Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of answers given by the Minister for Climate Change and Water (Senator Wong) to questions without notice asked by Senators Boswell, Boyce and Mason today relating to the proposed emissions trading scheme.

It is interesting today, and I thank the President for telling us, that ‘doormats’ is not a term that is of any consequence in here. I want to reflect, in my speech taking note of answers, to the doormats that are now in Queensland—doormats to Labor Party environmental policy. The ETS is the ‘employment termination scheme’ for the many people in Queensland who will lose their jobs because of this political gesture.

Let us talk about who the doormats to this Labor policy will be in Queensland. Let us talk about the people in Gladstone in the aluminium industry, who will be the doormats to Labor’s emissions trading scheme—the employment termination scheme. Let us talk about the people in Gladstone who work in the coal industry, who will become doormats to the Labor Party’s environmental altar. Let us talk about the people in Gladstone involved with electricity generation and all those who rely on it, who will become doormats to the Labor Party’s employment termination scheme. Let’s talk about the people in Mackay in the coal industry, who will become doormats to the Labor Party’s gesture, which is completely without consequence to the environment. It is a political gesture that will put people out of work.

Queensland working families will be out of work for a political gesture. Queensland working families will become doormats to the Labor Party. Their jobs, their income, do not matter, as long as the Labor Party can have the credentials to waffle on at some international conference, as long as the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, can hold up and wave a flag about his magnanimous solo crusade.

Let us talk about the people of Mount Isa in the refining business, who will become doormats to the Labor Party’s emissions trading scheme. Apparently the fact that they live in the privations of western Queensland is of no consequence—they will be offered up at the Labor Party’s environmental altar. Let us talk about the people at Cloncurry who will become doormats because of the effect the Labor Party’s emissions trading scheme will have on the grazing industry—a 20 per cent increase in costs for an industry that only makes about a four per cent return.

Let us talk about the people of Cairns who will become doormats to the Labor Party’s policy—apparently the Labor Party do not care about the tourism industry. Apparently they do not care that aviation fuel is going to be picked up by the ETS—the employment termination scheme. They do not care that flights will be closed down. People will lose their jobs because of this political gesture, this political tokenism, this disgusting attack on Queensland working families by the Labor Party.

Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It’ll look good in Geneva, though.

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, they will look good in Geneva, they will look smarmy in Kyoto, but they will look disastrous if you have a job in Gladstone, in Mount Isa, in Rockhampton, in Mackay, in Cairns, in Townsville, in Cloncurry or in Toowoomba. All these places are to become doormats to the Labor Party because apparently their gesture is worth more than Queensland jobs, more than the jobs of Australian working families.

How dare they come in here and say they support working families when they are the only party in the Western world coming up with a policy that will put people out of work for a token gesture. Some 50,000 abattoir workers, meat workers, could lose their jobs because of this gesture and the jobs of about 18,000 mining workers in Queensland are under threat, because of a gesture. They are willing to put these people down. They do not care about them any more. They have found themselves on the Treasury benches and now they can put these people aside for a gesture. The ETS, the employment termination scheme, is brought to you by the Australian Labor Party—who consider you to be no more than a doormat—for the Kyoto protocol and the whole environmental movement, even though it is not actually going to change the environment, even though it is not going to make one iota of difference to the climate. They are willing to put these people out of work, out on the street, and have the locks changed after their houses are repossessed because they no longer have jobs—because of the Labor Party. (Time expired)

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Joyce, there is a great deal of stupidity in your remarks, because the greatest threat to jobs in Queensland in the long term is climate change. Indeed, you only need to look at the coral bleaching that is projected to take place, even under the existing projections of climate change. If we fail to mitigate climate change, as our ETS outlines that we should, we will be looking at a far more catastrophic scenario for the Great Barrier Reef. That is the real threat to jobs in Queensland.

Labor have done extensive work on this issue, unlike those opposite, who do not want to talk about the jobs that will be lost if we fail to respond to climate change. We must prepare this nation for a carbon constrained future, a future in which we will very much feel the impact of climate change on jobs—in the Western Australian rock lobster industry, for instance, through increased drought and coral bleaching.

The fact is that not taking action now would leave Australian jobs on an even more insecure footing. We need to put Australia on a footing that will create the jobs of the future and mitigate as much of the inevitable damage of climate change on our great nation as possible. We need to emerge from this economic downturn with a commitment to the jobs of the future. That is what is in the best interests of our nation. It makes good economic sense, and our economic modelling has told us so. We know that the less we do now the more it will cost later.

I hope senators in this place had a chance earlier this week to go to the CSIRO’s briefing on the latest science on climate change. The CSIRO made it very, very clear that what will prove most costly to the Australian community, environment and economy is unabated climate change. We must mitigate climate change and we must cooperate with the global community to reach that goal.

The impact on our local environment is already going to be severe, but, if unmitigated, it will be catastrophic. We will have more bushfires—and we only need to look at the nation’s recent experiences to see how terrible they can be. We will have more floods. Look at the impact on productivity in North Queensland of the floods that we have experienced. We will have less rain, more drought and more extreme weather events. This is not the future that we want for our nation.

On the other hand, the government is looking to provide substantial support and assistance for the jobs of today to transition to the jobs of the future through the CPRS. We have allocated free permits to engage in emissions-intensive trade-exposed activities. We have an Electricity Sector Adjustment Scheme, and that is going to provide fixed allocations of permits to coal fired electricity generators worth about $3.9 billion over five years. We also have a $2.15 billion Climate Change Action Fund, which is providing further targeted assistance to businesses as well as community sector organisations, workers, regions and communities. We understand that what we are doing is difficult. This is no easy path, but the alternative that you would have us face is much worse. The CPRS will create the low pollution jobs of the future. The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme and our renewable energy target are creating the low pollution jobs of the future in industries like solar energy, on wind farms and in jobs using new technologies—clean coal and geothermal energy.

Senators will know that the Treasury modelling released last October shows that these measures are going to see the renewable energy sector grow to up to 30 times its current size by 2050, creating thousands of new jobs. But if we do not act Australia’s economy is going to be left behind. We will not have the opportunity to create the low pollution jobs of the future. We will have missed the boat. (Time expired)

Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let us have a quick look at the government’s record on jobs. Prior to Christmas there was a stimulus package and the government promised that 70,000 jobs would be created.

Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

75,000.

Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They promised that 75,000 jobs would be created by the first stimulus package. What is the evidence of any job creation? There is none—absolutely none. There have been no jobs created. So the language started to change. We learnt all about ‘create’ and then it changed.

Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Jacinta Collins interjecting—

Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The language changed from ‘create’ to ‘support’, Senator Collins. The second stimulus package came out—$42 billion—but it is now not about creating jobs any more; it is about supporting jobs. That is now the best the government can do.

Is there any evidence that the $42 billion stimulus package is actually supporting any jobs? No; once again there is not. We have had two stimulus packages but there were no jobs created before Christmas with the first stimulus package. And in the second stimulus package how many jobs have been supported? We are not sure if there are any. That is the government’s record, having spent billions of dollars on job support and job creation.

The government has failed to create any jobs and it has even failed the smaller test—the easier test, the lower benchmark—of supporting jobs. It has even failed to do that. But what is far, far worse than failing to create jobs and failing to support jobs is, as my friend Senator Joyce has pointed out, that the government policy is now costing jobs—thousands of jobs throughout our state of Queensland. We learnt today that Xstrata has said that they may have to retrench up to 1,000 employees and sacrifice 4,000 future jobs. Just to remind Senator Collins about how bad it is, this appeared on page 1 of the Courier Mail:

In other employment news, a survey of 40 businesses with turnover up to $250 million has found 60 per cent had already frozen, or planned to freeze, staff hiring this financial year.

So not only has there been no creation and no support, but now the government is actually costing jobs. That is why the opposition does not support the government’s ETS. It has failed. The entire architecture of the government’s scheme is a failure. As far as jobs are concerned it has failed every single benchmark. On the front page of today’s Australian it said:

Modelling shows regional impact greater than forecast.

Labor heartland turns on ETS.

These are the workers of Gladstone and Mount Isa. The mayors are concerned that the towns will turn into ghost towns because there will be no jobs. Labor workers, who that lot opposite say they care about, will be without work. Real estate will fall and they will be without jobs. The mayors and the workers of those towns are petrified about the ETS.

No wonder the Labor heartland is falling apart; they know that this will cost jobs. Everyone throughout the country knows that, except, it seems, the Labor frontbench. Mr Rudd does not mind going to trendy conferences. That is great, but what about the people? What about the workers? What about the workers in Gladstone and Mount Isa? The one way the Labor Party will be able to win the seat of Gladstone in the state election is that there will be no-one left there. We are talking about a serious economic recession in Central Queensland because of these schemes.

And the hide of the Labor frontbench to come in here and preach to this side about working families! They are far more concerned about how they appear to the overseas set than they are about the workers of Central Queensland. That is the great failure of this government. Every time it comes to a choice between the latte set and the workers, they go with the latte set. That is the one thing that never changes about the Australian Labor Party: in a choice between workers and the latte set, the latte set wins every single time.

Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On the same matter, Senator Mason is right about one thing and one thing only: we are dealing with a serious economic recession. But what is of critical importance to all Australians and their jobs is not the regional recession, despite the fact that this weekend we have an election in Queensland; rather, it is the fact that we are dealing with a global financial crisis. If you listened to the opposition in question time today or to them taking note of answers after question time, there is one area only where the opposition are being quite consistent with their policy, and that is what I have characterised previously as scepticism and denial. Their scepticism and denial about the global financial crisis is astounding. We all know their longstanding scepticism about climate change; there is nothing new in that. There is nothing new that they could use today to focus debate on that issue. But what is shameless, what is outrageous, is the way they seek to utilise every shift in our labour market, as if it is a sign, to justify their scepticism and their denial.

The best example of that recently—and I will not harp on the comment ‘let’s just wait and see’ made by the previous shadow Treasurer, Julie Bishop, about the global financial crisis—is from their new shadow Treasurer, Mr Hockey, who used the Pacific Brands situation as a case in point on this issue. Quite aside from his claims that Pacific Brands have made their decisions due to factors well beyond the immediate, pressing, economic recession worldwide, he tried to claim that it was our labour policies that had generated that shift. The one simple fact that he should have been aware of, that he should have known—and that, certainly, Senator Mason was seeking to deny in this debate today—is that our first economic stimulus package actually increased retail spending on socks and jocks. It increased retail spending. It was quite counterintuitive for the shadow Treasurer to even use that as a case in point. Labor’s package had increased pre-Christmas retail spending in Australia on socks and jocks. That is why I use that as perhaps the best example. He is the best person this opposition can come up with as shadow Treasurer, and he cannot understand the sheer economics of what was occurring in the Pacific Brands case.

But that is not the only example. If you look at the cases raised today in question time, in case after case after case, shifts in the labour market were used by the opposition to try and deny not only the global financial crisis but also that we should do something to drive investment in renewable energy. Why is it that this opposition cannot accept that we should do something in that area? Perhaps it is the same reason, this same scepticism and denial, that leads them to reject us doing anything to support investment in the commercial property sector. Again, this is a case of denial, but I thought it was an even better example, because if Mr Turnbull maintains his opposition in that area we are indeed looking at 50,000 people losing their jobs in that sector. Fifty thousand people, the estimates tell us, will lose their jobs in the commercial property sector if the opposition oppose yet another measure that is trying to support and sustain Australian jobs.

The opposition can continue to harp on the various examples that will occur in the future in the Australian labour market, because every Australian knows that we do suffer some level of vulnerability to the global financial crisis. The opposition may want to deny that and use every single case to try and argue that it is the Rudd Labor government’s fault, but Australians are not that stupid. It is no wonder that you are suffering in the polls in how well you are regarded as economic managers—because Australians are not that stupid. (Time expired)

Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would also like to take note of the answers—well, the almost answers, the semi-answers—given by Minister Wong to questions asked by coalition senators today regarding the emissions trading scheme and the effect that it will have on jobs. I think we have had quite enough of the big picture, as presented by Minister Wong, which has no detail about anything except that perhaps it will be okay some time in the future—that is, if there is anyone left to take the jobs that she hopes to be able to create in the future some time. Let us get away from that big picture and talk about what is actually happening on the ground right now in regional communities all over Australia—for example, in Gladstone and Mount Isa, which particularly concern me.

I have used in the past a story that was told to me in the Queensland country town of Roma, about what happened when they were having difficulty finding a bank manager for one of the local banks. When there was no bank manager in Roma, the 10 major accounts of that bank were transferred to the nearest large town, which was Toowoomba. Guess where those families went to shop, to have haircuts, to buy shoes and to buy clothes? They went to the major regional centre, not the local town. The effect on the economy of Roma of taking a key worker out of the system was dramatic, to the extent that the council got involved to try and ameliorate the problem. This is what we are looking at thousands and thousands of times over in centres like Gladstone and Mount Isa. Now vibrant regional towns, they are certainly not going to stay that way if Minister Wong can see only the big picture of the future, not what is actually happening on the ground right now to Queenslanders.

It is worth noting the comments made by the mayors of Mount Isa and Gladstone in this regard. The Mayor of Mount Isa, John Molony, said:

… the ETS should be held in abeyance until the economic downturn is over …

He points out:

… smelting and copper refining in Mt Isa and Townsville … would be severely hindered—

if they had to trade carbon emission permits. It is beyond thinking that the only response that the minister had to that was: ‘Oh well, it’ll be okay in years to come. They can all go and work in tourism on the Great Barrier Reef.’

The Mayor of Gladstone, George Creed, has also said that the ETS will damage the industrial viability of his community at the very time when they can least afford it. These mayors are interested, yes, in the long-term future of their communities. They are interested in ensuring that climate change has the least possible impact on their communities. But they are also interested in the plight faced by working families in those towns right now. They do not need the sorts of pie in the sky responses that we received from the minister during question time.

It was interesting to note that, despite the questions that were asked by my colleague Senator Boswell about the coal industry, the minister managed to never use the term ‘coal’ in her answer. She responded by talking about emission intensive industries and the like. These are real industries that are worked in by real people. What we need the government to do is to get real and care about what is happening now. Certainly they should pursue the long-term need to reduce emissions and ameliorate the effects of climate change, but they should not do it wholly and solely at the expense of Australian workers now.

Let us look just briefly at what the Queensland response to the cuts in jobs in Queensland will be. Where is Minister John Mickel? Nonexistent. Where is the Queensland Premier, Anna Bligh, and where are her attempts to save jobs? Not there. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.