Sean Edwards (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Sorry, I was getting a bit social. Two companies. It is $150 million over six years to hundreds of companies or $300 million to two companies over four years. I know which industry I would like to be in. That is nothing against those two companies; it is not their fault.

Participation in such assistance would involve considerable upfront capital contribution from the industry as a prerequisite at a time when the industry would already be experiencing declining profitability and deadweight costs of the proposed carbon tax regime. Clearly any assistance provided by the Commonwealth should be genuine, unconditional and in the form of untied government assistance. Notwithstanding this, the red meat processing industry is potentially facing substantial cost imposts under the proposed legislation, with no specific assistance for direct obligations like other identified emissions-intensive trade-exposed industries and no opportunity to pass the scheme costs forward to our export customers. Why is it that this Labor government has only considered the steel industry? Why is the government playing favourites? Some of Australia's most important industries will now be in need of assistance, just like the steel industry will be. The carbon tax will place additional pressure on a range of important industries, particularly those in rural Australia like the red meat sector, the wine supply industry and in time, I suspect, grain exporters.

Australian steel manufacturers already comply with a number of environmental laws and regulations that their foreign counterparts do not have to contend with. If the goal is environmental gain then why add further pressure to an industry, which by global standards is quite clean and efficient, that may result in it moving offshore? This $300 million in compensation from the government is a token gesture to industry, but it does highlight just how serious the carbon tax is for Australian industry. It shows us how uncompetitive the carbon tax will make industry. The compensation for just one industry is a snub to other important industries like the red meat industry, which also faces highly competitive export environments and will face huge costs in order to adapt and cope with the looming carbon tax.

The impact of this toxic tax on companies such as T&R Pastoral in my home state of South Australia—where Senator Penny Wong, Senator Farrell, Senator Gallacher and Senator McEwen live—will be significant. The increase in the costs of energy such as electricity and gas will lead to an increased cost of $2.36 per beast and 21c per sheep or lamb processed. These figures on their own do not sound like a lot, but when you consider how many head are processed by this important South Australian employer the impact is significant. They process 200,000 cattle and 2.25 million sheep each year. This will result in an increase in cost of $944,000 per year from higher energy costs. Why is the government not doing more to help this and other processors adjust?

This is compensation for a carbon tax, pure and simple; that is all it is. It is not about structural adjustment for the steel industry. It is about carbon tax compensation. How many times have we heard those opposite loudly proclaim that only the biggest polluters will pay, ignoring the fact that those so-called polluters are some of the major industries in Australia?

And when it finally dawned on the government that the steel industry was going to be hugely disadvantaged by a carbon tax, it realised it had to do something, otherwise 91,000 steelworkers and a $29 billion industry were destined for the scrapheap.

The government wants us to support this bill, yet much of the important detail of the Steel Transformation Plan will be included in a legislative instrument rather than in primary legislation, as the bill itself does not detail the plan. It is not good enough to state that a draft of the plan should be released between now and the end of the year. This is not good enough. We are expected to trust the word of this government. How can we, when the Australian electorate has been told deliberate untruths about what caused this bill to be formulated in the first place?

Clause 9(2) provides that the Steel Transformation Plan is a self-assessment plan. In other words, it is up to the eligible steel company to determine whether its application of payments is consistent with the overall objective of the plan. Again, this lack of supervision and accountability raises once more the track record—yes, we will tick them off as we go; tick, tick, tick—of this Gillard Labor government. It is a record of pink batts, school halls, cash for clunkers, GroceryWatch and Fuelwatch—the list goes on. We all love school halls, but we do not like those school halls that cost three times what they should.

Sacrificed on the altar of carbon dioxide rectitude, the steel industry was belatedly made the beneficiary of this, the Steel Transformation Plan Bill 2011, by the Gillard government. I repeat: if there had been no carbon tax, this bill would not be necessary. I suspect that those words of Wayne Goss in 1996 when he talked about the election that year will come true when the Australian people front up to the next election: they are likely to take to this government with baseball bats.