Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Hansard source

I wish to contribute to the series of debates this morning and to this one in particular on exempting the Business Names Registration Bill 2011 and related bills from the cut-off. As our leader in the Senate, Senator Abetz, has said, we will be supporting that. It is a bill that is relatively straightforward and can run the passage of debate in this place without the normal cut-off procedures. It is so different to the cut-off for the other bills that have been debated this morning.

I call upon members of the Greens political party to explain why all of Senator Bob Brown's very pious and very principled speeches over the whole of his parliamentary career against guillotining debate and gagging individual senators has suddenly changed. Why is it that Senator Brown—who, for as long as he has been in this chamber, has got up and wasted the time of the Senate by calling votes on motions that he knows have no chance of passing—has spent hours in this Senate railing against the guillotine? Why has he spent literally hours in this Senate arguing against the gagging of individual senators wishing to speak on any bill? But on a bill as important as the carbon tax legislation—which will change the way of life for all Australians; which will add to their cost of living; and which makes things, particularly for those of us who live in rural and regional and remote Australia, even more expensive—why has he now abandoned his former principled opposition to guillotines and gags and gone along with his mates in the Labor Party?

I think that Senator Brown's supporters—those many people who I think are misguided, but there you are, they are there—have always thought Senator Brown was worth a vote because he believed in parliamentary democracy. He believed that every person had the right to have their say. He believed that this chamber and this parliament was a place where the views of Australians could be put without restriction. But what has happened today? So far this morning, Senator Brown has led his little band of senators in guillotining debate on no less than three occasions in a couple of hours. Some of Senator Brown's supporters may well say: 'That's not why we voted for you. We voted for you because you've always portrayed yourself as the upholder of parliamentary democracy.' Those of us who sit in the chamber know that is completely wrong. But Senator Brown has been able to hoodwink many people who have voted for him over many years into believing that he does believe in parliamentary democracy and that he does believe that matters should be fully debated.

Before the last election the Prime Minister put her hand and on her heart and said solemnly to the Australian people on two occasions at least, 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.' How can you trust anything that this Prime Minister might ever say today, tomorrow or at any time in the future, when she has clearly, as result of the vote today in the other place, abandoned that solemn promise?

Some would say the Prime Minister is a liar. I would not say that because I know it is unparliamentary. But what I would say is that this is a policy and this is a principle based on a lie. If the Prime Minister thinks that it is genuine, she should do the honourable thing—although we understand she is incapable of honourable things as a result of this debate—and go back to the people of Australia and say: 'I did promise you this. I have now changed my mind because I wanted to stay Prime Minister and the only way I could do that was if I got the Greens on side, and they wanted me to do this. So I've changed my mind. But as a democrat, I will put back to the Australian people my change of mind. I promised you 12 months ago there would be no carbon tax but now I want a carbon tax, so I am going to ask the Australian if they support that.'

You would not have to be Einstein to understand that the Australian people do not want a carbon tax. You do not always believe opinion polls but they cannot be that wrong. More than 50 per cent of the Australian people clearly oppose the carbon tax. In fact, at the last federal election there were 150 candidates in the House of Representatives. They all stood for election. They confronted their electors and said: 'We want you to vote for us. These are the policies we stand upon.' What was the policy that 148 members of the lower house supported? It was that there would be no carbon tax, and please vote for them. So all the people in those 148 electorates around Australia said, 'I can vote for Mr Perrett because he is not going to support a carbon tax; I can vote for Kirsten Livermore in the electorate of Capricornia in Central Queensland because she is going to vote against a carbon tax.' Kirsten Livermore, the member for Capricornia, actually said before the election, as did her leader, 'There will be no carbon tax.' The electorate of Capricornia in Central Queensland incorporates Rockhampton and mining towns such as Moranbah, Dysart and Middlemount—towns that produce Australia's wealth, that supply employment to the people of Central Queensland. The industry in those towns gives people who live in the area good wages, allowing them to build new homes down at Emu Park on the Yeppoon-Capricorn Coast. All those people said: 'We can vote for Kirsten Livermore because she is going to oppose the carbon tax. We do not want the carbon tax because we know what it will do to our jobs, we know what it will do to our pay packets and we know what it will do to the mortgage that we have to pay on the new home that we have just built down at Emu Park.' So they voted for Kirsten Livermore, confident in the fact that there would be no carbon tax in this term of parliament. What has happened today? Kirsten Livermore and the very principled Mr Perrett have breached that promise to their electorate and voted for a carbon tax that they promised we would not have.

How can you believe anything Prime Minister Gillard would ever say? How can you believe anything anyone in the Labor Party would ever say? I challenge Senator Furner, Senator Ludwig, Senator McLucas and Senator Moore—the senators from Queensland elected at the previous election—to explain to the people of Queensland why they promised just a year ago that, if elected, they would not introduce a carbon tax. I ask them to come into this chamber and tell the Senate why they went to the last election and promised there would be no carbon tax, and today they are part of a party that has voted for it in the House—and I am sure that in a few weeks they will be part of a party that will vote for the carbon tax in the Senate. They themselves will vote for it.

I would like Senator McLucas, who sometimes comes from the north, where I come from, to get up and explain to the people of Cairns, Townsville, Mackay, Rockhampton, Moranbah, Dysart and Mount Isa why she went to the last election promising that she would not impose a carbon tax on them. I want her to come into this chamber and explain now why she has gypped those people, why she has completely broken her promise and done something quite contrary to what she promised she would do. It is important that Senator McLucas does that, because she knows that this carbon tax will add even more to the cost of living of people in those towns that I have just mentioned because we are all going to pay more for fuel. When you pay more for fuel you pay more for transport. You do not have to be Einstein to work out that the further you live from the capital cities and the further you live from the major ports, the higher the transport costs. Costs in the electorate that Senator McLucas claims to represent in the north are going to increase quite substantially.

A lot of people still think air conditioning is a luxury. In the north where I come from—along with Senator McLucas, Mr Snowdon and Senator Crossin—air conditioning is no longer a luxury. It is an essential part of life. But the cost of air conditioning will become prohibitive. Many pensioners will have to turn off their air conditioners and try and live through the heat of a northern summer without that support because they will simply not be able to afford the electricity bills that will increase substantially as a result of this carbon tax being imposed by a Labor Party that promised it would never be imposed. This is a very serious matter. People will die without air conditioning. I can guarantee you that there will be pensioners and people on limited incomes in the north who will not be able to afford to turn on their air conditioners once this carbon tax comes into place. I want Senator McLucas and Senator Crossin to come into this chamber and explain to me why they are putting these people at that risk.

Of all the senators that the Labor-Greens government comprises at the moment, Senator Waters, who I see has just come into the chamber, is the only one that can hold her head up high. I concede that Senator Waters did at least have the honesty and courage to go to the last election and say, 'Elect me and I will vote for a carbon tax,' because that has been the Greens policy, wrong though it is. At least she was honest about it. But the other people that the Labor-Green government comprises at the moment are completely dishonest because they have abrogated their duties and their honour to their electorates.

As senators will know, there are not many Labor members from Queensland in the lower house. There are not that many Labor senators from Queensland either. The people of Queensland have long since worked out that Labor cannot manage money. They cannot be trusted. What further evidence do they ever need than what has happened in the lower house today? To those few Queensland Labor members who are left, I say to them: guys, your days are numbered. You had the opportunity today to stand by your promise. You had the opportunity today to stand by the people of Queensland, the people who elected you to this parliament.

The people of Queensland—and I can talk about Queensland; I am a senator for Queensland—clearly do not want a carbon tax. Mr Swan, the Deputy Leader of the Labor Party, promised everyone before the last election that there would be no carbon tax. In fact, when Tony Abbott, the Leader of the Liberal Party, said, 'Elect Labor and you will get a carbon tax,' Mr Swan said of Mr Abbott: 'He is being hysterical. There will be no carbon tax. Our leader has said it. I as deputy leader say it. There will be no carbon tax under a future Labor government.' This is Mr Wayne Swan. He has already lost his seat of Lilley once because of his arrogance—the way he treated his electorate with disdain, the way he completely ignored their wishes and spent his time floating around Australia doing whatever Labor members of parliament do. He did not look after his electorate of Lilley, and they voted him out. I can assure Mr Swan that at an election this year, next year or the year after: brother, you will not be there. It happened once before that his arrogance was understood by his electorate, and they got rid of him. This time they will not forget. I can guarantee that.

And that goes for the other Queensland Labor members of parliament. I cannot remember them all, although it is not hard since there are so few in Queensland: Mr Emerson and Ms Livermore—and Mr Perrett, whom we cannot forget. I think that is about it. None of the others reach the radar screen. None of them will be there. In fact, opinion polls conducted by the Courier Mail showed that an election held anywhere in the near future would result in only one member of the Labor Party being elected in Queensland. That would be Mr Rudd, the past and future leader. A lot of the Labor Party backbenchers are now looking at their own futures, looking at their own pension entitlements, looking at the avalanche of voter anger coming their way. They are thinking that Mr Rudd, although they got rid of him a year or so ago, is not looking so bad after all.

So I predict that Mr Rudd will be back as Labor leader. But do not take any notice of my prediction. Some of the Labor members also predict that Mr Rudd will be back as leader. And those who protest the most loudly against that are most likely the ones who will be supporting him. That is fortunate, because at least there would be a Queensland Labor member in parliament. On recent opinions polls, Mr Rudd is the only Queensland Labor member who would be left in parliament. And something like that has happened before.