Sean Edwards (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I also rise to take note of the answers given by Senator Wong in question time. I concur with Senator Carol Brown that climate change is indeed real. We can all go along with that. The question that we raise and continue to have unanswered—in fact, Senator Wong is like the Artful Dodger when it comes to answering this question—is whether the Gillard Labor government will release the modelling for the carbon tax. The answer is, 'We have released an unprecedented amount of information to do with it.' It is not a big ask. It is only, as outlined by the Labor Party, the single biggest tax reform that this country has ever undertaken, and we are not getting any scrutiny of it at all. There are independent people out there in the Australian business society who would like to have it scrutinised.

In Senate estimates we heard questions asked about when the model is going to be released. Again, the answer came back, 'When we think it might be fit to be released.' Is this another, 'Well, we will get to it soon'? Is it going to come before the next election? I do not know. All we hear from Senator Wong is, 'There is an enormous amount of information out there in the public domain.' What we do not need is another talkfest with voluminous amounts of information that do not accurately represent the financial modelling on which this government has based, punted and bet the economic future of this country's prosperity. The Productivity Commission has the model, but it is not in the Australian public domain. We want some transparency from the government on this one. We would like the people from Bloomberg to have it. They have got a couple of hundred of economists over there who might want to have a look at it and make some public comments. Why won't we give it to them? Instead, we are faced with a model that, on the government's own admission, has a decline in GDP in real terms from 2020 to 2050. What it is, I predict, is churn. It is just another bureaucracy churning it out, taking money from those who have it and generate it, putting it through a mill and distributing it as they see fit.

Senator Wong continues to avoid the question about whether she will give the opposition the opportunity to rightly scrutinise it under that good and solid Westminster system of government that keeps everyone accountable.