David Johnston (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Jobs and Workplace Relations (Senator Evans) to a question without notice asked by Senator Johnston today relating to a proposed carbon tax and the Australian Defence Force fuel costs.

In so doing, I want to highlight that the Australian Defence Force in 2009-10 spent about $290 million on fuel and emitted about 1.7 million tonnes of carbon. The complete fraud of this carbon tax is highlighted by the fact that this government does not even know of that figure, which is 68 times the 25,000-tonne threshold. The government has no policy and is completely oblivious to the numbers that I have just mentioned.

This carbon tax is the greatest betrayal of Australians in our political history. It emanates from a lie, and we all know the words off by heart. Both the Prime Minister and the Treasurer of the Gillard government said that there would be no carbon tax. It was an unqualified promise. It was unequivocal. It was the clearest promise, compact and contract with the Australian voting public that one could ever wish to remember. The question that flows from that promise is: why did she say we would not do it? Why did she say, 'No, no, no, we are not having a carbon tax'? Could it be because it will remove from the Australian economy $9 billion every year? Could it be because everybody—rain, hail or shine; pensioner, new home buyer or student—will get a 10 per cent hike in their electricity bill in the very first year alone? Could it be because there is a nine per cent hike in everybody's gas bill? Could it be because higher marginal tax rates and low- and middle-income earners will be hit for six and there will be a $4.3 billion hit on the budget bottom line? Could it be because the trillion-dollar cost to the economy over the coming decades will send hundreds of billions of hard-won Australian dollars overseas in the pursuit of these crazy carbon credits and $3.5 billion will be spent each year on foreign carbon credits whilst this government pursues, in line with all of its failed policies, this crazy policy?

Small business will be hit for six. Electricity utilities in each state, and particularly the manufacturing heartland of our country in Victoria, will be hit for six. The mining industry will be not only ravaged and savaged in Western Australia and Queensland by this deceptive and lazy government with a mining tax but also copping it in the neck with a carbon tax. As I have said, manufacturing industry will be completely annihilated by this tax, and I have not even begun to talk about the long-term cost of living for ordinary Australians. But they do not care.

In Western Australia, in 2015 the owner of every truck over 4.5 tonnes is going to have pay up the carbon tax. In a state the size and dimension of ours, this is a cyanide capsule for our economy. It is an absolute shocking disgrace that this government stands up and says, 'This is in the national interest.' This is a government that is bringing us the NBN at $50 billion with no cost-benefit analysis. It is going to be late and it is probably going to cost double that. This is a government that has given us school halls and pink batts. Of course, we are repairing the damage from the mismanagement and the negligence of the pink batts program to the tune of a billion dollars. This is a government that says that a carbon tax will be in the national interest. And who can forget the stirring performances of the citizens assembly, the cash-for-clunkers scheme and the digital set-top boxes that you could buy at Harvey Norman? This is the most incompetent government we have ever been saddled with. This tax will be forever writ large on the tombstone of this government when we finally and surely get rid of it. (Time expired)