Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

At the invitation of the minister, I will indicate that the coalition have a proud record of dealing with these issues. We don't believe in taxing the life out of the Australian economy. We don't believe in shutting down businesses to achieve some ideological outcome. We don't believe in doing dodgy deals with the Australian Greens. That's the difference between the government and the opposition. The government are the government today because they conned the people of Australia into voting for them. That's why they're there—because they promised the people of Australia they were going to reduce power bills by $275 for everyone. Do you know what? That promise, made 97 times of course, is now not one they're going to stick to. It's one they won't even mention.

The minister asks me what our position is. We care about the environment. We care about carbon emissions and dealing with them. But we're not going to tax the life out of the economy just to offshore our emissions. When it becomes unaffordable to do business here, when it becomes unaffordable to manufacture cement, aluminium and steel, do you know what they're going to do? They're going to start doing it overseas. They're not going to do it here. They're going to be doing it in countries where they don't give a damn about the environment, where they don't have a mechanism like the one we're doing. This is what companies will sadly do. When we push the emissions out of our backyard so we can't see them and we can all feel good about our lattes on a Saturday morning, do you know what we're also doing? We're sending jobs offshore from places like Georgetown in Tasmania, where smelters are going to be impacted by this. Norske Skog in the Derwent Valley, the only newsprint mill in Australia, will be captured by this. That's the difference between us and you. We do not want to destroy the economy on the altar of Labor-Green ideology. You want to talk about our policies? We stand with consumers, we stand with households and we stand with businesses, not with Labor talking points.