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

If it was such a good idea to move in the absence of other nations, to move unilaterally, why don't other nations move first? That simple, fundamental question was never answered by Senator Wong in a week and a half. I listened to her and I received no answer. What does this government know, what does Senator Wong know, what does the Prime Minister know, what does Mr Combet know that President Obama does not know, or the leadership of India, China, Brazil and Russia? What does she know that they do not know? Why does she want to move unilaterally? Those other nations know fundamentally that to move unilaterally rather than multilaterally is against the national interest. That is the great deceit, the great lie, in this debate. That is the one I object to fundamentally, far more than anything else. It is something that Senator Wong and the Labor Party, and indeed the Greens, have never answered in a week and a half of debate. Labor has sold out their own country just so they could form a government with the Greens, and I suppose now the bourgeois Left will feel a lot better about themselves. Isn't that just wonderful? And the possibility of this tax is founded upon a lie. But, as I say, that is not the worst part. It is the fundamental deceit about other countries that I find even more objectionable.

Our carbon tax in the end will have to rely upon carbon markets. As the Canadian foreign affairs minister pointed out the other day, there is not one properly functioning carbon market in the world. Before my friends on the other side say, 'What about the European Union?' which is of course the largest carbon market, that is a corrupt, limp and rife-with-abuse market. It is a hopeless and pathetic carbon market. It spends more time being investigated than it does in operation. What sort of precedent does that set for a carbon market internationally? None at all. Yet again this tax built upon a lie somehow is justified.

Finally, the Prime Minister says the coalition is out of step with the future. Let me make these predictions, and I do not mind putting them on the record. Firstly, carbon emissions will continue to rise for the foreseeable future in Australia and in those competitor countries, the resource rich, trade exposed countries. They will continue to rise. Secondly, this tax will have no impact on climate whatsoever—none, zip, zilch. Thirdly, Australia will be a poorer country because of this tax. If that is the better future that the Prime Minister talks so glowingly about, I do not want to be part of it, because that is the sort of future that just does not work.