Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today.

A couple of weeks ago, Labor members and Greens senators were dancing in the aisles. There was kissing and hugging. They were patting each other on the back. Why? Because this Labor-Greens government had managed to force a toxic carbon tax through the parliament, a tax which Labor knows will push up the cost of everything, will hurt our economy, will make Australia less competitive internationally, will cost jobs and will result in lower real wages—and all of that without doing anything to help reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. That was what Labor members and Greens senators were patting each other on the back for a couple of weeks ago.

Of course, we know that the government has based its legislation, its compensation package and its transitional assistance on some modelling conducted by Treasury that was based on false assumptions imposed on Treasury by this bad and incompetent Labor government. Labor had one single objective with its Treasury modelling of the carbon tax: it wanted to make it look as if there was going to be hardly any impact at all on household budgets, on the economy or on jobs. It wanted to downplay the economic harm from the carbon tax and it wanted to make it look as if there was going to be massive environmental gain for hardly any economic pain.

What we know is that the carbon tax will be all economic pain for no environmental gain. What we know is that the government has based its modelling on false assumptions, including the assumption that countries like the US, Canada, China and a whole heap of others will be part of a global carbon-pricing scheme from 2016 onwards. It will not happen; it was never going to happen. The impact of Labor's carbon tax on household budgets, on the economy, on jobs and on real wages will be even worse than what the government has conceded in its own figures.

It is not enough that this carbon tax is bad for household budgets; we also know that it is bad for the federal budget. Of course, this is a government which knows how to raise a multibillion-dollar tax, but it is even better at knowing how to spend that money faster than it brings it in. Here we have a government that is coming up with two multibillion-dollar new taxes—the carbon tax and the mining tax—and each one of these taxes leaves the budget worse off. Why? Because, before the government has even collected them, it is spending more than it is expecting to raise. The carbon tax, according to the concessions that the government has made so far, is going to cost the budget about $5 billion more than it is going to raise. The government is going to raise $25 billion and spend about $30 billion. With the mining tax, over the next decade Treasury projections suggest that the government is going to raise about $38½ billion, but we know that the cost of all the promises it has attached to the mining tax is actually approaching $60 billion. There is one fiscal train wreck after another—multibillion-dollar new taxes that leave Australian people worse off, that leave the economy worse off and that leave the federal budget worse off.

That is why this Labor government is not able to deliver a surplus budget. This is a government that is addicted to spending and addicted to new taxes. Even when it comes in with one new, ad hoc, lazy tax grab after another it still cannot balance the books. In the process, real Australians are being asked to make the sacrifice, to pay the price, for Labor's reckless spending and waste in so many areas.

In relation to the carbon tax, the government have been saying for some time: 'Look at Europe. Europe has an emissions trading scheme.' Never mind that the price on carbon over there is about $9 a tonne whereas the Labor Party here, with the Greens, want to slug Australian businesses and the Australian economy $23 a tonne and rising. Never mind that in Europe they are offering 100 per cent protection to all of the emissions-intensive, export-oriented, trade-exposed industries. If Europe is doing something like this, surely we would not want to take the lead from them. Look at the economy of Europe. Does this Labor-Greens government want to take Australia where governments in Europe have taken Europe over the last 20 or 30 years? We should not be taking our economic prosperity in Australia for granted. Bad governments and bad economic management can take Australia down the same bad path. (Time expired)