Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Minister for Employment) Share this | Hansard source

Let us just be very clear about one issue here. What this government is seeking to do is to have the carbon tax repealed. That was the bipartisan position of Prime Minister Gillard and the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Abbott, at the 2010 election. We were promised there would be no carbon tax in 2010. Then, in 2013, Prime Minister Rudd and the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Abbott, were once again on a unity ticket—and I have exhibit A here: a Labor Party brochure authorised by George Wright, in which he tells us, 'Kevin Rudd and Labor have removed the carbon tax.'

So why on earth is my good friend Senator Moore—recently resworn as a representative of the people of Queensland, having been elected on the policy of removing the carbon tax, and her colleagues before her having been elected on a policy of never having a carbon tax—now standing here seeking to frustrate the will of the Australian people? I do not think anyone could argue with the proposition that the carbon tax was one of the key issues at the last election.

The reason the Australian people wanted to see the back end of the carbon tax was that they knew it was impacting on their cost of living—$550 for the average household in Australia each and every year. And, courtesy of the Greens-Labor majority that used to preside in this place, the carbon tax ratcheted up yet again on 1 July to increase that impost on Australian families even further. And, if the cost-of-living impost is not bad enough, we know it destroys jobs. The carbon tax is a blot on the economic landscape of our nation. It attacks the cost of living of families and it is destroying jobs as we speak.

We all know the example of Fuji chemicals, which wanted to set up in Australia with $1 billion worth of infrastructure capital investment and 150 jobs, as an ongoing concern and replacing imports. They decided to set up in China instead, simply because of the carbon tax. Do you know what they will do in China? They will emit more greenhouse gases in their production than they did in a pre-carbon tax environment in Australia. And that is where you see the absolutely perverse environmental outcome of the carbon tax. Not only does it destroy Australia's economy and the cost of living; it actually ensures that clean production companies in Australia have to move offshore to countries where they do not have as strong an environmental regime as we do in Australia.