Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Finance, Charities and Electoral Matters) Share this | Hansard source

I'd just like to start by commenting on the cruelty of the Labor Party's tactics group, which keeps humiliating their own senators with their line of questioning, which never fails to highlight their absolute inadequacies in any number of policy areas. I think it's particularly harsh to be leading out with Senator Watt, who was, along with his left-wing colleagues, the author of the strategy at the last election to make it a climate change election, which worked out so beautifully for them around the country but most particularly where Senator Murray Watt was leading the charge, in the great state of Queensland. This is where the Labor Party, in making it a climate change election, managed to poll at roughly 22 per cent of the primary vote.

I would like to, first, comment on the absolute abject cruelty of Labor's question time strategy when it comes to highlighting their inadequacies. When they ask about aged care, we're reminded of the fact that they had $387 billion of new taxes and not one dollar—not one dollar—for aged care. When they ask about defence, we are reminded of the fact that the Labor Party lowered the defence budget as a proportion of GDP to about the lowest in this country since World War II, and we have been picking up the slack since. When we talk about climate change, and when they ask questions about climate change, we are reminded about the Labor Party's abject failure when it came to policies in this space.

Despite imposing a carbon tax that they promised they would not impose on the Australian people, guess what? When the Labor Party were in government, they were still on track not to meet the 2020 Kyoto targets. So not only did they impose this economy-destroying tax, which we had to come and repeal in 2013-14, but also they were still on track not to meet their Kyoto targets. They imposed all of the economic pain on the Australian people without any of the environmental gain. What did we do? We came in with our direct action—

Senator Pratt interjecting—

I will tell you what we did in comparison! We have the Labor Party's record, which is a carbon tax they promised not to deliver but did deliver, but a failure to meet the 2020 targets. That was where we were on track. Then the coalition comes in, repeals the carbon tax, grows the economy, and guess what? We meet our 2020 targets. Now the Labor Party can only argue about whether or not carryover credits should be used, because we were able to achieve our targets—of course they wouldn't use carryover credits, if the Labor Party were in, because they were on track not to meet the targets. You only get the carryover credits if you overachieve. If you underachieve you don't get to use the carryover credits. That is a fundamental difference between us.

It is particularly cruel, in the last couple of days—and I do have sympathy for some of my Labor Senate colleagues who have been sent out by the tactics group. Members of the Otis group have been sent out to lead the charge on climate change questioning. I think that is particularly cruel. When we saw that the Otis group had formed and had fine Farrell wines and delicious foods—God knows what their carbon footprint was, but we won't get into that—and they had got together to try and fight and argue for more sensible policy, when it came to the balance between emissions reductions and supporting jobs, supporting industry, little did we know that only a few days after the emergence of this group this get together was a meeting of surrender.

We saw the 2050 net zero emissions reduction announced only a few days after the Otis group came out. It appears that that meeting was a declaration of surrender by the more sensible people within the Labor Party who have been completely rolled. Where Anthony Albanese is taking the Labor Party and where he wants to take the Australian people is to a place where our economy suffers, where jobs are lost, where we have higher electricity prices, and if your record when you were last in government follows you still won't achieve the targets, because you were absolutely useless at delivering it last time— (Time expired)