Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Lines, if you think it does those things, it would be an incumbent on you to take to the Australian people a policy to get rid of the tax completely but you are not doing that. It did not do that while you were in government. So your claims right now are exposed as the complete political rhetoric they are. They are not based on what you really believe impacts people. They are based on a political argument which you are seeking to have to focus on cost-of-living issues will.

The irony is that, on this side of the chamber, we are having a mature debate about what our tax system should look like and about how we can promote economic growth; on that side of the chamber they are proposing a massive tax which is going to hit poor people in this country. They are the ones proposing this tax. They are going to do it through another carbon tax. Just last week we saw the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Shorten, put forward a 45 per cent cut in our carbon emissions by 2030, almost halving our carbon emissions by 2030. The only way they are going to do that is through a new carbon tax or a new emissions trading scheme, which is another word for a tax. They are going to put another tax on the Australian people if they get back in power and guess who is going to be paying this tax? Guess who will be most exposed to paying Labor's carbon tax version 2.0? It will be the poorer households in our nation, just as it was last time.

The Australian people rejected the tax last time but the Labor Party are coming back for a sequel. We know it will hit the poorest people because the Labor Party did modelling on this when they were in government. They commissioned economic modelling from the Treasury when they were in government into this type of reduction, into a reduction of around 45 per cent in carbon taxes—44 per cent, to be precise. We know from that modelling, from the experts, from the Australian Treasury, what would be the impact of such a tax. The impact would be that income per person would be $4,900 lower by 2030 if we were to implement such a policy.

No-one is asking us to do this policy. It is beyond the proposals coming from other countries in Paris right now, yet the Australian Labor Party—the party which once represented workers, the party which was formed under a tree in Barcaldine to represent shearers of our nation—are putting forward a tax which will reduce the income of the average person by $5,000 a year, which will hit those industries which employ workers in this country, particularly in our steel, in our aluminium and in our power production sectors. Indeed under the Labor Party modelling on the carbon tax, all 37 coal-fired power stations in this nation would close—all of them.

I know Senator Whish-Wilson and Senator Rice will be licking their lips at the prospect that 37 coal-fired power stations would be out of action but it is not the stated view of the Labor Party. The Labor Party do not believe in shutting down our coal-fired power stations; yet they are pushing a policy which should have that very effect. What are they going to say to the people of the Hunter Valley, what are they going to say to the people of the La Trobe finally, what are they going to say to the people of Central Queensland who lose their jobs because they are pushing a policy which is are ideologically driven and will not deliver a practical result for the environment and will make us economically poorer? From that modelling we know that the coal, oil and gas industries would be around 23 per cent lower than they otherwise would be in 2030, that the coal mining output would be 42 per cent lower and the aluminium industry would halve under their model

These are their figures. They are not my figures, they are not Senator McGrath's figures, they are not any government minister's figures. They are the Australian Labor Party's figures from when they were in government about this particular policy option. It is complete madness. It is madness on stilts to be proposing such a tax, which would hit the poorest Australians the most. We would not be able to afford compensation either, because this policy actually reduces their economic growth.

We on this side are focused on tax reform ideas that will promote economic growth and job creation. Yes, that might mean some change to the mix of our tax system, but that is how we are going to afford a bigger pie which we can share among all Australians to fund all the public services we expect and to make sure every one of us will be better off as a result of that change, as was done with the GST. The way you do not do tax reform is to put taxes on individual sectors of our economy—wealth-producing ones like coal, aluminium and steel—which would lower economic growth, shrink the economic pie and make it harder to make sure every Australian can have a better day tomorrow than they have today.

That is what we are focused on. We are focused on making a brighter and stronger economy for tomorrow than we have today, and we will do that through considered, well thought-through and consultative tax reform. We will not impose massive new taxes on individual sectors of our economy that seek to divide our community, lower our economic growth and make us all poorer.