, people were entitled to believe that the current Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, had realised that that was not effective action on climate change but just an irresponsible and reckless act of economic self-harm. So when the Prime Minister changed her mind after the prodding by Senator Brown, after she went into the courtyard on 24 February 2011 and announced that there would be a carbon tax, we were told, 'Don't you worry. You are going to like it once you see the detail.' But guess what: once they saw the detail the Australian people still did not like it. Then she was going to wear out her shoe leather. The more she wore out her shoe leather the less people liked it.

After all the inquiries that we have had, I asked some basic questions of Senator Wong last week and earlier this week. Remember the question that goes to the core of this whole issue. I asked Senator Wong, 'What will be the net reduction in global emissions as a result of a carbon tax here in Australia?' She was unable to answer. The reason she was unable to answer is that she does not know what increases in emissions this Australian carbon tax would cause in other parts of the world as a result of making overseas manufacturers more competitive than manufacturers here in Australia, as a result of having overseas emitters who are less environmentally efficient than the equivalent businesses in Australia take market share away from businesses here in Australia. We now have revelations that even the climate change department itself is about to rent headquarters built with Chinese aluminium, which is cheaper, which just happens to be produced through a more emissions intensive process. It is already starting.

This government has got no answers. This is a government which tells us this carbon tax will not have any impact on jobs, yet when you look at the fine detail it looks like they have included that as an assumption in the Treasury modelling. But they continue to dishonestly claim that this carbon tax will not have any impact on jobs. These are the sorts of issues that the Senate committee process has a responsibility to the Australian people to properly explore and properly scrutinise. We should not send this to this sham inquiry which Senator Birmingham and I are both on, which will have three hearings at present, two in Canberra and one in Melbourne, not a single meeting in Western Australia or other parts of Australia where there are particular issues. It is one week for submissions, three or four days for hearings and a report by 7 October. This is 1,100 pages of legislation, 19 bills—on something we were promised we would not get.

If the Senate supports the recommendation from the Selection of Bills Committee we would be abrogating our responsibility to apply proper scrutiny to a fundamental economic change that this government wants to impose on the Australian people. Given the government's bad track record when it comes to implementing change, this Senate should make it its business to apply proper scrutiny. (Time expired)