David Johnston (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

In supporting this matter of public importance I want to begin by looking at where the government is on this. This Australian Labor Party, with its long history, is travelling with a primary vote of less than 30 per cent. In Western Australia it is about 26 per cent and I think it is about 25 or 26 per cent in Queensland. Why is that? Many Labor senators say it is because the coalition is running a scare campaign. It is pretty scary when you are confronting a cold, hungry, penniless winter, when you cannot afford electricity, you cannot afford to travel, you cannot afford water. In Western Australia the biggest on-grid user of electricity is the Water Corporation. It is pretty scary. Yet I hear senators on the other side say, 'The government's been upfront with the Australian people.' When was it upfront? 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead'—that is very upfront. The Treasurer, 'This is a hysterical allegation.' That is right upfront. This crazy government is embarking upon economic suicide for this country.

They will not mention this tax, they dare not mention its name: the carbon tax, putting a price on carbon. Who thinks the Australian people are that dumb? Putting a price on carbon—it is a carbon tax; call it a carbon tax. Have a modicum of decency and honesty: you are going to tax the living daylights out of industry and business and you are going to send the cost of living through the roof like a skyrocket. But you do not care, because you want the money. You have spent every cent you had; you want more. This is the Labor Party in action. It is pretty scary. And people are scared. They are scared of the cold, hungry, penniless winters they have to confront with a carbon tax.

Why did the Prime Minister deny there would be a carbon tax—'There will be no carbon tax'—instead of saying, 'A carbon tax will provide a clean energy future for all of us and we will all be better off'? No. She did not say that. She said, 'There will be no carbon tax.' And the Treasurer said, 'This is a hysterical allegation. We're not doing it.' Why not? Could it be that the cost of living will go through the roof like a skyrocket? Business, especially small business, will be under siege in terms of cost inputs. There will be a devastated economy. People will not spend, because they will be paying so much more for electricity. The price of petrol will be up by 6.5c a litre; the price of gas, 10 per cent a year; the price of groceries, particularly in regional Australia, will go through the roof because, in 2014, the cost of transport will be brought in, depending on where you live; and there will be electricity price hikes of $300 to $400 a year. But a carbon tax is a hysterical allegation; it was never going to happen. Within months we have a carbon tax. And the Labor Party are wondering why people do not believe them when they say, 'We've been upfront with the Australian people.' They have been everything but upfront with the Australian people. They have misled the Australian people and they know it. The Australian people have woken up to the sad sorry dawn of these misrepresenters—these fakes—who will say anything if they think the front page will keep their posteriors covered.

We in Western Australia have massive freight infrastructure costs coming with this carbon tax. Thousands of kilometres are travelled by transport companies to deliver basic staples—groceries, bread and milk. The prices of these things will go through the roof. A little town where I spent a lot of my younger days, Kalgoorlie, depends entirely upon Perth for its water, 600 kilometres away. How does the water get there? By electricity. You do not think people in Kalgoorlie are going to pay a hell of a lot more for their water? Our energy is generated by coal at Collie. I cannot believe I have to give a lesson like this. We have a desal plant providing water for Western Australia. Where does the energy come from? Electricity.

The biggest on-grid user of electricity in the Perth metropolitan area for the movement of potable water and sewage is the Water Corporation. People in Perth will be hit with their electricity bills and then their water bills.

But what about the economy generally? Victoria's manufacturing base, the heartland of manufacturing in Australia, has been built upon low cents per kilowatt hour from Gippsland. That has been our massive economic advantage. What are we doing to it? We are going to chop it off at the knees.

This crazy government does not understand anything about economics. This carbon tax will be ruinous. By 2020, $3.5 billion will have been spent each year on foreign carbon credits. It will rise by 2050 to $57 billion—that is, money offshore, to Upper Volta and Niger. That is the equivalent of 1.5 per cent of GDP. That is what we are currently spending on defence. This will take the defence portfolio out of our GDP. That is what it amounts to.

Do you think the government care about pensioners and people sitting in homes, in cold climates such as Tasmania and Victoria, desperate to be heated, desperate to cook their food where the price of electricity goes up and up, because they cannot make their sums add up? We only had to see the defence minister four days before the budget rip $5 billion out of the defence budget like an ATM because the calculator would not come up with the right number. This is the worst piece of public administration. Labor senators do not care. In New South Wales, we have seen electricity prices going through the roof. The carbon tax will come in and they will have to pay it, so they are trying to get some capital on the table so that they have the money to pay this tax. Electricity prices in South Australia are going up 18 per cent and 24 local government councils have received 'please explain' letters: 'We're naming and shaming you; we want you to pay the tax.' People who receive their rates in 2012-13 will wonder why on earth they have gone through the roof. Landfill sites, the collecting of rubbish—all of these things—are in the frame. But Labor just does not care about people's standard of living.

This carbon tax will be one of the greatest underminers of Australia's economic capability. And guess what? China is not having a bar of it. Canada is not touching it. The miners of Canada do not have to do anything, so their nickel, copper, lead and zinc will be a lot cheaper than ours. Japan and the United States are not touching it.

So here we are trying to compete, exporting everything we produce, with countries that do not have this massive carbon tax eating away like a cancer at their economic base. Towards the end of my time to speak, I say that, frankly, the minister has not said very much in her time, to my knowledge, but one thing she did say in 2009, about a carbon tax, a carbon price, was this. She said:

The introduction of a carbon price ahead of effective international action can lead to perverse incentives for such industries to relocate or source production offshore. There is no point in imposing a carbon price domestically which results in emissions and production transferring internationally for no environmental gain.

There, in her own words, she has told us exactly what the Labor Party is doing. Let us look at those words again. She said:

The introduction of a carbon price ahead of effective international action can lead to perverse incentives for such industries to relocate or source production offshore. There is no point in imposing a carbon price domestically which results in emissions and production transferring internationally for no environmental gain.

We know that without those other countries doing anything there is zero environmental gain, and here were the Labor Party being upfront with the Australian people and telling us what they are not going to do. Yet then they went right ahead, as they like and as clear as day, and imposed exactly what they said they would not. So they were telling us how bad it would be but they were still doing it.