Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I will have to go home and Google 'true-up'. I have never heard that term before. This is a new world we are living in; we are truing up things. It sounds like 'chewing up'. The question that was clearly asked was, how do they calculate the regulator's reasonable estimate—what is the reasonable estimate? We have a very long procession of words without any semblance of an answer inside them. What we do know is that it is up for judicial review, because who needs a parliament anymore? We will just forget all about it.

I have another question. You can spend all night and all day going through these one after the other after the other. I grant that under this lunatic scheme the climate change authority makes its recommendation and then the minister, in his war against climate, accepts the recommendation. But it never goes through the parliament. This completely new tax does not have to go through both houses of parliament. It is just a regulatory instrument. There is no other tax in this nation that you can increase without having to go through the parliament, but this one you can. Things change. The only hope we have is the disallowance of a regulatory instrument. Then it goes to the default carbon pollution cap. The default carbon pollution cap is the carbon pollution cap of the previous flexible charge year minus 12 million. Why 12 million? I do not know. It is another number plucked out of the orifices of banality.

The problem with this default year—and this is the question, Minister—is that, if we disallow it, it goes to the default year minus 12 million. If it is disallowed again, it goes to the default year minus 12 million. There is no phase-out year. It will just keep going to the default year and there is nothing in the legislation about a phase-out year. It will go to the default year continuously until we have to turn out the lights in this place, until we are not allowed to breathe out anymore, until there is no carbon left in the economy. It is another one of these lunatic provisions in an extremely badly written bill. I will direct you explicitly to it. Go to part 2, section 18, page 31. What is the phase-out year? Where in this magnum opus is it actually explained to us what happens if we have a succession of default years, one after the other, because the Senate keeps on disallowing it? We will not have an economy; there will be nobody left here.