Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

Oh, how a once proud Labor Party has become a pathetic shadow of its former self. Today we are witnessing again the Australian Labor Party coming into this chamber to do the Greens' bidding. Yesterday the first and most urgent item on the government's agenda was to remove a coalition senator from the chairmanship of a committee and to replace that very good senator with a Greens senator who has only been here for five minutes. It was Senator Ludwig, Manager of Government Business in the Senate, who moved the motion, doing the Greens' dirty work. Here he is again today and his first item of business is to bring to fruition that which the Australian Greens bragged about on their website before the Senate was even told what was planned in relation to the truncating of the debate on the clean energy bills.

I refer to the Greens website, which told us that there was going to be an historic vote. It said:

If you are near Canberra next Tuesday, please come to the Senate to see the historic carbon price package pass into law.

We were able to access that well before—indeed, hours before—Senator Ludwig rang Senator Fifield to tell him what the Labor Party had in mind. It is quite clear that the Greens and GetUp! developed their strategy, put it up on their website and then told the hapless Manager of Government Business in the Senate, 'You will now ring the opposition and tell them that this is what is going to happen,' and, as if he were Senator Brown's ventriloquist doll, that is exactly what Senator Ludwig did. I was surprised at Senator Ludwig's speech this morning because I could have sworn it was Senator Brown speaking, but Senator Brown did not move his lips at all. An expert ventriloquist is our Senator Brown because he has a willing doll in Senator Ludwig, who is willing to mouth that which Senator Brown wishes to put to the Senate. It is interesting that it is always the Labor Party doing their dirty work. It is never the Greens actually getting up and asking, 'We want to pull a stunt on Tuesday; therefore, can we bring the vote forward?' No, they do it under the guise of the Australian Labor Party and the Manager of Government Business in the Senate, which highlights yet again that they are in an alliance and therefore not deserving of the chairmanship of a committee, which they got just the other day.

One wonders what the Greens, with arrogance and hubris oozing out of every pore of their collective body, see the role of the Senate as being. They put up on their website what is going to happen. Yesterday it was the chairmanship of a committee. Today it is a vote of the Senate in relation to truncating what the Australian Labor Party and the Greens boast to be the most important piece of legislation ever to come before this parliament. When they say it is historic, I think they are right. As we know, the books of history are littered with events good and bad. This will be an historic event which will go down on the bad side of the ledger. History will record that the Australian people were deceived, that a leader of the Australian Labor Party and a deputy leader of the Australian Labor Party went to the electorate saying there would be no carbon tax. Every single Labor member and senator in this place and the other place was elected on a promise of no carbon tax, as was every one of the coalition members and senators. So well over 90 per cent of parliamentarians were elected on a no-carbon-tax policy. Yet, somehow, it is going to get through against the express promise of all those parliamentarians to the Australian people. This gross deceit is now dressed up as being historic.

The Australian Greens might boast and gloat and say this is a wonderful historic day when the tail is able to wag the Australian Labor Party dog, but I say to those in the Australian Labor Party that this will be a historic day for the Australian Labor Party as well because the good, conservative, blue-collar workers whose jobs you will be destroying and whose cost of living you will be increasing will know that those good, traditional Labor values for which you once stood have now been discarded in favour of doing the bidding of the Australian Greens. That is why the Australian people wherever I go these days are saying, 'Eric, when can we have an election?'

I have been involved in politics a long time, not only as a senator, but as a state president and before that as a rank-and-file volunteer. Come election time, most people say, 'Oh no, not again, not another election.' Now the Australian people are actually clamouring and asking: 'When can we have another election?' The reason for that is that they feel betrayed and they feel deceived. They have a right to feel deceived, because that is exactly what the Australian Labor Party has done to so many of their very good and very faithful followers—people who have voted for the Australian Labor Party for generations in fact. A lady came up to me the other day and said, 'My father and his father before him were proud Australian Labor Party voters. I'm 70 years myself, Senator Abetz, but do you know what? Come the next elections, state and federal, I will be voting for your party, Senator Abetz. I never thought I'd be saying that to you, but it's nice to meet you here at the shopping centre.' That was at Eastlands, over on the eastern shore of Hobart. She indicated to me that she was switching her vote, and the reason was the deceit and betrayal by the Australian Labor Party in relation to the carbon tax promise.

The Australian Labor Party is right to call what will happen on Tuesday a historic day, but it will be a day that will be marked in the index of the history books under the word treachery. You will look up the word treachery and you will see an insert underneath it: ALP carbon tax. Because that is exactly what the Australian Labor Party has done: it has deceived the Australian people. This government has no moral authority to introduce this legislation, because it said it would not. As a result, of course, it stands to reason that neither does it have a mandate for this legislation. Indeed, the exact opposite is true. Nor can the Australian Labor Party hide behind the assertion, 'Sure, we said one thing before the election, but the Australian people have changed their mind. There is popular support for this move. We were somehow out of step and we are now going to bow to the will of the Australian people.' We know that that is untrue as well. So on what basis does the Australian Labor Party come into this place and vote for this legislation? No moral authority, no mandate, no popular support: why would you do it other than to protect one job, the job of the Prime Minister, Ms Gillard? That is the only reason, and it is a shameful reason. When you lie to the electorate in a democracy you do not have a mandate and you do not have popular support. One wonders what motivates the government in relation to these matters.

I understand that the Australian Greens have a view on precommitment with poker machines. I never knew that their views on precommitment extended to votes of the Senate, because they have precommitted by their media releases votes of the Senate in relation to, I think it was, Senator Wright getting a chairmanship before the Senate had decided anything. It begs a very interesting question: why was Senator Wright given that chairmanship and not Senator Sarah Hanson-Young? Senator Hanson-Young has more seniority, she has been here longer and we know that the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee deals with matters legal and immigration, which are her forte. But, somehow, the Greens have overlooked her. Senator Milne, who is in the chamber, is busy studying her papers. We know why, but we will leave that for the Australian Greens to sort out. That is another indication of the arrogance of the Australian Greens: that they were willing to put out a press release, precommit the Senate and indicate what was going to happen. On the Greens website yesterday the same arrogance and hubris showed through. It is an honour and a privilege to be able to serve in this place, but for the Greens to treat this place now as their own fiefdom because they can make the Australian Labor Party do whatever they want is not something to be proud of and it is not something to be claimed as historic.

I return to the once great Australian Labor Party. They do have a few days left to redeem themselves in the eyes of the Australian people. They might do that by trying to change their leader. We do not know what they are going to do in that regard; that is for them to determine. One thing I would say to the Australian Labor Party, that once great party that did actually look after workers, that was actually concerned about jobs, that was actually concerned about people's cost of living, is that you still have a few days left to change your mind. You can change your vote. You can decide, 'We will in fact honour that which we promised, we will in fact honour the mandate we were given, we will in fact honour the popular view of the Australian people,' all three of which are against the introduction of the carbon tax. I have no doubt that if the Australian Labor Party were to do that their support in the opinion polls would go up. It would go up; there is no doubt about that. I say to the Labor Party: 'Change leaders as often as you like. Your problem is not your leader and your leadership; your problem is your policy.' It is a policy that is nowadays linked inextricably with the Australian Greens. You have formed a dirty deal with the Australian Greens. You have formed an alliance and partnership that will haunt you to your political graves, because the Australian workers, whom you used to champion, whom you used to look after, know that the carbon tax proposals are bad proposals for their jobs and their cost of living. These workers are also very decent people, very decent Australians who are genuinely concerned about the future of our environment. But they know that this carbon tax suite of measures will do nothing to help or protect the environment. The coal workers in the states of Queensland and New South Wales say, 'It is passing strange, is it not, that this Australian Labor Party, which used to support us, says it is right to dig up coal in Australia, ship it to China, burn it in China for the benefit of the Chinese and not tax it but, if we dig out the same Australian coal and burn it in Australia for the benefit of Australians, it is an unmitigated evil that needs to be taxed?'