Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for COAG) Share this | Hansard source

In speaking to this motion on the government's determination to exacerbate cost-of-living pressures for Australian households through the introduction of the world's biggest carbon tax on 1 July, there are a number of points that I think are well worth making. I will start by referring to an old political aphorism that would be known to those who have been hanging around the game of politics for some time. It is about what politicians usually need to do to get a message out—that is, talk to the people. It is along the lines of: just when you become bored with saying it, they probably have not even started listening so you should keep saying it. Those of us who have worked in campaigns over many years would have heard this, used it and hopefully listened to it.

What is intriguing in this instance is that we have to reverse it. We have a government that is not listening to what the people are saying, even though the people keep repeating the message that they do not like the carbon tax and they do not want it to be introduced. It seems to me that, although people are probably quite bored with saying it—but they will keep on, I suspect—the government simply is not listening to them So even the aphorism in reverse is not working for this government.

It does not matter where you are in Australia, what you are doing or what you are engaged in: in the forums that members of the coalition have been holding all over the country to discuss issues that are predicated on the carbon tax, people are raising their concerns about it before the member raises the subject. It is raised when you are in shopping centres. In fact, the piece de resistance was someone raising concerns about the carbon tax with me last week while I was at the State of Origin football game at ANZ Stadium in New South Wales. I was proudly wearing blue for the Blues—who, I might note for the record, won. A gentleman sitting a couple of rows in front of me and my Queensland colleague Senator Barnaby Joyce made his views very clearly known. As a political representative you cannot go anywhere in this country without being stopped to hear concerns about the carbon tax raised with you.

In regard to exacerbating the pain that Australian households are feeling, this government is going to win a gold medal. You would have thought that they had already caused enough pain with their particular spending habits, but, no, Australian families will be hit again on 1 July.

The Prime Minister and other members of the cabinet can try to use nice, benign language like 'putting a price on carbon', but let us not make any error about this. This carbon tax is going to hit the hip pockets of all Australians. It will affect the price of everything, and many Australians are very concerned about its impact. It does not matter whether we are speaking about housing, electricity, health, education or something as simple as council rates. Every time Australians open their mail at the moment there is a new piece of correspondence from a utility company or from their local council or from another agency in their community saying, 'As of 1 July we will be forced to pursue a price rise.' It makes for sad and sorry reading at the end of a busy working day. It will penalise, for example, in one of my shadow portfolio areas, new-home builders, for cutting emissions by building homes that are more energy efficient than existing homes—because, frankly, the carbon tax will increase the cost of building the average new home by $5,200, even after compensation, according to the estimates of the Housing Industry Association. And the Housing Industry Association have been at great pains, and gone to great lengths, to raise their concerns with government representatives and within the community as to the impact that this will have on new home construction in this country. New-home builders already have to comply with state based energy efficiency schemes, so how on earth will penalising builders of energy-efficient homes save the environment and reduce the national housing shortage that has increased to 228,000 homes, as at 1 July, according to the latest National Housing Supply Council key indicators 2012 report? The answer is pretty simple: it won't. And those numbers are not getting any better. We waited a very long time for the National Housing Supply Council to be reconstituted by this government, all the while concerned about where the figures were going in relation to the building of new homes vis-a-vis the demand. What is clear to us is that increasing the cost of building new homes is only going to impact even more negatively on those figures.

We have subcontractors all over Australia, in all aspects of the construction industry, who are very concerned about actually losing their own businesses, about being driven to the wall. Independent subbies do not receive any compensation for the increased costs that are going to result from the carbon tax. The scarcity of subcontractors is already a challenge for home builders—and, as they become more scarce, it will increase the cost for home builders. In growing parts of Australia, particularly like Western Sydney, where many areas are being opened up for development, this is a very significant challenge. But what about the challenge it presents to the subcontractors themselves, to their families and to their businesses? It appears to be something that the government has absolutely no regard for.

So building is discouraged through higher costs. We have a carbon tax coming in on 1 July which will only exacerbate the housing shortage and hurt even tenants, who are already facing rents that are rising well above inflation. That puts very significant pressure on marginal renters on low incomes, on those in accommodation like caravan parks, and increases the pressure on homelessness services. Those of us who have, in our own capital cities and communities, seen the recent business and CEO sleep-outs that either have happened or are going to happen, will know only too clearly how difficult that environment is.

The cash handouts that are supposed to compensate for this tax are not going to fool homeowners, they are not going to fool investors, and frankly they are not going to fool poor tenants who are struggling on a daily basis. We are seeing the government insulting the intelligence of the Australian community by trying to make a calculation of how much better off or worse off individuals will be, but the thing that we do know for certain is that, no matter what the calculations are, the carbon tax will keep prices and costs going up. It will cause electricity prices to skyrocket. In my own area of Western Sydney, IPART in New South Wales has indicated that electricity prices will increase by 11.8 per cent by 1 July. There is not a single household or a single small business that will not be impacted by those rises. They will be paying on average an extra $208 a year in electricity prices for households and an extra $270 a year for businesses.

I talk to people, as I know all my colleagues do, who are struggling to meet their staff payments, let alone their rental payments, let alone their utilities payments, and struggling to keep Australians employed. How they are expected to continue to do that after 1 July is probably the greatest mystery of 2012 at this point. We have increases in gas bills, and we will find ourselves paying the world's highest electricity prices for the world's largest carbon tax, and the government will not even tell us what it will do for the environment ultimately.

The happy reminder—and I use the word 'happy' with great irony—is that, every time families turn on the light switch, they will be asking, 'How can I afford to pay this bill?' And in some cases they are not turning on the light switches or the heating, in parts of Australia that are very cold and very lonely places if you are fighting these sorts of challenges.

Our message is that there is absolutely nothing right about this carbon tax and the electricity price increases it will cause—for example, talk to a local hospital. I noticed that recently in Sydney the Daily Telegraph ran a few headlines, 'Even schools and hospitals feel the carbon tax' and 'Carbon tax bill $46 million for hospitals and schools'. I was at Westmead hospital last October, with the shadow minister for health, the Hon. Peter Dutton, a member of the other place, talking to locals about the impact on that hospital—which, based on the assessments that they have made, could face up to $728,000 a year in electricity costs, putting extra burdens on local suppliers. It is inconceivable that a hospital struggling to meet its budgets now has to be asked to re-manage its allocations to incorporate those sorts of costs. Think about the number of staff they could have on the floor for that. Think about the sorts of impacts it is having on local families. Think about the communities that are looking at this challenge from 1 July, looking at the impact it will have on their lives, on their children, on their aged parents—on whatever part of the community you care to look at. You hear it every single day. (Time expired)