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

So why did you campaign to abolish the carbon tax, not only in 2010 but in 2013 as well?

As I have already pointed out to Senator Cameron—he who will interject but never listen—the carbon tax applying in Australia is in fact perverse in relation to the world's environment. Europe discovered that themselves when they closed down their relatively clean aluminium smelters only to see them pop up again in Africa and elsewhere where the environmental regimes were not half as good as they were in their pre-existing foundries and smelters in Europe. As a result, the world's environment was worse off. The same is happening in relation to Australia. With great respect to Senator Moore, it is not as though this is a debate that has fallen out of the sky just today; I think it has been around very strongly for a number of years. In fact, so strong was the sentiment in the Australian community that Labor promised no carbon tax in 2010. They promised that absolutely.

Then, when they realised the vehemence with which the Australian people despised the carbon tax—because it was impacting on the cost of living; it was destroying their jobs and having a perverse outcome on the environment—the Labor Party rushed around at the 2013 election to say, 'No, nothing to see here. We've already removed the carbon tax.' We know that the carbon tax has not been removed. Just as the Australian people were misled before the 2010 election—that there would be no carbon tax—so they were misled by the Australian Labor Party in 2013 with the assertion that the carbon tax had already been removed.

The simple fact that we have to introduce this swathe of bills, some nine of them, indicates that the carbon tax regrettably is still alive and well. And, each day that this carbon tax continues, it will continue to have an impost on the cost of living for every single Australian, and it will continue to destroy jobs, especially in the manufacturing sector—