John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Wright referred to the drought package announced last week by Prime Minister Abbott and the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Barnaby Joyce. Sure, it has been dry in many parts of Australia—and of course the Greens start wringing their hands and scream 'climate change'—but there have been droughts every decade and climate change was not even thought or talked of. We can go back to the big drought of 1895 to 1907.

Let's get back to the debate and look at what business says about the carbon tax—to August 2013, in Fernvale Queensland and the business Zanow Sand and Gravel. Manager Brad Zanow said overheads had risen by $15,000 a month and that the carbon tax had led to an increase in electricity bills as well as the cost of oil, cement powder and air-conditioning gas. Mr Zanow said the business had shed five of its 58 staff. In December 2012 Grain Products Australia, based in Tamworth—I visited this factory in recent times, prior to this—went into administration citing increased electricity charges as one of the reasons it was in financial trouble. The $1.2 million increase in energy costs was blamed on network charges, environmental issues and—you guessed it—the carbon tax.

In February 2014 Virgin Australia boss John Borghetti said the best thing the government and Labor could do for airlines would be to scrap the carbon tax. Virgin Australia suffered an $83 million loss to the end of December last year and Mr Borghetti said the carbon tax has cost the airline industry hundreds of millions of dollars. These figures are thrown around—the carbon tax cost Qantas $106 million last year and Virgin Airlines more than $50 million. Isn't it amazing that, when the previous government and their strange alliance brought this tax in, they put it on the airlines in Australia but not those that fly internationally?

I want to make another point. Out in most large rural areas we have crop dusters—small airplanes for spreading fertilizer and often chemical spraying for weeds in crops. I was speaking to a gentleman just recently who owns a crop-dusting business. The carbon tax component of the fuel for his airplanes has cost him $60,000. Here are graziers, spreading fertilizer to encourage growth in our natural pastures and improved pastures, and when they grow they actually absorb CO2, they carry more stock and they grow more food to feed people in Australia and around the world. But this crazy tax we are trying to abolish is taxing this crop-dusting company $60,000 a year. Of course a grazier says, 'Well, I'll budget $30,000 for the spreading of fertilizer this year'—so he or she will spend the $30,000. Because there are higher spreading costs for the fuel for those aircraft, they actually spread less fertilizer.

Tourism Accommodation Australia estimates the cost of the carbon tax on the sector would be $115 million in the first year alone. Macquarie Generation, in the Hunter Valley, which operates the Liddell and Bayswater power stations—I am sure many would be well aware of those generators—had a carbon tax bill to 30 June last year that was a massive $460 million. And what did they do? They just passed it on to the consumer.

This is the broadest, largest price on carbon in the world. Here we are trying to compete in the world markets, with other countries that have nowhere near the costs of these so-called environmental taxes, and we are losing our competitive edge. It is as simple as that.

I am the first to say that the environment is probably the most important thing we have to protect for future generations, especially our lands and our soils that have to grow the food—but this tax goes nowhere near doing any of that. In fact, if you want to look after the environment I suggest you look at a map of Australia. At a guess I would say that 55, 60 or perhaps 65 per cent of our whole nation is in the hands of farmers, graziers and pastoralists. The best way we can look after that environment is to see that the people running those properties actually make a living and have money in their pockets. Without money they are forced, if I can put it this way, to mine their country instead of farm their country—or perhaps overcrop it or overstock it to try to stay financially viable.

The best way we can look after our environment is to see we have strong financial landowners. We had a terrible run with the previous government's ridiculous decision, supported by the Greens, to ban the live export of cattle to Indonesia. Now, thankfully, this government—and I commend Prime Minister Tony Abbott and the Minister for Agriculture, Barnaby Joyce, for this—have gone back to Indonesia and stimulated the export of cattle once more. In September 2013 OECD research backed the coalition's claims that 'Australia's pioneering carbon pricing is damaging its competitiveness'. So we have the OECD agreeing with what I just said.

Let's talk briefly about the weather—because the Greens have been in here waffling on about heatwaves and droughts. I will quote from an article of 22 October:

The Blue Mountains bushfire crisis was the result of a lack of political leadership and had nothing to do with climate change, one of Australia's foremost disaster management experts said. David Packham, a former Deputy Director of the Australian Counter Disaster College, said linking the NSW fire disaster with global warming was nonsense. Mr. Packham previously accused latte conservationists of having too much influence on forest management.

This is the argument I have made many times in this place: if you lock up country and leave it in the form of national parks then the grass grows, the lightning strikes, the fires get going and the damage is enormous. It is not conservation; it is destroying those areas that are not managed. Until I leave this place and go to my grave, whenever that is, I will say: you must manage country. This is one of the serious problems we face with the serious bushfires, in national parks especially, with huge fuel loads—and that is not helping our environment one bit. As I said, if we want to help our environment, get our business sector strong and get our farmers financially strong so they can spend the money on the environment.