Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Hansard source

Peter Beattie did get a job, so there is one winner so far out of the Steel Transformation Plan Bill. But I thought Paul Howes was promising that not one job would be lost, and already we have seen the steel industry shed jobs since this plan was announced and even since this funding was announced. Let us understand that this plan and this funding are nothing more than a rotten little bandaid that will not last very long. It will apply some money for a period of time and so that will buy a little bit of peace for the government. That is all they are hoping for. They are hoping that this money will last past the next election, that it will ensure the steel industry in Australia survives past the next election, that they can keep Mr Howes and his cronies quiet past the next election, that it will actually achieve that much. That is all they are hoping for because, of course, the money will run out.

This is not some type of ongoing support to address the fundamental issues of the carbon tax, because the money from this runs out and the carbon tax, if Labor get their way, is here forever. It is here to stay. That is certainly what Prime Minister Gillard was saying today, that Labor stand by the carbon tax now, in five years, in 50 years, however long it takes—forever. So we know the government have the carbon tax here forever. We know the carbon tax is going to keep going up and up and up. The price of it keeps going up dramatically right through at least the modelled period to 2050, and it will go up beyond that, given the way the trajectories and the curves have indicated, at that time. This money will be flat out lasting for a couple of years, and then the steel industry are on their own again unless they manage to convince the government to fork out for another bailout plan. So this is little more than a bandaid. It is a bandaid measure that may last until the next election if Senator Carr is lucky. It may manage to hold things together for that long, but that is all that it is likely to achieve.

Senator Carr, you come in here and you try to talk about how it is a transformation—and you insert that grand word, 'transformation', into the title of this bill—but nobody is conned by that; nobody thinks that you are going to somehow, through this one bill and through this $300 million in spending, miraculously set the steel industry up for a bright future under the carbon tax, without some type of further assistance. So nobody is conned by that, and ultimately we will face a future in which governments will either have to fork out yet more money for the steel industry to prop it up under the carbon tax or, alternatively, see the steel industry die not the death of a thousand cuts but instead the death of one mighty sword blow to the neck in the name of the carbon tax.

The AWU state secretary in South Australia, Mr Wayne Hanson, had it right when he was talking about some of the major industrial towns in my home state. Take the words of Mr Hanson, when talking about Whyalla, the home of the OneSteel operations there, and Port Pirie, the home of the Nyrstar smelter there, and about what the impact of the carbon tax could be on those towns. What did Mr Hanson have to say about the potential impact of the carbon tax on the towns of Whyalla and Port Pirie in South Australia? He said this of those towns under the carbon tax:

'Goodbye. They will be off the map …'

That is what Mr Hanson thought the carbon tax would do. Why did he think that would be the case? Why did he think that the carbon tax would cause the towns of Whyalla and Port Pirie to be wiped off the map? He said:

It's ridiculous to consider (a carbon tax) when you don't have other countries that are prepared to adopt a common approach," he said. " … Should we be the trail-blazer?"

Mr Hanson seemed to really hit the nail on the head. Sadly, after he made these comments he went to ground very quickly. I can only assume that some of his friends in the labour movement suggested that such honesty was not encouraged in the labour movement and that such honesty in the public arena was not something that they wanted to hear from people like Mr Hanson, who might actually be exposing in some way the government's rotten plans that will destroy industries like the steel industry. Mr Hanson was not alone. It is little wonder that he thought that he could get away with such brazen honesty about the carbon tax and its impact on the steel industry. He made those comments on 19 April, when they were reported, and it was perfectly reasonable for him to think he could say that because a few days earlier, on 15 April, his national secretary had equally been out there being pretty bolshie about the impact of the carbon tax on the steel industry. That was none other than Mr Paul Howes, the same Mr Howes whom Senator Boswell mentioned before and whom we saw bobbing up on our television screens and coming to great national prominence on the night of the coup when Mr Kevin Rudd was rolled as Prime Minister of this country. Mr Howes bobbed up on Lateline and announced to the world that he was behind the change and that he was delivering the prime ministership to Julia Gillard, who was then, of course, the Deputy Prime Minister. Mr Howes, obviously a man of great influence in the Labor Party, had said on 15 April, as the national secretary of the Australian Workers Union, that he wanted to ensure that this carbon price will not cost a single job:

If one job is gone, our support is gone.