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

I thank the senator for his question. Taxes on our electricity sector are going to be incredibly bad for northern Australian development, because businesses in northern Australia face some of the highest power prices in our nation. The electricity sector in northern Australia is sparsely developed. Indeed, one customer in Gladstone accounts for 25 per cent of the power demand in northern Australia—the Boyne Island aluminium smelter. So any plan to increase electricity prices is going to have an enormous impact on growth and development in our North. It is going to limit that development and make it harder for businesses in northern Australia to make a go of it.

That is why plans announced by the Labor Party last week to implement an electricity emissions trading scheme, a fancy term for a tax, are going to be bad for northern Australia: because this tax is the sequel to another tax—it is the sequel to a tax that the Labor Party put in last time they were in power—and, like most sequels, this one is going to be worse than the original tax put in place by the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments. This tax is going to be worse because it is going to increase power prices by more than that tax. That tax that was implemented before was only going to increase power prices by 10 per cent. But modelling that they did while they were in government showed that power prices would go up by 78 per cent with a similar scheme to the one that they are looking to implement. A 78 per cent increase in power prices in our North is going to be destructive for development in northern Australia. It is going to make the power prices of businesses in the North even higher than those in other parts of our country. That is why the modelling that the Labor Party did before already shows that the impact of a carbon tax, including on jobs, will be highest in North Queensland and northern Australia generally, and these plans now would limit the government's plans to create jobs and investment in northern Australia.