Fiona Nash (NSW, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Education) Share this | Hansard source

Yes; thank you, Senator Edwards. And there has been a total inability to manage our borders properly. Why on earth would we think that they could get something like a compensation package for steel right? Obviously, they have not, with only two companies to be assisted.

Colleagues, you can only be gobsmacked by the way in which this is going to operate. The government talks about it being a four-year plan. Given the way it is structured, it could be, I think, only about a year and one day and all the money could have disappeared altogether. There is even confusion over how long the plan is supposed to be. Is it four years or five years? I think Minister Greg Combet is talking about it being over five years but we have the official department website saying it is over six years. This government cannot manage a thing and cannot deliver any policy properly to the Australian people—and, to see that, we only have to look at where the government is not compensating. We have this picking and choosing as to whom they are going to compensate and the fact that they are giving upfront compensation in bulk, one-off payments to welfare recipients. So how on earth can they ensure that that funding is going to go, over the 18-month period of time, to those people that need it, when it is needed, when the carbon tax has imposed those electricity cost increases? The government simply cannot give that guarantee. Now we see this compensation package that is going to help only two firms—two firms, I repeat—out of the myriad firms out there. Every other steel business is not going to receive so much as one single cent of assistance under this legislation.

It is one thing to look at the compensation that the government is going to provide to the steel industry; but what we should really be looking at are the industries that the government have turned their back on and have not even considered compensating in a proper manner: those in agriculture, our farmers. We saw over the last couple of days the complete inability of Minister Penny Wong to answer in any detail whatsoever the questions that we on this side of the chamber were asking, rightly and properly, about what the impact was going to be on the agricultural industries, what the impact was going to be for irrigators, what the impact was going to be for the dairy sector. The government were simply incapable of answering the questions.

Farmers are the heart and soul of this country. They generate real wealth for this country. They work from dawn to dusk and beyond to be the backbone of this nation. And what have this government done for them? What recognition have this government given to the situation that they have now placed our farming sector in because of the incredible financial impacts of this carbon tax? Nothing. They have not considered the impacts in any real way, in any shape or form. They have not even done any modelling to actually see what the impacts are going to be, because they simply do not care. Here we have the Steel Transformation Plan Bill in front of us. What about farmers? What about those men and women—and their children—who are the backbone of this nation? What about them? The government simply do not care, and that is what makes it such a sad and dark day for the Australian people. And I cannot understand for a moment why on earth this government keeps hanging our farmers out to dry.

While I am on farmers, what was extraordinary today was that at a Greens press conference Senator Bob Brown said one of the reasons the Greens' stocks have been growing rapidly in the bush is 'our strong action to curb climate change'. If we had ever wondered if the Greens did believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden, that was the absolute proof today. I do not know who Senator Brown has been talking to out there, but he has certainly not been talking to the majority of farmers because I can tell him that, absolutely, right now, farmers across this country do not want a carbon tax. But, no, Senator Brown cannot possibly let reality get in the way of a good story—that would be wrong for him, wouldn't it! I can tell him right now that those words that he uttered this morning are wrong. Australian farmers do not want a carbon tax. For the fairies at the bottom of the garden, the Greens, along with the Labor government and the Independents, to cobble this together to give the Australian people a carbon tax is simply wrong.

I go back to my comments earlier that it is not going to change the climate one little bit. We hear from the other side of the chamber all these words of spin about a clean energy future and talk about all these new jobs that are going to be created. But we have not heard from the other side of the chamber about any one specific job that is going to be created. I have not heard of one. We have had this throwaway bandaid line that there are going to be all these jobs created. Well, they should tell all these people working in the steel industry and in the agricultural industry and all the other people across this nation who are going to lose their jobs because of the carbon tax—and that is not scaremongering; that is a fact—why the carbon tax is a good thing for them and they should tell them how fantastic it is that all these new jobs are being created. But I can tell you this, Madam Acting Deputy President Adams: those people want the jobs that they have got. They do not want some new job in some green industry doing basket weaving or something somewhere else; they actually want to hang on to the jobs that they have got. But this government is threatening those jobs, and the Australian people know that. The Steel Transformation Plan Bill is part of the carbon tax that this government is giving to this country, and it is simply wrong that we have a day like today, such a sad and dark day, for the Australian people, so we are not supporting this legislation. The coalition will absolutely get rid of this carbon tax. It is our pledge to the Australian people that we will do that.

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