Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Universities and Research) Share this | Hansard source

After all the tumult and shouting, Australia will now be subject to a carbon tax. I even enjoyed making a quiet and considered contribution to that debate. Sure, as Senator Cormann said, the Prime Minister did lie. Yes, it was an act of prime political dishonesty visited upon ordinary Australians. And in the end ordinary Australians will end up paying for the lie.

We will learn soon enough that this tax is not in Australia's national interest. I do not believe that the Prime Minister's lie, her deceit and her dishonesty before the last election, was the greatest lie in this debate. I do not accept that. Going back for a second, you will recall that the coalition has always argued—we have been arguing it for two, three or four years—that a tax on carbon in Australia is justifiable, but only when there is a sufficiently comprehensive global agreement to support it. If there is, then it may be in our national interest. If there is not, it certainly is not in our interest. That was John Howard's view before the 2007 election. It should never have gone to Copenhagen; that was the wrong forum. It is the sort of issue that should have gone to the G20 and been sorted out there. It never was.

One of the great lies in this debate is that there is a sufficiently comprehensive global agreement. That is rubbish. That is not right. There still is not. Our major competitors, the ones that really count, are the energy rich, trade exposed economies such as Brazil, Russia, India and China. So often we heard Senator Wong, Mr Combet and the Prime Minister say, 'Oh, the Chinese are doing something.' Yes, they are doing something, but nothing that will stop their emissions from growing 500 per cent between 1990 and 2020. That is the second lie. And, as we know, the United States and Canada, as the latter's foreign minister has so recently made so very plain, have no intention at all of embarking upon a price on carbon.