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

Because retailers in this country are not exactly experiencing a buoyant time. I walk up and down the streets of many country towns and rural centres. In a recent food processing inquiry I walked down the streets of Shepparton in Victoria where there were some 84—and now are I believe some 130—shops vacant due to the fact that there is so much uncertainty in this electorate. Don't go now, Senator Thistlethwaite because I am going to tell you about the policy that we are going to bring to this place when the Australian people get an opportunity to go to the polls about the way in which you have been running this country for the last five to six years. We are going to axe this carbon tax which you have imposed upon the Australian people in what has to be one of the greatest electoral lies in this Federation's history.

Senator Thistlethwaite talked about a slack and below par argument. He said, 'Small business are all out there having an absolute wonderful time.' You, Senator Farrell, would know. The Clare Valley, Barossa Valley, McLaren Vale and Coonawarra great wine regions in South Australia are not having a very good time. There is the high Australian dollar. There is an inability to access capital for an industry which has been in a great deal of need for capital. Unfortunately, now what have they got? Rising energy costs because we have a carbon tax on energy. One of the biggest bottom line items for South Australia's greatest and most famous industry is energy costs going up some 18 per cent in what is a constricted market. These people work in an environment where those they sell to in this country—Coles, Metcash, Woolworths—have already said to people in these industries that they will not accept price rises on their product because of the carbon tax. So what happens?

The producers of wine in South Australia say, 'Okay, we cannot pass it on to our retailer because they have massive concentration of power, so what do we do with it now? What is the next thing? The only piece of elastic in this whole argument is the dear old farmer. Let's go and have a crack at the farmer.' Instead of getting $1,200 or $1,500 or $1,800 a tonne, the farmers are getting $800 or $600 a tonne because the wineries cannot go out of business, so they push back to the easiest possible price mechanism in their cost of goods which is the farmer. Senator Thistlethwaite, these are the small businesses you talk about? I think not.

What about the automotive parts manufacturers? Their energy costs have gone through the roof. In South Australia in my patron seat of Wakefield, where General Motors Holden and a plethora of other firms supply that important industry, an industry which your government over there has seen fit to supply with $220 million, but what compensation did the car parts manufacturers get? Nothing. They are an essential part of the chain but they did not get anything and they have just been hit with this carbon tax. Senator Thistlethwaite, is that one of the small businesses that are flourishing on this wonderful set of numbers which in any other time you would have to say are great? No, there is no confidence out there.

You talk about not being able to operate where the environment is going to take our productivity. Your own man, the Climate Change Commissioner Tim Flannery, has been on the record to say it might be 500 or it might be 1,000 years before we notice the difference. The rest of the world gets that. I have been fortunate enough to see industry in Asia in recent times. They are opening coal-fired and nuclear power stations—a power generator to the tune of one a week through those countries. What are they doing? Are they applying an emissions cost impost on business? No, they are not.

We stand out like a beacon of silliness in what was and should have been a big lesson coming from Copenhagen that the rest of the world was not prepared to take it on. Yet we stand out here because of this murky little alliance with the Greens. I know a lot of you on the other side sort of choke on this whole carbon tax thing and all you reasonable ones over there did not want it. But you had to take it because that was the cost of government. It is about trust, Senator Polley, and you know it is about trust because all the numbers look okay but business—