Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Today the Senate is debating the repeal and reversal of one of the greatest political cons ever perpetrated upon the Australian people. It is an edifice of magical thinking, completely divorced from economic and environmental reality. It is monumental. It is the world's largest environmental tax, with no impact—absolutely none—on the environment, but with a significant negative impact on the economy and standard of living of Australian families. It is a carbon tax based on a lie that there would be no carbon tax. It is a fraudulent policy imposed on an already-struggling economy by the unholy alliance of the morally vain Australian Labor Party and Australian Greens.

Only Labor and the Greens could have claimed that a big new tax would help the economy grow. That is what they claimed. Only Labor and the Greens could have claimed that a new tax was needed to save the planet, even though that tax would have absolutely no effect on the temperature or the climate. Only Labor and the Greens could have argued that Australia had to set the example and lead the world—when no on else was willing to follow—and kneecap their own economy, for no gain. You might call it 'unilateral economic self-harm'. That is what I would call it. In the end the tax did not lower the temperature, but it did lower the Labor vote.

The debate we are having today goes back more than when the carbon tax was first imposed on the good people of Australia two years ago—against their will and without a political mandate. Today's debate represents a closure on four years of political madness that cost two Labor Prime Ministers their jobs, one of them twice. Four years ago I stood here in this chamber arguing against a similar harebrained idea embraced by Labor and the Greens: the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, the CPRS, also known as the emissions trading scheme.

During that debate, four long years ago, I remember saying that it was the ultimate folly to try to rush through and pass an emissions trading scheme bill before there had been a United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen and before our major trading partners introduced similar schemes. It seemed pretty logical. But, no, Labor and the Greens were hell-bent on pushing it through. As I and many others suspected, Copenhagen was a dismal failure, and the recent Warsaw conference was a fizzer as well. Over the past four years there has been no major international agreement, and I venture a guess that we are unlikely to see one in the foreseeable future. None of our major trading partners—none of those resource-rich trade-exposed economies—have remotely come close to introducing similar far-reaching and punitive schemes at home, whether they be emissions trading schemes, carbon taxes or whatever. None of them have.

President Obama said no. Canada said no. Japan said no. China, India and Brazil are not shooting themselves in the feet either. They also said no. The European Union—here we go! Oh, yes, the European Union! The European Union's carbon trading scheme—for those who are familiar with the literature—is an international joke. Those who look at the literature will know this. It is small, it is limp and it is a corrupt market, useful only for spivs, speculators and organised crime. It is a bastard offspring of the gnomes of Zurich and the bureaucrats of Brussels. Thanks to Labor and the Greens, Australia found itself leading with no-one following.

At a time when the world economy continued to be in the doldrums and economic growth has slowed down to a crawl, apparently no-one was keen to enter an international economic suicide pact. Surprise, surprise, surprise!—no other country on earth except Australia would stand up and deliberately damage its economy, as the left in this parliament wanted us to do. They talk about the big side of town. They do not care about kids trying to get jobs or businesses being created. They do not give a damn—they never have.

Let's make it clear—and I hope the Greens listen to this—if the G20 were to decide tomorrow that it is a good idea that we should have a universal emissions trading scheme or a uniform carbon tax across the whole group, I would say that Australia should join in with those major economies.