Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

I thank all of those senators who have contributed to this debate. Abolishing the Clean Energy Finance Corporation is a priority for this government—indeed, it was a firm commitment that we took to the Australian people at the last election. We know that Labor senators in particular are suffering from government change denial, but not even the Labor Party could credibly suggest that we were not entirely transparent about our plans to scrap the carbon tax and to abolish the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. We know that there were Labor senators in Western Australia—the shadow parliamentary secretary for climate change, in particular—who went across Western Australia distributing pamphlets promising that Labor would terminate the carbon tax. Despite all of the backtracking since the election, there was no mention in the fine print of the pamphlets of any plans to replace a fixed price carbon tax with a floating price carbon tax, an emissions trading scheme or whatever the Labor Party wants to call it. The senator was making a very firm commitment that Labor would terminate the carbon tax.

Unlike Labor, coalition senators—this government—are delivering on the commitments that we made before the election, which is why we introduced this legislation in the first sitting fortnight of the new parliament. That is exactly what we said we would do. We made all of that very clear to the Australian people and we received the support of the Australian people, as shown by our strong election result. Labor takes at its peril the position that it has flagged again in this chamber today. It ignores at its peril the wishes of the Australian people as expressed at the last election. It is really quite arrogant to persist with something that has been rejected so overwhelmingly by the Australian people.

Claims that the Clean Energy Finance Corporation does not cost the budget—repeated again by Senator Lundy just now—are just another case of magic pudding economics. Claims that the Clean Energy Finance Corporation somehow would have a positive impact on the budget are a case of voodoo economics, because they do not take into account the public debt interest cost of the corporation. When public debt interest is taken into account the Clean Energy Finance Corporation clearly costs the budget bottom line over the forward estimates.

The Labor Party inherited a position of no government net debt and strong surplus budgets and in six years turned that into a situation of $250 billion of accumulated deficits, gross debt heading for $400 billion and beyond, and a budget situation that will be very difficult to turn around from where Labor left it. It is no wonder that the Labor Party left the budget in such a mess if it cannot understand such basic premises as: if you borrow money in order to spend money there is actually a cost attached to the borrowing. That is something that Senator Lundy ignored again in her presentation today—as have her colleagues. She is not Robinson Crusoe in relation to this, to be fair to Senator Lundy. All of the senators on the Labor side have faithfully delivered the Labor Party talking points during this debate, in order to keep the debate going, and have made the same erroneous assertion.

Let me be very clear and explicit in relation to this: abolishing the Clean Energy Finance Corporation will improve the budget position over that period, because the government will not be paying interest on the debt that it borrows to fund the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. By opposing our delivery of our commitment, made during the election, to abolish the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, those opposite drive the budget further into deficit than it needs to be.

But that of course is the history of the Labor Party. The Labor Party in government was pretty reckless when it came to financial management; but it is even worse now in opposition under the leadership of Mr Shorten, because Mr Shorten is essentially too weak to stand up to the different vested interests across the Labor Party. If there is somebody in the Labor Party who wants an emissions trading scheme, even though everybody knows that Bill Shorten personally wants to scrap it—everybody knows that; he has confided that to so many people that he could not credibly deny it—he is too weak to stand up to the vested interests in the Labor Party. So instead of picking a fight in the national interest, instead of picking a fight that will help deliver cost-of-living relief and help us to strengthen the economy, Bill Shorten goes the easy way and allows Labor Party people to get away with—