Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Hansard source

I speak on this motion to take note of the Select Committee on the Scrutiny of New Taxes interim report entitled, The carbon tax: economic pain for no environmental gain. This was a significant inquiry undertaken under the chairmanship of my colleague Senator Cormann, who spoke on this report the other day. What is noteworthy about this inquiry, before I turn to its findings, is that it is an inquiry that actually had the opportunity to undertake some real scrutiny of the carbon tax proposal. It actually had the opportunity to go into some real detail in looking at the carbon tax proposal. Uniquely, it took submissions from all comers and published submissions from all comers about the carbon tax proposal and travelled around Australia to hear from Australians of all walks of life with an interest in and concern about Labor's carbon tax proposal.

It stands in stark contrast to the next committee report listed for consideration, that of a committee that I had the pleasure of serving on. Although, it was not much of a pleasure because that was the joint select committee established to look purely at the government's carbon tax bills. In marked contrast to the committee that Senator Cormann chaired, we saw that committee have just three weeks to do its job—looking at more than 1,100 pages of legislation in 19 bills, which are being rammed through this parliament at present. We saw that committee try to undertake the mammoth task of scrutinising a sweeping change to the Australian economy. Of all the points in this debate that are argued over, I think the one that everybody around the chamber agrees on is that the carbon tax is a sweeping change. The government likes to claim it is a sweeping change, the Greens like to claim it is a sweeping change, the crossbenches acknowledge that it is a sweeping change, and the National Party and the Liberal Party certainly believe it is a sweeping change. Some think it is a change for the better and others think it is a change for the worse, but we all acknowledge and agree that it is a sweeping change—a fundamental change to our economy.

Such a fundamental change, you would have thought, warranted thorough and decent scrutiny, but no, it would seem that the proponents of the change want minimal scrutiny—the least amount of scrutiny possible. So they rammed through this three-week inquiry. There were six days for people to make submissions, with 4½ thousand submissions essentially ignored by the inquiry. They were rejected by Labor and the Greens using their majority on the committee to say, 'These aren't worthwhile submissions; we won't bother publishing them.' Hearings were held in the very diverse range of cities of Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra!