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

This government long ago lost any ability to claim to be making Australia more competitive, especially because of its carbon price. It is one of the many features of how this government has lost its way and its credibility—the carbon tax, the mining tax and making Australia's business environment one of the least cost competitive places in the Western world to do business. It is to the shame of this government that its policies, including those discussed today, are such a demonstration of how much it has lost its way. We now have the reality that this government has lost any sense of moral compass whatsoever, as each of its members spends far more time worrying about their own jobs than they do about the jobs of other Australians. Every single member of this government seems completely preoccupied, not with the impact of the carbon tax, not with the hurt to levels of confidence in the Australian business community and not with the hurt to the competitiveness of Australian business but with the bad polls that are afflicting their government and what they can do about it by changing the Labor leadership. Now, to be frank, the government have reached the point where they have lost any right to be taken seriously at all.

The cannibalisation of the Labor government is an amazing feat to watch. We have now seen leadership ballots and battles in June 2010, in February 2012, in March 2013 and now, again, in June 2013. It would all be a big joke if it were not so serious in terms of the harm it is doing to the country and if it were not for the fact that, with the sideshow happening opposite, the government have completely lost sight of the important policies and the harm that some of their policies, like the carbon tax, are doing to the Australian people. While the sideshow continues, Australia continues to suffer, with the highest carbon tax in the world and the broadest coverage of any carbon tax in the world, with an increase next year, an increase the year after that, with the expansion of the coverage to the trucking industry and with Senator Conroy today failing to rule out hitting the family farm or family car as well.