Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

I seek leave to move a motion of censure in the following terms, 'That this Senate censure the Labor-Green alliance's unprincipled use of their numbers to stifle debate that involves the national interest.'

Leave not granted.

I move:

  That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate moving a motion to provide for the consideration of a matter, namely a motion to give precedence to a motion of censure.

Five out of six senators from each state of the Commonwealth of Australia were elected at the last election on a promise of no carbon tax. Two out of two senators for each of the territories were elected on a promise of no carbon tax. One hundred and forty-eight members out of the 150 House of Representatives members were elected on a promise of no carbon tax.

So today the Australian people are quite rightly asking: why is it that the carbon tax legislation has been carried through the House of Representatives? There is nobody in Australia who believes that Ms Gillard would be the Prime Minister of this great nation if she had said there would be a carbon tax under a government she led. With six days to go before the last election, with the polls indicating a very, very close result, Ms Gillard and the Labor Party collectively stared down the camera lens and said to the Australian people, broadcast into their living rooms through the mechanism of a television, that there would be no carbon tax.

They have betrayed the Australian people. They have deceived the Australian people. When we said at the last election that you could not trust Labor on this, they got out their hapless Deputy Leader, Mr Swan, who said we were being hysterical. Today we know we were historical, because history has recorded that Labor has done exactly that which we predicted. What is the saying: Oh, what tangled webs we weave when we set out to deceive? That is what Labor have got themselves into. Having deceived the Australian electorate, they are now entangling themselves more and more in the corruption of the democratic process in this country. That is why they cannot accept any debate on this matter. That is why they want to stifle and gag debate.

We also have the Australian Greens, those great champions of freedom of speech—except when it attacks the Greens. Then we will have an inquiry into the media and they will have an inquiry into whatever else. Senator Brown could not even defend the Greens' position. That is why—possibly in a disorderly manner, Mr Deputy President—I said to the Leader of the Australian Greens that the tie he is wearing today is very apt, except that it should have been on his back, because that yellow stripe of cowardice is what the Greens have displayed today by not being willing to justify on the public record why they have moved the gag on a matter that is so important.

Let us not forget the carbon issue was sold to the Australian people originally as the 'greatest moral challenge of our time'. It now seems the 'greatest moral challenge of our time' somehow allows the greatest deceit of our time; the greatest, unprincipled and unprecedented gagging of debate in this Senate somehow is allowed. The simple fact is the Labor Party can twist and turn as much as it likes, but members know that the only reason that they are in government, albeit by their fingernails, is that they promised there would be no carbon tax—something that they are now trying to ram through this place in such an unprincipled manner that they would gag debate. They have done so twice already today.

If the carbon tax is such a great policy and initiative, why did not Labor say that during the last election? What was their difficulty in saying to the people of Australia: 'This is a great idea and we will implement it. We will do it.' They said the exact opposite. Confronted with their deception of the Australian electorate, they are compounding their unprincipled behaviour by seeking to gag every single debate in relation to this matter. We will not stand for it. We will, as a coalition, stand up for the Australian people. We will give expression to their voice as they want it heard, unlike what Labor and the Greens did in cutting out all those submissions to the Joint Select Committee on Australia's Clean Energy Future Legislation. (Time expired)