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

This is typical Greens voodoo economics. We have a tax that will raise the same or more but will cost less. The Labor-Greens carbon tax was not just a tax on people's electricity bills; it was a tax on the economy and jobs. It made Australian businesses less competitive internationally by shifting jobs and emissions overseas. You might think that costing people their job is not a problem, but the coalition actually thinks it is. We happen to think that stronger growth, more jobs and more opportunity for people to get ahead are good things. The carbon tax was a tax on everything in the economy. You call it a tax on polluters, but it was actually a tax on employers. It was a tax on businesses that employ Australians. It was a tax on those businesses that keep our lights on, including the lights in this chamber. It was a tax that was not only hurting families, pensioners and small businesses but hurting the economy as a whole. It was costing jobs. It was, over time, according to Labor's own modelling, going to lead to pay cuts and fewer jobs that were less well paid, all the while helping businesses in other parts of the world that were polluting more, for want of a better word—putting more emissions into the atmosphere for the same amount of economic output—to take market share away from us, helping them to take jobs away from Australia. So, there was no environmental benefit but all economic costs—costs for families, pensioners, small businesses and the economy as a whole.