Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

What I said in this place is that anyone who is stupid enough to get ahead of the rest of the world and destroy this economy deserves to be politically removed themselves. Indeed, I have some other quotes here. This one is from Wayne Swan, the Treasurer, in relation to the carbon tax just before the 2010 election:

We have made our position very clear. We have ruled it out.

And again:

… what we rejected is this hysterical allegation that somehow we are moving towards a carbon tax from the Liberals in their advertising. We certainly reject that.

That is from the Treasurer just prior to the election. Every one of those on the other side was elected on the back of a lie. The member for Corangamite was elected on the back of a lie, but he did not even have the intestinal fortitude to get in and explain himself. At least those on the other side have stood up to try to justify the unjustifiable with this absolutely toxic tax.

There are two ways of addressing this issue. One is the direct action plan outlined by the Leader of the Opposition. The Greens and the Labor Party can argue at the margins about its effectiveness, but we believe it is going to work and we believe that it is affordable. What is not in dispute, and has not been in dispute since this legislation was introduced, is that all this toxic tax will do is cost our kids jobs. It will cost jobs now and it will cost jobs in the future, and it will do so on the back of absolutely no identifiable environmental outcome. That is the most galling part of this; there is no identifiable environmental outcome for this. The only outcome is the loss of jobs. The only outcome is that every single Labor senator was elected on the back of a lie, every single Labor member of parliament in the other place was elected on the back of a lie, and the Australian community, when given the opportunity, will make absolutely sure that they are— (Time expired)