Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Education) Share this | Hansard source

That is saying something. We emit 1.4 per cent of the world's emissions, but we are going to have this whacking great tax that will not change the climate one little bit. No amount of debate—I do not care how many hours of debate we listen to in the other chamber and in this place—can take away from the fact that this piece of legislation is not going to change the climate one little bit. The government says, 'Oh, we're going to compensate,' because we on this side of the chamber are giving the Australian people facts. We are not scaremongering when we tell them exactly how this is going to hit their hip pocket. Electricity, fuel, transport—it is going to hit their hip pocket, there are no two ways about it. As my good colleague and leader, Senator Joyce, says, it is going to come at you out of the shopping trolley and it is going to come at you out of the power point. The Australian people understand that the costs will be passed on. And the government admit that, because they have put in place a compensation package. By the very fact that they have put a compensation package in place, they have admitted that those companies will pass the costs on. How is it actually going to change the behaviour of those companies, which is what the government are trying to do, if they are going to pass the costs on and not bear the cost burden?

The compensation is very interesting, because guess what, colleagues? It is not ongoing. It is not going to go on forever into the future. It is not going to be rolling compensation that goes on for decades. This carbon tax is going to go on and on and on, which means the costs are going to go on and on and on. So the compensation in its theoretical form, from the other side of this chamber, is going to be very short lived. What is even more astounding—I should not actually be astounded by this, colleagues; we should not be at all surprised—is that the government have done part of their compensation as a one-off, upfront, lump sum payment before the commencement of the carbon pricing scheme. This advance payment is designed to cover a period of six to 18 months, depending on the type of welfare payment that a person is receiving.

Does this government learn nothing? A lump sum payment—let me see, colleagues. Let us go back to—oh, I don't know—maybe the $900 payment that went out from the government during the global financial crisis. What did we see then but a splash of activity, and the feedback coming from clubs and shops—for example, places selling plasma TVs—was that their profits went through the roof. Does the government really think that giving a one-off payment to tide people over for the next 18 months is really the smartest thing to do? Does it think that is a really clever way of dealing with compensation? The more important thing is that it is not ongoing, and under this government the carbon tax will be—and that is the very difference.

The impact on the regions is going to be enormous. While the government keeps saying, 'Agriculture is not included,' we know that down the track, when there is a review, there is capacity for agriculture to be included. This is not going off into the never-never of 'agriculture is going to be out forever'. It is simply not true. Putting that to one side, that is a separate issue anyway, because even if agricultural emissions are excluded, farmers are still going to bear all of those associated costs—fuel, transport, electricity, fertiliser. Farmers are going to get hit harder than those in so many other parts of our economy, much harder. What is extraordinary is that this government thinks that is okay.

Farmers are at the bottom of the food chain, and so often we have absolutely nowhere to pass costs on. But this government thinks that is fine. This government thinks it is fine for regional communities to be harder hit than anywhere else. This government thinks it is fine for farmers to bear the brunt financially of a whacking great new tax that is not going to change the climate one little bit. If I could come up with a better word for it, I would, but at the moment all I can come up with is 'stupid'. It is just stupid legislation from this government because it is not even going to achieve what the government is trying to achieve. The cost to farmers is going to be huge. Jock Laurie, the President of the National Farmers Federation, recently said:

Food processors are facing millions of dollars in higher costs as a result of the carbon tax, particularly through increased electricity prices, and many have said that the only way they can recoup this cost is to pass it on to their suppliers—our farmers.

That is precisely what is going to happen, colleagues. We have examples.

Under a carbon tax, the Murray Goulburn Co-operative's costs are going to go up over $5,000 per farmer, paid for by farmers. We are going to see rice farmers' costs, on average, increase around $10,000 a farm. The power increases are going to sit with our farmers. The power and gas bill for an average horticultural farm in the central west of New South Wales is going to go up to $50,000 a year. These are just tiny examples of the very real effect that this tax is going to have on people not only in our regional communities but right across the regions.

The end result: by 2020, what is going to happen? Our emissions are actually going to increase from around 578 million tonnes to 621 million tonnes. We are doing all of this, putting all of this pain on the Australian people, for an increase in global emissions. I am back to that word again, colleagues. It is stupid. It is simply stupid.

I and my colleagues on this side of the chamber will not give up. We have fought this fight for a long time, even back when we had the initial debate around the emissions trading scheme that the government wanted to bring in. I commend my colleagues on this side of the chamber for having the guts to stand up and say, 'This country does not want an emissions trading scheme.' Some of them are here in the chamber with me at the moment: Senator Joyce, Senator Bernardi, Senator Cash. There were so many of my colleagues on this side of the chamber who fought and fought to allow the Australian people to have their voice because they did not want an emissions trading scheme.

And now, today, we have this carbon tax legislation before us. To anyone listening out there, I can only say: please don't stop. Contact the Prime Minister, contact your local Labor member and contact the ministers. If you do not want this carbon tax, you tell them, and do not stop telling them. Let them know exactly what we think. We know what you think about it, people out in the Australian communities. You make sure you tell the Prime Minister of this country that you do not want a carbon tax.

I know that on this side of the chamber we will not step back one moment from trying everything we possibly can to ensure, under this government, that we do not have a carbon tax. But we can absolutely promise the Australian people that if the coalition is in government we will rescind this tax. There will be no carbon tax under a coalition government, and the reason we are so resolved about this is that we know it is wrong. We know the Australian people do not want it, and our job is to make sure we do the right thing by them. We know that this tax is not even going to do what the government intends it to do, and how stupid is that! It is a whacking new tax that is going to affect all Australian people and it is not going to change the climate one little bit.