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

There is a loud, consistent and very sound chorus of voices from the Australian community calling for the world's biggest carbon tax to be repealed. It is time for the Senate to heed those voices. The government, in its endeavour to repeal the carbon tax, has received support from many quarters, be it the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry or the National Farmers' Federation, from BlueScope Steel to Wesfarmers. But, more importantly than those with potentially a particular interest, over 10 million Australians voted for a variety of political parties all committed to the repeal of the carbon tax—and one of those political parties was the Australian Labor Party. At the last election, even Labor pretended that they had repealed the carbon tax.

This morning, Gary Heilmann, a fishing business operator, told his fellow Australians, courtesy of the ABC, of the carbon tax impost on his operation:

The carbon tax alone cost us around about $30,000 per year here. Plus the other major impact was the $72 per kilo that it added to the refrigerant gases that we use for our refrigeration plants, both on the boats and in the factory.

He went on:

Effectively we went from a situation where a failure on a boat or piece of equipment would cost $2000 worth of refrigerant, to … $10,000 every time.