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

As you know, these sorts of things do not worry me. There is a pretty easy answer. Why did the Greens and the Labor Party gang up on the Australian people and do this? I will tell you why. The answer is moral vanity. As always, it was the vain belief that the left—the Greens and Labor—know what is best and that they are the world's conscience. And the answer is guilt—guilt that Australian capitalism, innovation, entrepreneurship, jobs and hard work have made us one of the most prosperous and successful nations on the face of the earth. And the answer is self-loathing, or at least deep scepticism of the values of one's own society. Moral vanity, guilt and self-loathing: the three great contributions to politics from the left in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. That is what you might call the perfect leftist trifecta.

For the left—the Labor Party and the Greens—the ETS and the carbon tax were not policy. They were just these great, giant psychodramas designed to make themselves feel better about themselves, to demonstrate to the world how enlightened they were and how morally superior they were to the coalition. To the Labor Party and the Greens, it was all about appearing in the next Al Gore documentary, another photo opportunity at the United Nations and more applause and more accolades from the trendy international elites. It was a never-ending circle of moral onanism. That is what they provided.

The left—the Greens more so than Labor—have always been ambivalent. The Greens in particular have always been ambivalent about business. So punishing producers and employers, particularly in mining and in energy, was never going to be a major problem for the Greens. But the working class was always the key Labor constituency, and there was no clearer sign of how the Labor Party had lost its way and drifted away from its roots than its decision to sacrifice the interests and wellbeing of working families so that the inner-city elites could enjoy that warm and fuzzy feeling of righteousness, superiority and moral vanity. The Labor Party were quite happy to sacrifice the jobs of the people they used to represent to cultivate the trendies in the inner city. Great! That is what has happened to the once great Australian Labor Party. It is no longer the party of Ben Chifley and John Curtin. It is now the party of the inner-city left, vying, of course, with our friends in the Australian Greens.

The left does not care anymore about the working class. Environmental utopia has replaced the workers' paradise as the great goal. The environment has become the new proletariat. After all, polar bears are much cuddlier and much cuter than working class miners or truck drivers. Only business, capitalism and progress remain as the traditional enemies of the Labor Party, and for the Greens remain the exploiters, the oppressors, and now also—God help us!—the polluters. The Left's tried, tested and failed vision of the world is still there. The Left's vision remains—informing their rhetoric and animating their actions—that capitalism, Western civilisation and our way of life are inherently dangerous and contain destructive forces that have to be tamed. That is what the Greens believe. They believe that a government of enlightened experts—like themselves!—knows best, that individuals need to be subsumed for the collective, and that liberty should always be sacrificed for equality.

Instead of fighting for a workers' paradise, which is what the Labor Party used to do, the Left now tries to save the planet from pollution, from global warming, from overpopulation, from resource exhaustion and from nuclear power. And, yes, the proposed remedies are the same. The remedies have not changed: the growth of the state with, always, more government, more debt and the redistribution of wealth. They always have the same solutions; only the problems are different.

This debate has gone on for many years, for some of us. I have spoken quite a few times in this debate. So I would like to finish on a more personal note. I am particularly glad to participate in this debate today—perhaps more glad than nearly any other senator—because it brings for me, finally, some sense of closure. During those turbulent few months—you will remember them Acting Deputy President Boyce—more than four years ago, I argued against the CPRS or the emission trading scheme, in the coalition party room as well as in the shadow ministry. My colleagues Senator Fifield and Senator Cormann and I were the first to resign from the coalition front bench because we could not, in good faith, support this policy.

I was told by many in Canberra that I was disloyal and crazy and that I was committing political suicide. But I was told by party members and constituents back in Queensland that the ETS was bad policy—bad for families, bad for business, bad for exporters, bad for Queensland and bad for Australia. Back then I spoke to scores of party members. They were right. And yet they were derided by some—even in my own party—as being the 'peasants' revolt' or the 'pitchfork revolution'. I remember those times so well! But, in the end, they had a far greater insight than all the political sophisticates around here. We have learnt, haven't we, over the last four or five years, that the cultural insights of these so-called sophisticates—these elites—is often abysmal? Their insights are so divorced—so far—from where the Australian people are, from working Australia, that it is nearly unbelievable. They are light years away.

I chose to listen to my party members and constituents knowing that there is far more to their collective wisdom than the conventional wisdom of the Canberra political echo chamber. Since that time four years ago we have been proven right, time and time again. Now we are turning the last page on this sad and sorry chapter of Australia's political and economic history. It is a victory for common sense in the end—and, indeed, a victory for the national interest. I say this to the Liberal-National Party members and the people of Queensland: this one is for you.