Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Well, 'weren't good enough', Senator, because they would have said something that did not fit your political line. Remember: it was your leader who promised the Australian people before the 2010 election: 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.' She told us it would never happen. Why did she tell us that if she subsequently said it was a good thing to do? You do not need to delve too closely into what happened to understand the hypocrisy, and the downright dishonesty, might I say, of the Australian Labor Party. Ms Gillard and Mr Swan promised there would be no carbon tax. The minute they could, they got in and broke that promise.

I just want to ask: if it was such a good idea, why did Ms Gillard promise not to do it? Has anyone ever answered that? I repeat my question in the hope that someone might be able to explain it. Australia emits less than 1.4 per cent of the world's carbon emissions; how is reducing that by five per cent going to save all the cyclones and floods that the Greens tell us will come upon the world if we do not reduce our 1.4 per cent emissions by five per cent? Is there anything in that that is believable? Similarly, the climate has changed. What was the cause of that climate change prior to the industrialised era of this nation? Something was doing it. It clearly was not man's emissions of carbon, so tell me what it was. That is why this whole debate is never as clear cut as the Greens and the Labor Party would have us believe. I retain an open mind—