Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

If we want to protect our living standards today, if we want to build opportunity and prosperity for the future then we need to implement the economic action strategy the coalition took to the last election and we need to implement our plans to repair the budget.

This week last year we had then Prime Minister Rudd go out into the community saying that he was going to be the carbon tax terminator. Now we on this side of the chamber know what a carbon tax terminator looks like and we certainly know that Prime Minister Rudd was no carbon tax terminator because guess what? The carbon tax is back. As soon as the supposed carbon tax terminator, Mr Rudd, goes off into the sunset, here is the Labor Party—having campaigned on the promise to remove the carbon tax, indeed, having asserted they had already abolished the carbon tax—voting every day to keep it. This is a tax that has not been terminated but is still alive and kicking.