Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this package of bills, debating what many Australians hope will be the final chapter and effectively the nail in the coffin of the disastrous carbon tax. It is a tax that, of course, was not even meant to exist and it is one of the most damaging and ridiculous policies that has ever traversed through both houses of parliament. It is a tax that has been a blight on this country's economy and a burden on the budget of every Australian family and every Australian business. It has put pressure on the cost of living, it has increased the costs of doing business within Australia and it has damaged our international competitiveness overseas. In fact, it was in its very first year a $7.6 billion hit to our economy. It had a direct impact on over 75,000 Australian businesses.

After all of this, how much did the carbon tax reduce carbon dioxide emissions by? Just 0.1 per cent. It cost $7.6 billion and reduced carbon dioxide emissions by barely 0.1 per cent. I could sum it up in another way. It has not worked. Only the Labor Party and their alliance partners in the Greens could impose a tax on the country to save the environment that actually made next to no difference.

But while the carbon tax was doing its damage to the wallets of Australians, it was also—I remind you, Acting Deputy President Furner, and the people of Australia—doing untold damage to those in the Labor Party. No other policy in recent memory has claimed such high-level political scalps or damaged so many political reputations. Let's take a walk down memory lane. It originally started with Mr Rudd walking away from his emissions trading scheme, which helped lead the way to him being dumped as leader and Prime Minister in 2010. Then Ms Gillard, after plunging the knife into Mr Rudd's back, tried to make her mark on the policy, misleading the Australian people in the most blatant manner that I have ever seen from a sitting Prime Minister. Just days before the election Ms Gillard promised on national television in front of millions of Australians:

There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.

She took that promise to the election, as did all the Labor Party. She scraped into government with the help of a handful of Independents and then turned her back on the clear will of the Australian people by doing the exact thing she promised not to do. The question remained—and it remained a black stain over Ms Gillard's prime ministership—how could anyone trust anything she said after she had backflipped on such a flagrant election promise? That did, indeed, haunt her throughout her prime ministership and eventually it helped lead to her downfall.

Mr Rudd then made a comeback and tried to smooth things over. In his eagerness to win the election at whatever cost, he admitted the carbon tax was a huge burden for all Australians. He said:

The government has decided to terminate the carbon tax to help cost-of-living pressures for families and to reduce costs for small business.

Let me read the opening line of that again: 'The government has decided to terminate the carbon tax'. That was Mr Rudd and the Labor Party before the last election. But that did not save him, because by then the Australian people had had a gutful. They were sick of paying another tax that Labor had lumped them with and that was achieving no beneficial outcome. They were sick of forking out for Labor's and the Green' ideological bent of putting a price on carbon dioxide—that odourless and colourless gas that is actually vital for life on earth. So the Australian people categorically rejected what Labor had put forward—and their policies—at the last election. They wanted change and they did not trust the then Labor government to fulfil their promise of abolishing the carbon tax. So they left it to the coalition to abolish the carbon tax—and that is exactly what we are trying to do.

This is about making things better for the Australian people. It is about removing a toxic tax that does nothing to help the environment but hurts everyone's household budgets. The quarterly CPI figures which were released on 24 October last year, the first CPI figures since the carbon tax was introduced, showed the largest quarterly increase ever. About two-thirds of this increase, on average, was due to the carbon tax. There was a 15.3 per cent rise in electricity and household gas, and a 14.2 per cent rise in miscellaneous fuels. Electricity companies are now being slugged to the tune of $3.5 billion and these higher costs are being passed on to consumers. It was extraordinary to read an opinion piece in the local paper today by Mr Paul Howes, the man who basically said he would quit the Labor Party and quit supporting the Labor Party if one job were lost due to the carbon tax. He was lamenting the cost of electricity for businesses and saying that that was what was making manufacturing uncompetitive. But in his about-face in his opinion piece he failed to once mention the impact of the carbon tax on electricity costs and how that was threatening our manufacturing competitiveness in this country.

We see even more proof with the Clean Energy Regulator's report that tells us 16 of the 20 biggest carbon tax bills went to electricity companies. The additional costs for the power industry overall equate to $4.1 billion. That, of course—and I will say it again—means higher electricity and utility bills for Australian families. Businesses are crying out for relief as well. Labor's tax has been a $1.1 billion burden for our manufacturing sector. Industry groups have said that:

…Australia's high carbon tax raises business costs unnecessarily, hitting industry competitiveness and investment confidence.

The Business Council of Australia agrees, saying the carbon tax:

…places excessive costs on business and households because the carbon charge under the legislation is now one of the highest in the world.

In recent days, Virgin Australia boss John Borghetti singled out the carbon tax for its damaging impact on airlines. I know his words have already been mentioned, but they are worth repeating. He said:

…the best assistance the government and the opposition can provide is the removal of the carbon tax, which has cost this industry hundreds of millions of dollars…

The cost of the carbon tax to this one company alone is $27 million. All this damage is from a tax we were never meant to have in the first place. What Labor and the Greens seem to forget is that the most important poll on the carbon tax was taken on 7 September last year. The people had their say, yet those on the other side of the chamber are still confused. The party that vowed to terminate the carbon tax, as the Labor Party did, is now fighting to keep it. Quite frankly, those on the other side appear to have very little interest in easing the cost-of-living pressures on families. I would suggest that they do not have any, because they were the ones who implemented this tax whose entire aim was to increase costs. That, indeed, was the whole point of it.

In contrast to the continuing Labor chaos, the government has listened. We warned about the destructive nature of this tax before it was implemented. We took our considered and consistent position to the Australian people at the election and we fought to remove the carbon tax. Doing so will have positive consequences. As Rod Sims from the ACCC said last year:

What went up will clearly come down when you take away the carbon price.

According to Treasury modelling, removing the carbon tax in 2014-15 will leave average costs of living across all households around $550 lower than they otherwise would have been in 2014-15. It is estimated that retail electricity will be around nine per cent lower and retail gas prices around seven per cent lower than they would otherwise have been. This means that average electricity bills will be around $200 lower than they otherwise would have been for households. It also means that average household gas bills will be around $70 lower than they would otherwise have been. For business, it is estimated that compliance costs will decrease by around $87.6 million per year. The burdens pushed onto Australian business and families will be eased and taxpayers will no longer have to foot the bill for Labor's reckless spending and misguided ideological vendetta against carbon dioxide.

All this goes to show the level of deception and nonsense that has been attached to this carbon tax. Mr Rudd called the carbon tax—or its previous incarnation—the great moral challenge of our generation, and yet twice he denounced policies that his party was pursuing.

Ms Gillard made a fundamental error of judgement in breaking her promise to all Australians. Dr Bob Brown, a former senator, blamed the Queensland floods on coal companies and climate change. Speaking about the Murray Darling Basin in 2009, Senator Wong said:

… this severe, extended drought is clearly linked with global warming.

And now the Leader of the Opposition, after sitting back and watching his colleagues self-destruct over this, is providing only more chaos for the Labor Party and for the Australian people by holding up the repeal of the carbon tax.

Senators on the other side of the chamber are the prophets of doom, always seeking to fundamentally change our economy to pursue an extreme agenda. The climate change alarmists want us to believe what they tell us, at any cost. It is all about the price they are willing for others to pay. And, quite frankly, it is not simply the impact that something like the carbon tax has on our economy that we should be considering; we all have to pay for the extras that come with these policies. Almost $1.5 million was spent by the Rudd government on travel costs to send 68 people to that ill-famed Copenhagen conference in 2009; a conference that achieved basically nothing.

Taxpayers also forked out another $360,000 for a delegation to be sent to a Mexico climate change conference. And how can we forget the clauses within the draft of the mooted Copenhagen treaty that sought to establish an unelected and virtually unaccountable world body that would have required Australia to transfer billions of dollars each and every year to developing countries, all in the name of combating climate change? Those are just a few examples of how easy it was for the previous government to spend taxpayers' money to pursue their green dreams and socialist agenda.

Rather than seeking to strike a balance between protecting the environment and the economic challenges we already face, Labor and the Greens were happy for taxpayers to bear the financial burden because it is the only way they know how to govern: taxes and more taxes. Their idea is to keep levelling taxes on other people without bothering about the real costs to our community. It is time for us to end this terrible part of our recent history. It is time for us to move on with getting our economy back on track. While those on the other side, along with their friends the Greens, sit and watch the death throes of their disastrous policy experiment, whose legacy we are living with today, the government is getting on with the job of governing.

We are making the tough decisions that protect the interests of this country, doing what is necessary to ensure that families and businesses have the best chance to succeed. We are working to implement the will of the Australian people, who want to see this carbon tax gone. We will not tax the Australian economy to achieve our environmental goals, unlike Labor and the Greens, who will tax the economy without achieving any environmental goals. We will work towards a sustainable environment through low-cost, effective opportunities to improve the environment.

The people of Australia know where we stand. They knew where we stood before the election; they know where we now stand. It is now up to the other side to respect the wishes of the people and vote to repeal the carbon tax and free this country from this damaging and ridiculous policy that was never designed to achieve any meaningful environmental outcome. I will be supporting this bill.