Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I will take that interjection because this is at the core of the Labor-Greens lie. You want people to believe that your tax is going to do something to improve the environment. It will not. You are painting this picture of how we have disastrous prospects of rising sea levels, floods, droughts and this and that. But your tax is not going to do a thing to stop a single flood, a single drought or to stop sea levels from rising. In fact, arguably, your tax will make it worse to the extent that it will make environmentally efficient businesses in Australia less competitive than more-polluting businesses in places like China and encourage the shifting of economic activity from Australia to other parts of the world. You have reduced economic activity in Australia—and your Treasury modelling assumes that economic activity in Australia will be lower than it would be without a carbon tax—but you will have shifted it to other parts in the world where the same level of economic activity will result in higher emissions. So, the world is no better off. That is what this is all about.

Your government, Senator Thistlethwaite, wants to make Australian businesses less competitive so that higher-emitting businesses in other parts of the world can take market share away from them. Your carbon tax aims to reduce emissions—no, it will not reduce emissions; they will continue to go up—compared to what they would have been without a carbon tax in a way that increases emissions, arguably by more, in other parts of the world. What is the sense of that? There is no sense in it.

The reason this is a legitimate thing for us to assess is that we are not alone in this world. Look at what is happening in other parts of the world. Canada has just said that there is no way they are going to go down this path. The US has made it very clear that there is no way they are going to have a carbon tax or an emissions trading scheme. And I do not believe that Barack Obama would go back on his word in the same way that Prime Minister Gillard has. I am prepared to give you a guarantee that Barack Obama is not going to put emissions trading scheme legislation forward.

Let me address another Labor-Greens lie. The minister keeps coming in here and saying: 'Well, China is making all these efforts. China is doing so much better than anybody thinks they are.' That is just not true. It is a complete fabrication. You do not need to look any further than the government's own modelling.