Senate debates
Monday, 28 February 2011
Gillard Government
Censure Motion
2:23 pm
Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
by leave—I move:
That the Senate censures the government for its gross deception of the Australian people by introducing a carbon tax after specifically ruling out such a measure during the election.
The Labor-Green alliance’s carbon tax announced last week is one of the biggest deceptions perpetrated on the Australian people. That is why this government deserves to be censured. It is a gross betrayal of the Australian people by their government. That is why this government deserves to be censured. It is dishonesty writ large. That is why this government deserves to be censured.
Let us be clear: in the last week of the campaign Labor specifically, solemnly and shamelessly promised no carbon tax. Let us just go through the list of examples that we have. Ms Gillard said:
There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.
Nothing could have been clearer. On 20 August, the day before the election, when things were very tight and everybody knew the election was close, Ms Gillard said:
I rule out a carbon tax.
Nothing could have been clearer. Indeed, her deputy, Mr Swan, said:
We have made our position very clear. We have ruled it out.
Then on 15 August he said:
Well, certainly, what we rejected is this hysterical allegation somehow that we are moving toward a carbon tax. We certainly reject that.
We now know that the government and the Labor Party were at all times moving to a carbon tax. So they made this specific, solemn and shameless promise to the Australian people in the dying days of the election that there would be no carbon tax. When the polls were desperately tight, Labor made the promise of no carbon tax, which allowed them to cling to power by their fingernails, with a little help from their friends in the Greens. Who in this place doubts that if Labor had said in the week leading up to the election, ‘We will introduce a carbon tax,’ they today would be sitting on this side of the chamber? They would be in opposition and there is no doubt that Tony Abbott would be the leader of a majority coalition government.
So Australians are quite right in asking today: ‘How is it that two members of the House of Representatives and five senators can dictate the nation’s policy against the policies on which 147 members of the House of Representatives and 71 senators were elected?’ It seems that the Greens tail that was wagging this Labor government has now morphed into the full backbone and skeleton and is directing absolutely every move of this conscienceless government. We now know the heavy price the Australian people are paying for this government: deceit before the election, deals immediately after the election and, now, these pathetic denials of the most disingenuous kind. Make no mistake. Labor’s promise of ‘no carbon tax’ was its election eve promise. It was express; it was emphatic. That is why Labor’s flagrant breach is such a gross and unprecedented betrayal of the Australian people and that is why it is imperative that this chamber censures the government.
This betrayal will impact every single Australian in every sphere of their lives. It will rightly shatter any vestige of confidence that may remain in the integrity of this government. It will punch holes in every household budget. It will destroy tens of thousands of jobs. And, perversely, it will make things worse for the environment in the absence of a global agreement. You can be assured that the factory owners of the BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India and China—are cheering on this Labor-Green madness, because they know that their products will now be able to displace the Australian made products, which are so much cleaner.
Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
You are sounding like Scott Morrison.
Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
An example that I can give to the senator from South Australia is—
Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Senator Wong interjecting—
Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
that in her very own home state there is a manufacturer of zinc—
Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
You are bloody shameful.
Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I withdraw.
John Hogg (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Senators on both sides, this does not help. We have a motion before the chair that the chamber has agreed to hear. Senator Abetz deserves to be heard. This is not helping Senator Abetz or me. When we have silence on both sides we will proceed.
Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I can understand the sensitivity and shrillness, especially that of Senator Wong, the failed minister for climate change. Let us not forget that in 2007 climate change was the greatest moral challenge of our time. Then what happened to it? While she was minister, it all of a sudden got dumped. And at whose insistence? At Ms Gillard’s insistence. We know that courtesy of Mr Rudd’s leaks during the last election. Nobody from Labor has denied it. So we have a situation in which this person who is Prime Minister today convinced the former Prime Minister, who she knifed, that it was no longer the greatest moral challenge of our time. Then she sought to take control of the Labor Party. She specifically promised the Australian people that she was not Mr Rudd, but—
Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
The ‘real Julia’.
Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
the ‘real Julia’—exactly right, Senator Ronaldson. ‘Trust me,’ she said. On the topic of trust, Senator Evans claims that he cannot remember what Ms Gillard said in her policy speech. Allow me to remind him. On the very first page, she said this: ‘I want to speak to you. I want to speak to you from my heart. I want to speak to you about my values.’ So it was from her heart and based on her values. I went through this document page by page, line by line, word by word, to see where there was this promise of a carbon price that had always been front and centre of Labor’s policy, according to Minister Evans. I am sorry: there was no mention of a carbon price; there was no mention of a carbon tax. Indeed, page after page, line after line, word after word, there is not a mention of a carbon tax or carbon price.
Finally, in the very last paragraph, eight lines from the end of Labor’s policy launch, is the only reference to climate change. That which was the great moral challenge of our time in 2007 was relegated to the very last paragraph and smothered in puerile pathetic plagiarisms of Mr Obama of the ‘Yes, we will’ kind. Climate change was thrown in at No. 5 out of nine. The statement was, ‘Yes, we will work together and tackle the challenge of climate change.’ That is it. In over 5,000 words, 12 words were devoted to climate change. And that was in the context of us having a citizens’ assembly. What was one of the first thing done after the election? The citizens’ assembly was axed. There was no pursuit of a community consensus, but there was a pursuit of a consensus with the Australian Greens and a few Independent members of the other house.
But the important thing is this: even with the acknowledgment that Ms Gillard said, ‘Yes, we will tackle climate change,’ after that she was asked, in effect, ‘Does “Yes, we will,” mean a tax on carbon?’ and she denied it. She denied it not once, not twice but on too many occasions to count, as did her Treasurer, Mr Swan. The denials were innumerable. The denials were shrill, with the coalition being labelled as hysterical and engaged in dishonest scare tactics.
Why the shrillness from Labor during the last election campaign? Why the unequivocal denials from Labor during the last election campaign? Why this grave betrayal now after the election campaign? Because, as we have seen only too often, Labor will say whatever and do whatever because their moral compass for government is ‘whatever it takes’.
The Australian people should feel aggrieved at this gross betrayal. But it is not only a gross betrayal; it is also bad policy. Here in the Senate are the two Greens leaders, pretending to be the champions of my home state of Tasmania. All I would ask them to do is read the Access Economics report on the impact that a carbon tax will have on transport. Their home state of Tasmania will suffer more greatly than any state in the Commonwealth. The cost of living will be most impacted in the southern part of Tasmania. And they claim to be senators from Tasmania.
Previously, we heard the shrill intervention of Senator Wong, a senator from South Australia. In her state, there is one of the cleanest manufacturers of zinc in the world. Indeed, in her home state, Nyrstar makes one tonne of zinc for about two tonnes of CO2 emitted. In China, that same one tonne of zinc is made with six tonnes of CO2 emitted to the atmosphere. So when we price our zinc out of the world market, the world market will buy its zinc not from South Australia or from my home state of Tasmania but from China. As a result, this madness of a carbon tax—in the absence of a world agreement, and that is an important caveat—will mean the pricing out of the marketplace of clean products in favour of dirtier products.
That is why I say to those on the Greens bench, on the crossbench and especially on the government bench: when you talk about a carbon tax in isolation, the factory owners of the BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India and China—are cheering you on from the sidelines, because they see the benefit for their economies. I happen to think that most Australians would be willing to suffer a bit of an economic loss if there were, on the other side of the ledger, an environmental dividend. But the simple fact is that there will not be an environmental dividend, and that is why this tax has such a disastrous bottom line. It will mug Australian jobs, it will mug Australia’s cost of living and, what is more, it will mug the world’s environment. We all know that. The Labor Party knows that. That is why Labor went to the last election solemnly promising that there would be no carbon tax. In August 2010 a carbon tax was a bad idea. Despite its being a bad idea, according to the Labor Party, we had the Greens willingly giving them their preferences.
One wonders whether a pre-election deal may in fact have been made, but that is for the Greens and the Labor Party to tell the Australian people. The simple fact remains that no manner of squirming and no manner of word games claimed by the Prime Minister can get her out of the solemn promise she made. This cuts at the very heart of our democratic system. Our democratic system is based on integrity. It is based on trust. It is based on the belief that when a government goes to the people with a promise it can in fact be believed and the promise can in fact be implemented.
Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
No wonder they want to get rid of you. What a pathetic performance. You—the leader!
Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Of Senator Cameron, who represents the zombies in this place, I ask, I wonder who said this:
I think when you go to an election and you give a promise to the Australian people, you should do everything in your power to honour that promise. … We want Australians to be able to say well, they said this and they did this.
The same person—there is a hint for you, Senator Cameron—also said:
If the reputation of this government is that we are stubborn in the delivery of our election promises, then we are stubborn in keeping our word to the Australian people. Then I’ll take that. I’ll take that as a badge of honour.
Who said that? None other than your Prime Minister. There she is on the record, absolutely ruling out a carbon tax, absolutely telling the Australian people how fundamental and important it is to have honesty and integrity in the delivery of an election promise. So I say to the Prime Minister and to the Labor Party: if you want to honour your election promise of no carbon tax, we in the coalition will support you all the way. We will assist you in that, because you and we were both elected on the same policy of no carbon tax.
Considering the vote that the coalition got and the vote that the Australian Labor Party got in comparison with the 10 per cent or so that the Greens got, the Australian people are asking, ‘How is it that the will of 90 per cent of the Australian people can be so shamelessly discarded?’ The reason is that Ms Gillard and Labor will do whatever it takes to cling onto power. That is their modus operandi. There is no morality in this. Let us not try to dress this up as some environmental policy, because it is not. It is a tax grab, but they are trying to give it a green veneer. It seems, in recent times, that, no matter what Labor is confronted with, the immediate reaction is tax. If there is a flood, let us have a tax; students, let us have a tax; resources, let us have a tax; alcohol, let us have a tax; carbon in the air, let us have a tax. These people are absolutely addicted to tax, even in circumstances in which they know it will hurt their base.
People like Senator Cameron and others who once were proud trade union leaders and who once were proud defenders of the Australian manufacturing sector are now sitting in this place selling that sector out. One indeed wonders why Senator Cameron had to go to all the trouble of knifing out Senator George Campbell from this place. Senator Campbell had become too weak; the Labor Party was deserting the workers. And now we have Senator Cameron following suit. We have in this one action by the government a window into how this government will behave.
Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Yawn. I am tired.
Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Senator Sterle may well be tired.
Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I imagine that listening to an intellectual argument for over five minutes would tire him. I can understand that, Senator Sterle. Nobody would complain if you were to take yourself outside of the chamber.
Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I am bored because you are boring me.
Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
What we have here is an issue of fundamental importance to the future of our nation. First of all, it is the democratic issue of a broken election promise, but not just any election promise: one that was made so solemnly, so deliberately and so carefully. There would be no carbon tax. Nothing could be clearer than that. Yet in question time today Senator Evans, despite knowing the fact, could not bring himself to admit that, yes, that is what the Prime Minister said; yes, it is a fact that the Labor Party’s election speech did not contain any mention of a carbon price or a carbon tax.
This government deserves the censure of the whole Senate. Indeed, I have a sneaking suspicion that if there were a secret ballot there would be members of the Labor Party caucus who would be voting for this, because they were not even allowed to have a say. So much for the community consultation. The Prime Minister did not even consult the community representatives that were democratically elected. I think she knew what the result would be.
So I accept that on this occasion we will not have a secret ballot. But I plead with those on the crossbenches to consider the gravity of this situation, because this government is deserving of censure for its deceit, for its deals and for its denials, which have now morphed into their new carbon tax—a tax which will hurt every single Australian household budget, will costs tens of thousands of jobs and will mug the world environment to boot.
Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Mr President, I raise a point of order. Under the standing orders a copy of the motion should be available to senators. We are 20 minutes into this debate and it is not available. I ask you to find out why that is the case and to see that one is circulated.
John Hogg (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I am led to believe that it is being copied now.
2:46 pm
Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Anyone listening to the debate on this motion of censure relating to a carbon tax would wonder what all the sound and fury is about. In Senator Abetz’s 20-minute contribution, there was not one reference to the question of how Australia should respond to the climate change challenge. We had all the normal petty point-scoring for which Senator Abetz is well known—the stuff that he learnt in student politics inside the Liberal Party, the stuff that is never actually developed to a more mature approach. All we heard was outrage and petty political point-scoring. The fact is that the Liberal-National coalition ran out of questions halfway through question 2. They had nothing more to say, because all they had is political point-scoring. They had nothing to say about the issues. When the Australian public are listening to this debate, they will be asking: ‘What is the Liberal Party’s current position on this? What is the Liberal Party saying to us about the policy issues?’ The answer is: nothing. But they are working on a three-word slogan which will reflect their position that they are against it.
George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
No, you are a liar! You lied!
Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Whatever it is, they are against it. They have no policy position.
John Hogg (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Minister, resume your seat. Senator Brandis, you need to withdraw that. You cannot address that remark across the chamber.
George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I withdraw.
Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
That is another example of where they are at. The contribution of Senator Brandis, their intellectual, is to say, ‘You lied, you lied.’ That is it. That is all we have got from them. That is where they have sunk to: petty name-calling, sloganeering, political point-scoring—nothing else.
John Hogg (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Order! Senator Evans, resume your seat. When we have silence we will proceed. Senator Evans.
Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
That is where the Liberal Party has got to on all this stuff. Senator Sterle was accused of not paying attention to Senator Abetz’s intellectual contribution. I defy anyone to defend his contribution as being intellectual. It was the junior student politician attack—the same old style with no substance.
The Labor Party actually thinks this is a serious global issue. We think climate change presents a real threat to both our climate and our economy. We think there needs to be a serious public policy debate. That is why we have pursued that debate for a number of years now and why in government we have sought to bring about fundamental change to the way in which we price carbon in our economy in order to drive a cleaner economy, in order to transform the economy into a cleaner power economy. It is a shame that again from the Liberal Party we have no policy, just slogans. I think it is interesting that the Liberal government of John Howard recognised that this was a problem. He said:
Significantly reducing emissions will mean higher costs for businesses and households. There is no escaping that and anyone who pretends to you otherwise is not a serious participant in this hugely important public policy debate.
John Howard said that at the Liberal Party Federal Council meeting in June 2007. His critique of your current position is that ‘anyone who pretends to you otherwise is not a serious participant in this hugely important public policy debate’. So your own former Prime Minister condemns your current position.
We know the Liberal Party have come a long way since John Howard was defeated as Prime Minister. It is amazing to think they have gone further to the right, but unfortunately they have. One of the reasons they have gone further to the right is the injection of far-right-wing senators into their little party room—more of that on another day.
Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Mr President, I raise a point of order. If we have got to listen to the leader, can we listen to the real leader, Senator Bob Brown?
John Hogg (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
There is no point of order, Senator Boswell.
Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I thank Senator Boswell for his intelligent contribution to the policy debate. Again, they have got nothing to contribute. We have seen the Liberal Party move to the right on this issue to the point of abandoning any commitment to climate change action and giving up on any attempt to recognise the challenges we face.
It is interesting to see what the current Leader of the Opposition, Mr Abbott, had to say in July 2009 about a carbon tax. It is worth while remembering and illustrating how far the Liberal Party have come. Mr Abbott said:
I also think that if you want to put a price on carbon, why not just do it with a simple tax? Why not ask motorists to pay more? Why not ask electricity consumers to pay more? Then at the end of the year you can take your invoices to the tax office and get a rebate of the carbon tax you paid. It would be burdensome. All taxes are burdensome. But it would certainly change the price of carbon, raise the price of carbon, without increasing in any way the overall tax burden.
I admit that Mr Abbott has many positions on this question, and it is hard to follow, but on that occasion he thought that a carbon tax was a good idea—that was his preferred option. As I say, there have been so many positions that it has been hard to follow. I gather now that we have settled on a position, and that is to say no to anything, to advance no policy prescription, just to say that it is all too hard.
In order to be clear on Mr Abbott’s position, I take the advice on this occasion of his own former leader Malcolm Turnbull, who said Mr Abbott had had every position but no conviction. Mr Turnbull said on the question:
Tony himself has, in just four or five months, publicly advocated the blocking of the ETS, the passing of the ETS, the amending of the ETS and, if the amendments were satisfactory, passing it, and now the blocking of it. His only redeeming virtue in this remarkable lack of conviction is that every time he announced a new position to me he would preface it with, ‘Mate, mate, I know I am a bit of a weather vane on this, but...’
That is Tony Abbott’s position, as summed up by Malcolm Turnbull. The Liberal Party has proved one thing and one thing only. It has no conviction on this. It has no policy, it has no conviction.
We are in a situation now where the coalition seeks to move a censure motion against the government on its position seeking to bring in a price on carbon but it has nothing to say about the public policy debate, just the puerile—
Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
We have a direct action plan.
Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Oh, the direct action plan! That was the one that left us with an $11 billion black hole in the election costings—that was the one. I have not heard very much about it lately. Is that still your policy? Today that is their policy, apparently—an $11 billion black hole in the budget. That is all they have got to contribute.
This is a serious challenge to the Australian economy. It is a serious challenge to our climate. When I talk to business I know they want certainty and they want leadership from the political leaders of this country. When they look to invest billions of dollars in electricity generation they want to know what the rules are going to be and what the returns on those investments are going to be. When they hear the Liberal Party taking the sort of position it is taking now, they are dismayed. They are dismayed at the lack of leadership because they say to us: ‘We will argue about the detail, but we want to know what is going to happen. If we are going to invest billions of dollars in electricity generation in this economy, then we need to know what the rules are. We need the politicians and the Australian parliament to resolve these issues so that we can make our investment decisions.’ Without that certainty, we know that we are not going to get the investment we need in power generation in this country.
It is important that we come to terms with the serious public policy issues at stake here. To be fair, even though we have been frustrated by Independents and the Greens in trying to get the CPRS established in the last parliament, at least we have now serious engagement from Independents and the Greens on the way forward on a major public policy issue. We know the Australian public expects us to seriously engage on this issue—not to invent a new three-word slogan, not to go out and do PR stunts pumping petrol in the suburbs but actually to engage in a serious climate and economic issue confronting Australia. They want more than three-word slogans. They want this parliament to get down to the job of crafting a response to the climate change challenge, to limiting our carbon pollution and to putting a price on carbon. We think that is the serious business of this parliament. We thank those Independents and Greens who are interested in coming to terms with this. We will argue about the detail, we will argue inside the framework about how to supply it, but all of those people will be in there arguing about the serious public policy debate and the Liberal-National Party have again marginalised themselves with their negativity, with their complete absence of public policy.
Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Do you want to have an election on it?
Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Senator, we had an election. You lost. So, having formed government, we actually take on the challenge. Confronted with massive natural disasters and the need to respond, we respond as a federal government should. We do not play politics with issues of flood levies and those sorts of responses. We respond seriously. When faced with these challenges of climate change we respond seriously. There is no substitute for hard policy work. We know that the Liberal Party is wracked by internal divisions and it cannot find a serious—
Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Confected laughter does not disguise it.
Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Confected laughter does not disguise what I read in the papers and what I see in the parliament. All I know is that, when a political party is divided and rudderless, the easiest thing to do is to say no.
John Hogg (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Senator Evans, resume your seat. When there is silence we will proceed.
Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Thank you, Mr President. The constant shouting and abuse from those opposite reflects the fact that they have nothing to say. It is really unfortunate that, in the Australian democracy, the opposition has nothing to contribute to what for us is a key policy debate. We tried in the last parliament to engage the opposition to try to get a consensus, and at the end of the day the business and wider community will demand that the parliament provides certainty. Today’s decision by the opposition to say that if this legislation passes it will reverse it is an interesting development. I think we will see that position re-examined if the legislation is passed by this parliament, because going to the next election saying ‘We are going to throw it all up in the air again and deny business certainty’ will be an interesting proposition. I will be very interested to see if you maintain this position through the life of this parliament.
I suspect that you will not. I suspect that you will come in here with your tail between your legs and adopt a new position again. It may be under a new leader, but I suspect you will come in with a new position because the Australian public will know that there has been an absence of leadership shown by the opposition. They will want certainty, they will want to know how we will move forward, they will want to know that there is a future for renewable energy and they will want to know that there is real progress occurring in reducing carbon pollution and that we can invest and go forward with confidence.
It is important to note that the opposition have failed to say anything in this debate today on the question of the way forward. They used to acknowledge that there was a problem, but now it seems that they are deniers again. As the numbers move inside the Liberal Party, one minute they say it is politics and then they say it is not. It depends on whether the believers or the deniers have the numbers. Therefore, we have seen changes in the leadership.
We actually believe action on climate change is important. We had a plan which we took to the last parliament; we were not able to get that carried. We have a plan to take to this parliament which we hope to get carried. It is an essential economic reform. We believe it is the right thing to do and we think we ought to have the support of the parliament. It is a price on pollution. It is the cheapest and fairest way to cut pollution and build a clean energy economy. The best way to stop businesses polluting and get them to invest in clean energy is to charge them when they pollute.
Despite having a huge natural advantage on a whole range of renewable resources, we have seen very slow movement to the use of renewable resources inside our economy because the economics have not been there to drive it. A price on pollution will help drive that investment. We think it is absolutely essential that we bring about a change in the price on carbon which will help make the adjustments to the economy. It will change prices. It is a market mechanism. It is interesting to see the Liberal Party again fighting market forces. But this will allow the market to determine investment in renewable energy and reduce the impact of carbon pollution in our economy.
We obviously reject the censure motion. I know a number of senators want to contribute to the debate. The government were prepared to take the motion because we think it is important there be a debate on these issues, and we will debate them over the next year as we seek to have the parliament adopt legislation.
Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
You still have four minutes.
Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Senator, I am happy to go on if you want me to go on. What I am prepared to say is that we are absolutely determined to try to drive reform in this area. It has been our consistent position to try to drive reform. The CPRS proposition we put to the last parliament did not gain the support we needed. We think the price on carbon will allow us to build a consensus of the parliament to drive the change this economy needs. I look forward to the Liberal-National opposition engaging in a real debate, engaging in the policy debate, rather than political stunts and juvenile student politics. Let’s engage in a real debate about the needs of the economy.
Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Mr President, I ask you to acknowledge the crossbench as having the third say in this debate.
John Hogg (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
In accordance with the convention in this chamber, I will go from one side to the other side.
3:04 pm
George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
The real question in this debate is why the Prime Minister said one thing on 16 August in order to get elected and did the opposite after her government had been commissioned. That is what this debate is all about—how the Prime Minister grossly deceived the Australian people. At the time of the 2010 election there was a lot of uncertainty in the air. The polls were tight, the Labor Party had had a terrible campaign, as they themselves later acknowledged, but there was one thing for sure, there was one thing about which the Australian people could be absolutely certain—and that was, come what may, whether we had a Labor government or a coalition government, there would not be a carbon tax. That was one issue that had been sorted because the coalition throughout the election campaign had made a commitment that there would be no carbon tax if a coalition government were elected. Mr Abbott was emphatic on that from the beginning to the end of the election campaign. On our side of politics the Australian public had nothing to fear from a carbon tax. But they also had this assurance from the Prime Minister. On 16 August she stood on the Kangaroo Point Cliffs in Brisbane after she gave a Labor Party policy speech and looked down the barrel of a television camera and said:
There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.
Let me say that again, because this was a very deliberate, considered statement. She said:
There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.
There was no wiggle room there. There were no ifs, buts or maybes. There were no weasel words. There was no ambiguity. She said:
There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.
She said that five days before the election. Promises, undertakings and assurances do not come more ironclad than that. Any elector who was uncertain—and a lot of people made up their minds in that last week—went to the polls knowing that if the Prime Minister of Australia was a person of her word and was telling the truth there would be no carbon tax under any government she led.
Fast-forward to last Thursday when the Prime Minister, flanked by Senator Bob Brown, Senator Christine Milne, Mr Oakeshott and Mr Windsor, stood in the Prime Minister’s courtyard and said, ‘There will be a carbon tax.’ This is not all that hard. If the Prime Minister on 16 August, five days before the election, says, ‘There will be no carbon tax under any government I lead’ and after she grafts her way back into power she announces there will be a carbon tax, have the people been misled? Of course they have been misled, and everyone who heard and relied upon the Prime Minister’s integrity when she made that statement on 16 August and now knows that she has retreated on it, she has abandoned it entirely, knows what this Prime Minister’s word of honour is worth. They know what this Prime Minister’s word of honour is worth. This government is without integrity. It is without credibility. It cannot be trusted to stick to its most solemn assurances.
But it was not merely the Prime Minister. This is what the Deputy Prime Minister said on the day before, on 15 August:
What we rejected is this hysterical allegation that somehow we are moving towards a carbon tax.
And a few days earlier on the same issue this is what Mr Swan said:
We have made our position very clear—
that is, speaking about a carbon tax—
We have ruled it out.
As I said before, it is not very difficult. It is not rocket science. When you have the leader and the deputy leader of the government the week before an election in which a carbon tax is one of the great issues emphatically, specifically, unambiguously rule out a carbon tax and when they find themselves back in government after the election and the events that happened in the weeks subsequently they introduce a carbon tax, did they mislead the Australian people? I do not think there is any person who has followed this debate who is in any doubt about that. In fact, looking at the long faces on the government back benches, there is not one Labor senator who is in any doubt about that.
Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
They were not consulted.
George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Of course they were not consulted, Senator Abetz. It did not go to caucus, and Senator Conroy has been going around telling people it did not even go to cabinet. Let Senator Wong deny that if she speaks in the debate. But wasn’t it significant that, in the 15 minutes during which he struggled to try and make some sort of defence of the government’s untenable position, not one word did Senator Evans, the government leader in the Senate, say in defence of the Prime Minister herself—not one word, because you cannot defend the indefensible. You cannot say the week before the election there will not be a carbon tax and a few months out from the election there will be a carbon tax and expect people to believe you anymore. That is the problem the government have. They will not be believed anymore.
In fact, Ms Gillard, in abandoning that solemn promise that was given to the Australian people on 16 August, was in a long and sorry line of Labor Party prime ministers. Who can forget after the 1993 election Mr Paul Keating and the l-a-w law tax cuts? Do you remember that, Mr Acting Deputy President—when Mr Keating went to that election and said: ‘There’s no way we will repeal these tax cuts because they are written into the legislation. This is not a promise; it’s l-a-w law’? Having won the 1993 election in part on the faith of that assurance, what does he do? He comes into the parliament in 1994 and changes the l-a-w law.
Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
He did a Gillard.
George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
He did a Gillard. Mr Rudd, the Prime Minister whom Julia Gillard butchered—on this very issue, by the way, of the way to deal with carbon emissions—in one of his most emphatic promises in the 2007 election campaign said that under no circumstances would any government he led interfere with the private health insurance rebate. What happened once Mr Rudd had been elected on the faith of that assurance, among others? He introduced legislation to means test the private health insurance rebate. We could go on and on and on, but each of those events has one thing in common: a promise by a Labor Prime Minister, a solemn promise by a Labor leader to the Australian people in an election campaign, which was flagrantly and shamelessly violated once they got the election behind them. That is what this Australian Labor Party is like and it is in particular what the government of Julia Gillard is like: a government whose word means nothing, whose Prime Minister’s integrity cannot be relied upon, who are prepared to do anything, to say anything, to break any commitment, to abandon any assurance, in order to get through the next election campaign. But the people are a wake-up to them. There is a reason why the talkback radios went into meltdown on Thursday and Friday after the Prime Minister announced that she was breaking this solemn promise.
I could go on and on about the long list of Labor broken promises in the dying days of Mr Rudd’s administration. My office actually produced this very attractive document, the long list of Kevin Rudd’s broken promises. Such was the demand for it that we had to produce a second edition, and at the time Mr Rudd was butchered by Ms Gillard we were into a third edition. Thank you, Mr Brennan. But the record of the Gillard government for breaking its promises in a much shorter period of time than the Rudd government is even worse. If I had the time I would read into the Hansard the 53 broken promises that we have tabulated since the 21 August election. But I will not dwell on that for a moment, because there is a more important issue to address, and that is the cost to Australians of this broken promise.
If you are a member of the Australian Labor Party, you do not live in the world of ordinary Australians and you do not live with people in the suburbs who have the cost pressures of normal families and normal suburban life; you live in this cocooned environment, this surreal environment, which is the modern Labor Party.
Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Senator Wong interjecting—
George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
You of all people, Senator Wong, would fail to understand the concerns of ordinary Australians living in the suburbs. You would not be concerned about the fact that, according to the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the effect upon a household of a $26 per tonne carbon price will be an increase in its electricity bill alone of at least $300 each year. People who are struggling to raise kids, people who are struggling to pay their mortgage, people who are struggling with higher interest rates as a result of this Labor government and people who are struggling to make ends meet just cannot afford to pay at least another $300 on their electricity bill in order to indulge the whimsy and fancy of this Labor government to give effect to a policy which is based upon a lie—the lie that there would be no carbon tax under a re-elected Labor government.
If you are a citizen of New South Wales it is worse. According to the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal, which is the statutory agency responsible for electricity pricing in New South Wales, for an average New South Wales household the effect of a carbon tax of $26 per tonne would be an increase in its electricity bills of at least $500 a year. Maybe those in the Labor Party, maybe those sons and daughters of the Comcar aristocracy, can afford $500 a year.
Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Mr QC, man of the people! Give me a break!
George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Maybe $500 a year means nothing to you, Senator Wong, but if you lived in the suburbs of normal Australians, were trying to raise a family and were trying to survive on Australian average weekly earnings $500 would mean a lot. The indifference to the concerns of average Australians, the indifference to the cost of living pressures upon them, is one of the most shameful aspects of the betrayal that is this broken promise.
It is not just electricity prices. My colleague and friend Senator Joyce asked the Leader of the Government in the Senate whether the government would give an assurance that petrol would be exempt from the carbon tax and no answer was forthcoming.
Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Yet again.
George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Yet again. We waited through two minutes of verbiage, through two minutes of trying to bat the question away, but came there an assurance? No, there did not. ‘Everything is in,’ said Senator Evans, ‘everything is included.’ So if you are trying to deal with the cost of petrol, if you are a member of an Australian family who worries about the cost of petrol on top of the rise in interest rates, on top of the rise in grocery prices and on top of the rise in your electricity prices, all of which will be driven up by the carbon tax, be assured that this government makes no commitment to you whatsoever that the cost of filling your family car will not increase significantly. In fact, at a carbon price of $26 per tonne it will rise by 6.5c a litre at a minimum.
We could look at this from a moral point of view and express outrage that a government could so flagrantly and shamelessly lie to the public just to win an election. We could look at it from an economic point of view. But I suspect that most Australians, while being disgusted at the lies that were told to them by the Labor Party in order to win the 2010 election, will be more immediately concerned about the effect on their hip pocket. They will be more immediately concerned that the price of electricity, the price of petrol, the price of groceries and the general price of living will be turbocharged as a result of this broken promise. Who do we have to thank for this? Of course the government of the day must take responsibility for its decision, and when it is a decision based on a lie the government must take responsibility for that. But we know who the joint authors, if not the real authors, of this decision were— not this lame, hopeless government but their political partners the Greens.
When Senator Brown appeared in the Prime Minister’s courtyard last week abreast the Prime Minister, with Senator Milne, Mr Oakeshott and Mr Windsor in tow, he looked every inch a prime minister. Let the record show that Senator Brown nodded appreciably at my remark. The fact is the person in control of that press conference was not the Prime Minister but Senator Bob Brown, just as the person in control of this agenda was not the Prime Minister but Senator Bob Brown. His colleague Senator Christine Milne—
Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Very helpful.
George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
very helpfully and candidly told us so. Senator Milne, no doubt bursting with pride at the achievement of her leader, said:
It’s happening because we have shared power in Australia.
In a doorstop interview the next day, this is what Senator Christine Milne, the Deputy Leader of the Greens, said:
We certainly have ownership of this scheme, because it’s one that we put on the table ourselves.
Senator Wong, who I see is here representing the government: be careful what you wish for; be careful in your choice of allies. They might just turn on you and claim credit, leaving you with the public odium of your broken promise while they claim the credit for the policy which they have foisted upon you.
Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
They are the gift that keeps on giving.
George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
They are, as Senator Abetz rightly says, the gift that keeps on giving.
I am sure this carbon tax will gladden the hearts of Senator Brown’s constituency. Most of them are very well-to-do people who probably will not feel greatly a $300- or a $500-a-year increase in their electricity prices. It will be your constituency, Senator Wong, the people who the Labor Party has always pretended to defend, the lower income earners, who will be paying the price of Bob Brown’s conceit. You will rue the day when you sold out your working class supporters for the well-to-do supporters of the Green party. You will rue the day when you sold the Labor Party’s soul for a mess of pottage in order to get the Greens into an alliance with you because they will turn on you, Senator Wong, and they have already begun to. They have fitted you up for this while they preen themselves, puff their chests out and say to the inner city dwellers earning six-figure incomes, ‘Look what we have made this government do.’
The fact is we are all losers from this. Our democratic system is a loser from this because we know that we have a government in place in Australia now that stole an election. Can you imagine what the result of the election would have been if instead of saying, ‘There will be no carbon price under the government I lead,’ the Prime Minister had been honest and said what was really on her mind, ‘There will be a carbon tax under the government I lead’? That would have been the truth but for the fact there would have been no government led by Ms Gillard after 21 August because the people would not have voted for a carbon tax. Our democratic system is the loser by this. The Australian Labor Party is the loser by this because whatever shred of respectability it might have been able to try and cling onto when it comes to accountability and transparency it has now irremediably lost. The biggest losers will be ordinary Australian families, particularly the low-income families, who the Labor Party used to support but has now abandoned, who will not be able to afford the price of the Labor Party’s dishonesty.
3:24 pm
Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
The first thing to point out here is that this censure motion is based on a falsity. The motion moved by Senator Brandis, presumably on the run, says:
That this Senate censure the Government for its gross deception of the Australian people by introducing a carbon tax …
The reality is—and one must be exact in important motions, not least in a censure motion of the government—that motions should be correct, precise and describe matters as they are. There has been no carbon tax introduced to this parliament and the government has introduced no tax. Certainly it is a matter that is under consideration, but the motion put forward by Senator Brandis would not pass a test in debating procedure at high school level. The opposition should do better on an important motion like this.
This morning the opposition and its leader, Mr Abbott, made the decision to repeal legislation for a carbon price if it is introduced later this year, on the presumption that it would pass the parliament. It was a big decision by a leader and an opposition to say that, if this parliament passes legislation to tackle climate change, a future Abbott government would move to repeal it. One only has to know about the business community’s concern that there at last be some surety brought into business and into investment through the establishment of a carbon price to know that that decision has much more to do with politics than it has to do with economic certainty or economic probity as far as this nation is concerned.
Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Acting Deputy President, your job is to prevent interjections across my speech at this end of the chamber as well as at that one. The fact is—
Russell Trood (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Senator Brown, I am familiar with my capacity to maintain order in the chamber. Please continue.
Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Familiarity needs to lead to action, Acting Deputy President. What we have is an opposition which is saying, ‘We will deny the Australian business community and the Australian nation certainty in the face of the need to have action on climate change.’
Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
$315 million for BlueScope. That’s what it’s going to cost them. That’s just one.
Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
The interjecting former leader of the National Party in the Senate comes to the defence of BlueScope Steel, which does not want to pay for the pollution that it produces. Here we get to the nub of the matter: the Abbott opposition’s decision that it will give polluters the right to continue to pollute at no cost while it puts all the cost across onto average households, consumers and small businesses in Australia. You cannot have it both ways.
I did agree with Senator Abetz when he said that most Australians are prepared to suffer a bit of an economic loss if there is to be an environmental gain. What we are trying to do in this great parliament of ours is maturely move towards a carbon price, which this opposition has agreed should be implemented.
Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
No, we haven’t.
Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
The interjection from Senator Bernardi is, ‘No, we haven’t,’ but you will know, Acting Deputy President, that the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme was supported by him and by other members of this opposition just two years ago.
Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Mr Acting Deputy President, I rise on a point of order on misrepresentation. I have never supported a carbon pollution reduction scheme in any form.
Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
There you go. We have an opposition that is split on the need for action on a carbon pollution reduction scheme. Tony Abbott’s prescription is for a levy of no action at all except on the householders of Australia. What he is saying is, ‘We will not charge the polluters.’ He is saying that he has a plan for $3.2 billion to be levied on the taxpayers of Australia through consolidated revenue to implement various schemes for the abatement of carbon pollution, some of which have been tried by the opposition before and have already been shown to fail. Nevertheless that $3.2 billion is the equivalent of 10,000 salaries for nurses and teachers in this country.
Tony Abbott is saying that rather than cost the polluters he will take the jobs, the wellbeing and the delivery of welfare to average Australians. I say to Tony Abbott that, if he moves to repeal a scheme this parliament has decided on in the interests of this nation in terms of tackling climate change, the Greens look forward to the next election when for every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every week we will take him on as he featherbeds the polluters against average households, average small businesses and average Australians. He wants to tax the average Australian against the big polluters. This is the big polluters’ party we are talking about, not just the opposition. It is the big polluters’ party we have on the opposition benches. And Mr Abbott is the doyen of featherbedding the big polluters against the interests of the average Australian who wants action on climate change.
Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
The baying poddy calves of the opposition are simply underlining the fact that they are squibbing and letting down the average Australian because they are simply going to allow the big polluters to continue to pollute. We had an example of that in Senator Abetz’s speech. He said that the prescription that the Greens, the Independents and the Labor Party government are looking at takes into account transport. That is exactly what the opposition did when they supported the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. They supported a price on the cost of fossil fuel emissions including transport and they had an offset arrangement there. So they supported that and now they do not. Senator Abetz said that in Tasmania there would be a bigger impost on transport than anywhere else. We remain flexible and open-minded about how the proposed price on carbon coming from transport systems is levied. My colleague Senator Milne has made it clear that one of the things we want to see is increased cheap, fast, efficient public transport in this country so that people have a real option when it comes to reducing carbon pollution in the atmosphere.
When you look a little further you will see that another thing Senator Abetz will not tackle, has not tackled and never can tackle is the biggest polluter of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere in Tasmania, which is Forestry Tasmania’s logging of the native forests of Tasmania. That produces more greenhouse gas emissions than the transport system of not just Tasmania but the whole economy. Senator Abetz is the chief at the gate of that continued pollution occurring at the expense of the transport system and of everybody else. Not only that, he is the chief purveyor of a mill proposed by Gunns to pollute the Tamar Valley, which would release 10 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per annum, which is the equivalent of a two per cent national increase on the pollution quotient. That is Senator Abetz for you. That is support of the polluters against the interests of the average Australian and that is writ large in this opposition.
I say to the opposition, through you, Mr Acting Deputy President: if you want to repeal a government, Independent and Greens arrangement to tackle climate change which converts into legislation through this parliament—and you have been welcomed to join this but have failed to do so—go right ahead. Come on in spinner, because we will take you on in this next election in every country town, in every suburb, in every city of Australia as the polluters’ party, which you are. You are the big polluters’ party against the interests of the ordinary Australian. That is the difference. You do not like it but that is what you are going to get. So come on in. If that is what you want to do we will take you on, very gladly. Thank you very much.
I would have thought that an opposition which claims to be conservative and which claims to be economically literate would have made a decision different to that and would have seen its responsibility differently. But the problem is that they have a leader whose mantra is, ‘I will oppose everything.’ And isn’t it wearing thin on the public? They all roll their eyes when they talk to me about it. They are the negative knockers brigade of the opposition, the obstructors, the people who want to stop progress in Australia in 2011. They are the people who are economically destructive in this modern Australia.
Sir Nicholas Stern reminded the world—
Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Who?
Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
‘Who?’ says Senator Macdonald from Queensland when I raise the name of Sir Nicholas Stern, who has been to this nation a few times and is the former chief economic adviser of the World Bank. He does not know who that is. That ignorance—which of course you are allowing him to continue to display, Mr Acting Deputy President, because you do not invoke the standing orders of this place, as you should—which is writ large in what he is doing and saying—
Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Mr Acting Deputy President, I raise a point of order. I fully agree with your observation. I would ask that that be withdrawn.
Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
You have not asked me to withdraw, Mr Acting Deputy President, because, as you know—
Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I will not, because it is your job, and it is my right in this chamber to acquaint you with the rules, Mr Acting Deputy President. That having been the case and having been established before in this place—
Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Mr Acting Deputy President, I rise on a point of order. Senator Brown is holding the chair in contempt and defying the chair. I ask that he be removed from the chamber.
The Acting Deputy President:
Senator Brown, I am very happy to give you the protection of the chair when I think you need it, and I will certainly ensure that you are provided with it when you need it. It was my judgment that you did not need the protection of the chair at this stage. I ask you to withdraw your remark.
Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I did need your protection and therefore I was quite in order to draw your attention to the fact that the chair had failed to protect me, and I do not withdraw. I have been in this position before. The rules are very clear on this—
Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Mr Acting Deputy President, he has defied the chair now a second time. He is in contempt of the chair.
Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Yes. The point of order is that he should be removed from the chamber.
Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Mr Acting Deputy President—
The Acting Deputy President:
Just a moment, Senator Macdonald. Senator Brown, I have made it clear to you that I will provide you with the protection of the chair when you need it. It is my judgment that you had not been in need of the protection of the chair, but, if the senators on my left become unusually or extraordinarily rowdy, I will provide you with the protection you need. So, in those circumstances, Senator Brown, perhaps you would be good enough to withdraw your reference to the chair and we can move ahead with the debate.
Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I needed that protection, and I am quite conversant with this situation. I have been in it before.
Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
In relation to this, Chair, there does appear to have been a reflection upon the chair. On that basis, I would ask Senator Brown to respect the chair and withdraw those comments. I do understand that there has been a significant input from those opposite which has, I suspect, caused this circumstance to arise. It is quite unseemly that they have not remained quiet and they have continued to be disorderly whilst you are contributing to this debate. I understand that that has exacerbated the circumstances. What we should not do at this point is add to their ill feelings about how they have behaved during your contribution. The chair has indicated that he will continue to provide the appropriate level of protection—in this instance, a high level of protection—to ensure that you can be heard in silence during your contribution. On that basis, we need, in my view, to get back to the debate proper and allow people to be heard in silence, and everyone should. I know there have been, up to this point, interjections from those opposite—not many at the moment from those on this side. We have been listening to your contribution in silence as the standing orders require. On all of that, I think common sense should prevail and we should be able to return to the debate, but I do accept the position that you have been goaded into by those opposite. I think we should all stand above that in this instance and respect the chair, as we should in these debates, and move on.
Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
My remarks were absolutely within the standing orders and my right on the floor of this parliament, Mr Acting Deputy President. I will not withdraw the remarks, which would set a precedent which would remove and diminish that right of any senator on the floor of the chamber.
Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Mr Acting Deputy President, I stand in reference to standing order 203, on infringement of an order: ‘uses objectionable words and refuses to withdraw such words’. He being in breach of that, you ask for him to be removed from the chamber.
Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Mr Acting Deputy President, on that point of order: the words I used were in no way objectionable. They were disputing a ruling that you had made. Of course, that must be part of the discourse on the floor of this chamber; otherwise, we would remove from the floor of the chamber the right to make determinations that would go to the chair. That is not how the Senate is constituted. The Senate is constituted so that the chair provides protection equally to all members, and, when there is a dispute between the chair and the members, that may be heard. I was respectful at all times. I put a point very clearly, in that you had not provided me with that protection in the way that we see of other senators. That was reasonable. You have now said you will from here on in. I am quite content with that. But my remark was in order at the time, and I am not going to withdraw it.
George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
On a point of order, Mr Acting Deputy President, Senator Joyce referred you to standing order 203(1)(c)—that is, the refusal to withdraw objectionable words. But might I also direct you to standing order 203(1)(e): if a senator ‘persistently and wilfully disregards the authority of the chair’. That would seem to be the most applicable subparagraph of standing order 203. Senator Brown is debating your ruling. On four occasions now, in the clearest terms, you have asked Senator Brown to withdraw his words, and in the clearest terms Senator Brown has refused to withdraw his words. There could not be a clearer instance, if I may say so, with respect, of a senator persistently and wilfully disregarding the authority of the chair. Might I respectfully submit, Mr Acting Deputy President, that in those circumstances you should conclude that there has at least been a breach of standing order 203(1)(e) and take the course prescribed by that standing order.
Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Mr Acting Deputy President, I ask that you acquaint the chamber by informing it of the words which were found to be objectionable at the core of this matter.
The Acting Deputy President:
Senator Brown, the objectionable words are your unwillingness to abide by a ruling of the chair. Several senators have drawn my attention to the provisions of standing order 203. I have consulted the Clerk on the matter. Senator Brown, it is clear, on the advice that I have received, and on the view of your fellow senators, that there is a breach of Senate standing order 203. For the final time, I ask that you withdraw your offensive remarks; otherwise, I will be obliged to name you.
Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Mr Acting Deputy President, I ask you to tell me what the remarks I made were which were offensive or objectionable.
The Acting Deputy President:
Senator Brown, you have been persistently disregarding my ruling. You are now being querulous with the chair. You are continuing to oppose it. I am very happy to proceed with this matter, but if you persist in this course I will name you and the consequences will follow. You have one more opportunity to withdraw your remarks or I will name you.
Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Mr Acting Deputy President, could I see if we can see a way through this? I am very keen to support the chair; we have always supported the chair in rulings. I was not in the chamber for the remarks et cetera, and I do not want to delay the Senate unnecessarily, nor do we really want to get to the situation of naming senators. We have not got there for many years, and I think it has been a sign of maturity in the chamber that we have moved on from those sorts of things.
Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I am just seeing if there is a way through which would perhaps allow us to have the matter referred to the President for report back, and whether that is a way of moving us on—bearing in mind that the President will rule on the ruling. This is in no way a criticism of the Acting Deputy President, but in terms of removing this impasse, rather than getting to a naming situation, I wonder whether there is an alternative way through. So I wonder whether it might be in the interests of the chamber that we ask the President to review the Hansard, review the decision and report back to the Senate either later today or tomorrow. I am just offering that as an alternative to—
George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Senator Brandis interjecting—
Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Well, I am happy to support the chair.
Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
If I may speak briefly on the—on the face of it—reasonable suggestion of the Leader of the Government in the Senate, I observe that the last time this occasion arose it was once again Senator Bob Brown who was in the midst of it. So, whilst normally, if you would offer some leeway to a senator, that might be appropriate; the simple fact is that there is a degree of serial offending here. Mr Acting Deputy President, the circumstances are that this has been a robust debate. On a number of occasions I was sat down in mid-flight because of interjections from the other side. When we have robust debates, if it gets too much for the speaker at the time, it is proper for the speaker to seek protection from the chair. But to seek to reflect on the chair, not having been told by the senator that he or she seeks protection, is clearly offensive. Nevertheless, we have moved on from that to a situation where you, from the chair, have asked a senator to withdraw certain remarks.
Can I say, with great respect in this place, that many of us have, from time to time, simply withdrawn matters that were not necessarily, in our minds or in the minds of other senators, offensive. But, just to keep the show on the road, you show something that I have not yet seen displayed by the Leader of the Greens—that is, simple good grace, and say, ‘I withdraw.’ You then sit down, let the show go on and thus protect the integrity of the chair and any person who might be presiding in that chair from time to time. So I would ask on this occasion that Senator Brown show some good grace and simply withdraw and allow the matter to proceed. If he were to do that then the actual words, and whether he should have been required to withdraw them or not, can be referred to the President for him to report back to us on at a future time. But, in the meantime, what harm is there in withdrawing, other than one particular senator’s personal pride?
Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Mr Acting Deputy President, I also rise on a point of order relating to standing order 203—‘Infringement of order’. I do ask that the Senate be informed of the objectionable words that have reputedly been used, because I hear a lot of objectionable words in the chamber. This morning I was sitting in here and heard the word ‘liar’ on about six or eight occasions. The speaker was in no way given protection from the chair at that point. I have not heard any objectionable words spoken here this afternoon. Before the Senate acts on this, I think senators need to know what the objectionable words were for which there was a request to withdraw. That is not unreasonable, because people are going to be asked to make judgments about the words that are deemed to be objectionable.
Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Mr Acting Deputy President, there are two matters now for consideration, as you have just outlined. The first is my repeated refusal to withdraw, which is based on my belief that you made a false ruling at the outset of this matter by acceding to persistent opposition claims that I had made an objectionable statement in the Senate, when in fact I had not. I am happy to comply with your persistent ruling, but I would ask that you go back to the original words that you ruled, at the behest of repeated appeals from the opposition in this place, to be objectionable, and come back with a ruling to the Senate after consideration on that very matter.
Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Mr Acting Deputy President, I rise on a point of order. In regard to standing order 203(1), Senator Brown is refusing to withdraw his words. Under 203(1)(d) he ‘persistently and wilfully refuses to conform to the standing orders’ and under 203(1)(e) he ‘persistently and wilfully disregards the authority of the chair’, and the course of action is quite literal and noted in 203(3), which states that he will attend in his place, which he is, and he will either apologise or, if he does not, a motion may be moved for which no amendment or adjournment shall be allowed and he will then be removed.
The Acting Deputy President:
Senator Brown, if you are willing to acknowledge the authority of the chair and withdraw your remarks, I am more than happy to refer the matter to the President for further consideration and for him to report back to the Senate on the matter to satisfy you as to the circumstances of the event.
Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I am willing to so withdraw, because I have never disputed the authority of the chair. But nor do I dispute the right of every member on the floor of this parliament to reasonably seek—
Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
That is all I did.
Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
It is abundantly clear to me, and always has been, that any member of this Senate may find that any particular deputy in the chair is not making a correct ruling. When that happens, it is not only the right, but it is an obligation, of members to query that. We have got some new members in here—
Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President, and I totally concur with your ruling. I assure you that I stand here in defence of the rights of senators not to be eroded, ever. That is what I am doing here this afternoon.
I come back to the matter at hand, which is this specious motion of lack of confidence in the government, on a presumption in the motion that does not exist—that is, that a carbon tax has been introduced in Australia, when one has not been. What is true here is that the Abbott opposition has decided to take this negative knocking and completely unconstructive opposition to everything that the government and, in the main, the Greens and the Independents put forward in this place. That is a political tactic, but I think it is very fraught.
What we are seeing from Tony Abbott, the honourable Leader of the Opposition, is a patronising of the people of Australia in a way that I have not seen in recent years from any political leader. The honourable leader is treating Australians as fools. What he is trying to do by appearing at petrol stations with a pump in his hand and filling up people’s cars, is to treat with disdain a very important debate that is occurring in this country. It may be that he wants a people’s revolt. In fact he said that. But I think he ought to be very wary indeed about the progress of that low level of political operation in a mature democracy. People will not like it. The intelligence of the Australian people is far higher than Tony Abbott would place it. The knowledge about the threat of climate change is far more developed in the Australian people generally than it is around the opposition party room table. The disdain that Australians have for those people who wilfully pollute, having had decades of forewarning about the threat of climate change, is very little different to the disdain people generally have for big tobacco, which continues to push its death-dealing products on a populace here and, more particularly, overseas, to make expenses on the basis that it causes no harm. That does not wash in modern Australia. I would have thought that an opposition would understand that in 2011, but it does not.
So we have this motion here today. And, by the way, this motion was brought on in question time. It would be my expectation that question time will resume at the end of the debate on this motion. That is in the hands of this house, but it may well be that the opposition has cut across question time when it could have put this motion a little later in the day. Indeed, it has an urgency motion on exactly the same topic to come. But these are political and strategic matters within the chamber. They are nowhere near as important as the impact of a decision made by an aberrant, straying and lost opposition in their party room today that it will rescind legislation which tackles climate change if such is agreed to by the other components of this parliament. That is a recipe for instability; it is a recipe for economic uncertainty; it is a recipe for job losses. Above all, it is a recipe for far greater pollution by the worst polluters of this country than we are even seeing in 2011. It is daft. You would expect a higher level of political behaviour and nous from this opposition. But they are not showing it and they are showing no signs of getting it.
I go back to my first point. The opposition have this strategy for going to the next election promising to return to uncertainty by rolling back properly considered legislation coming from the Gillard government and agreed to by the other components in both houses of parliament which give a majority—if that occurs. We will willingly debate the opposition on that in the lead-up to the next election. I predict that they are going to be in opposition for a long time to come.
4:01 pm
Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I rise to speak on this motion to censure the Gillard government for introducing a carbon tax after ruling out such a measure in the election. Back in November, I put out an op-ed regarding the price of power. It amazes me that to this day it keeps coming back to my office over and over again. The theme of it was that we do not need any more indicators for people who cannot afford power. They are out there. There are people right now, as my mother-in-law told me—she does meals on wheels—who in winter are found in bed, not because of infirmity but because they cannot afford power and that is the only way that they can afford to stay warm. This is a disgrace in a nation such as ours that has an abundance of wealth. These people do not need any more pricing mechanisms to teach them to use less power. These people cannot afford it as it is. There are people out there who are just scraping by. Their fundamentals of life—their standard of living—have been affected because they cannot afford things.
That is why the Australian electorate went into hyperspace when Ms Gillard announced the carbon tax. They read it for what it is: yet another assault on the fundamental standard of living that is their birthright. They read it for what it is: yet another frolic orchestrated by this strange, eclectic group of the Greens, the Independents and the Labor Party. They try to sign off on all issues at the same time and come up with a policy to match. I always thought that the Manic Monkey Cafe in inner suburban Nirvanaville was dry. But it is not: obviously, it is on for young and old. This is what we are getting here.
Is this going to change the temperature of the globe? No, it is not. This is merely a gesture—a gesture given by those who can afford it to those who cannot. It is being forced on people who cannot afford it. It will make no difference to the temperature of the globe; it will do nothing. It is merely a gesture, and the cruellest gesture to the people who cannot afford to pay for it.
Then we have this myriad of terms. I have heard people in the other place quoting Macbeth. I am more likely to quote Oscar Wilde: ‘The love that dare not speak its name’. In this case, it is the tax that dare not speak its name. Fortunately, Bob Brown has helped us out in an interview with Jon Faine in Melbourne. Jon Faine asked: ‘Are you avoiding calling it a carbon tax? Even Julia Gillard on The 7.30 Report conceded it’s a tax.’ Senator Brown replied: ‘It is a carbon tax.’ Mr Faine said: ‘Call it what it is: a carbon tax.’
Today we had a peculiarity. Senator Evans and the rest stitched themselves into corners trying not to say the word. If they do not say the word ‘tax’, it all gets better, so they say the word ‘price’ instead. They are still treating us as fools. Even though the whole Australian electorate—and listen to any talkback radio show—has gone into meltdown about this, they are still trying to use guile and cunning to try and avoid talking about what they are stitching us up with. It is amazing. It is contemptuous. It is absolutely hypocritical.
I want to bring the attention of the chamber to some statements made by Ms Gillard about Mr Abbott. These were statements regarding health and Medicare. This is from Ms Gillard:
[Abbott] should resign … This minister went to the Australian electorate before the last election and gave his word, and he did not keep it. It is no more complicated than that. It does not require any more frills or explanation than that. He went to the Australian electorate and he gave his word, a rock-solid, ironclad guarantee, and he did not keep it. When you look at the transcript of interview, there is no doubt. There is no equivocation here, no weasel words and no shades of grey.
That is Ms Gillard’s statement to Mr Abbott. I ask Ms Gillard to look at this statement. She also said this:
When he is out there in the public domain, moralising and telling others what to do, surely one of the standards he should model and exhibit in his own life is truthfulness. Surely that is one of the standards he should exhibit in his own life, but he has fallen short of that standard. I think he knows that he has fallen short and feels deeply uncomfortable about it. But, like the common problem across the Howard government frontbench, when confronted with a difficult choice he lacked the bottle to do the right thing, and the right thing would have been to offer his resignation and go to the backbench.
I put your ruler across you, Ms Gillard; I put your own statements back to you, Ms Gillard. You should offer your resignation and go to the backbench, which you deemed to be fit and proper in your dissertations to other people.
This is the height of hypocrisy. This is what we have with this government. We have the selling of an office, an office that was held by great people: by Curtin, by Chifley, by Menzies. And, even though I did not agree with Whitlam’s politics, I do not think that what Ms Gillard said could ever have been pinned on him. This is taking the prime office of our nation to a lower place. Ms Gillard is responsible for what is really a heinous event. She is taking away the Australian people’s respect for the highest office in this land. She has been shown to be a person who cannot be trusted with her word—and not her word on an oblique issue but her word on something utterly categorical in how people made their decisions about how they voted.
George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Gough sacked ministers for lying to the public.
Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Yes, Gough sacked ministers for lying to the public. This is really a statement of the character and the temperament of the people who are leading our nation. That question has not been answered by Ms Gillard. It has not been answered by any of the people on the front bench. We heard Minister Evans today in question time giving the ‘er, um’ answer. The ‘er, um’ answer is what you give when you know the answer but do not quite know how to say it because it will just get you into more strife than you are already in. The ‘er, um’ answer was the one given to the question of whether the tax will be on fuel. The ‘er’ is obviously coming from the Labor Party, but the ‘um’ is coming from the Greens: ‘Um, it’s going to be in.’ ‘Er, we don’t know what to do about it.’
This is yet another assault on the fundamental fabric, the standard of living of the Australian people. This is why for the life of me, even as an outsider, I cannot figure out who was doing the tactics in the Labor Party the day they announced this. What on earth was going on? Without a shadow of a doubt your own backbench never knew about this. It was one of those things that just popped out. You can forget about all Rudd’s sins. They pale into insignificance compared with this one. This is the whopper of all time.
What are you going to do? Is this hypocritical stance going to permeate? Is that what we will see? Is your polling, which has been going down to 32 per cent, going to continue to go down? Are you going to continue to lose the respect of the Australian people? Are you going to continue to have this contemptuous approach? And who are the people you are affecting most? Let us go to the nub of the issue. Is this how you say ‘thank you’ to the people of Mackay, the people of Wollongong, the people of the Hunter Valley and the people of Tasmania, where you have every seat? Are you so unaware of the predicament of the people who can hardly afford to get by at the moment that this is what you wish to do to them? Is this it? Is this your grand new vision? And for what—a gesture that will do nought for the temperature of the globe and nought for international politics? It is just one of these frolics to which you have been inspired because you have to kowtow to the new political masters in this place, Senator Bob Brown and his cohort.
Now we also have this obscure repeat rendition by the Independents. We have Mr Windsor turning up at the press conference telling us not to construe—that was his word: ‘construe’—anything from his appearance at a press conference. But what can we construe when someone turns up at a press conference to announce a carbon tax? What can we take away from that—that the poor fellow was lost and was asking directions or that he was wandering aimlessly back through the corridors and was filling some time by standing next to the Prime Minister as she announced the carbon tax? What he has come up against is that his own electorate is in meltdown because of what he has done. It is like the final damnation, the final insult to people who have supported him throughout his political career. He has become so detached that he is taking them through this arduous teeth-pulling exercise: ‘Will I or won’t I? What am I doing at the front of the political church in this big fluffy white dress? How did I get here? What will happen to me next? This is all just too fantastic.’
But the Australian people have woken up to it. They have called the Labor Party on it, and they are going to punish the Labor Party for it. This has framed it. When things are in a flux there are certain things that crystallise people’s perceptions of them, and this has done it. The Labor Party are so foolish, because it was such an arduous fight in which there was no redeeming feature and nothing to offer the Australian people. Yet the conceit of the Labor Party has taken them back there.
It is going to be a very interesting time. I am waiting with bated breath to see Paul Howes, in his next Mussolini impersonation, standing behind the podium, banging the table, ranting and raving about the Australian workers and how he is going to support them. Where is Mr Howes these days? What has happened to that man? Where has his ticker gone? Where did it all go—Mr Howes gesticulating as he holds up the Australian and points to it, talking about the working man? Now, when they are really under assault, when they are really under attack, where is the brave Mr Howes? Where has he gone? This is the hypocrisy of it. If ever there was a time for this man to stand up it is now, but you will not get sight nor sound of him. It is one thing for one audience, but when the heat is on he is out of the kitchen; he is gone. And what about the monastic silence of Mr Shorten? He is such a peaceful chap. He does not want to cause a ruckus. He does not want to go out there and support his leader—not yet; not when he sees the sunny uplands of his own career racing towards him.
This is the flux that the Australian people have been put in. Who are the people who are going to cool the planet? Who are these wondrous sages who are going to do it? They are none less than the people who brought you the ceiling insulation debacle, who could not for $2½ billion get fluffy stuff into the ceiling for the rats and the mice to sleep on without burning down 190 houses. These are the wondrous sages who brought you the Building the Education Revolution—a building in every backyard whether you wanted one or not, sometimes at three times the price—16.8 billion cold, hard dollars gone west.
These are the same people who have got you in excess of $181 billion in debt. Do not believe me; go to the Australian Office of Financial Management. Take it right from the horse’s mouth. Go to their website and read and weep about exactly where they have placed this nation. These are the same wise sages who gave us the draft guide to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, who have almost started riots in regional Australia. These are the people who have given us basically a whole submarine fleet, and we do not know whether one of them is operating. These are the same wondrous sages who have a lot of our naval ships in dock because they are rusting. These are the same wondrous sages who gave us Indigenous housing but they cannot actually build a house. These are the people, apparently, who are going to cool the planet from a room in Canberra. What credentials do they take to it? Not one success but a whole litany of attacks on the fundamental fabric—the cost of living.
My suggestion to you is you try to work out how to reduce the cost of living, how to reduce the cost of power. Try to work out how, as your famous previous leader Mr Latham said, to ease the squeeze. You remember Mr Latham, don’t you? He was supported by one Ms Gillard. That is what you should be concentrating on. Now you are coming up once more with these weasel words: 34,000 green jobs. Why not 34 million? Why not 34 billion? Why stop at 34,000? Why not double the carbon tax and double the number of jobs? Why not triple the carbon tax and triple the number of jobs? Who wants a job at BlueScope Steel when you can be making footpaths around a duck pond? Who wants a job in the manufacturing industry when you can be creating wind chimes at Nimbin? There is a great future for this! What are those boats doing off Newcastle? ‘Out, damned spot!’; get off my horizon! We do not need those boats. We can replace them with something else, maybe Paul Howes’s books—build them up with them and send them over to China. How is this economy going to work under you guys? How is it actually going to stick together? How are we going to pay our bills? What do we say to the people of Mackay? What do we say to the people of Newcastle? What about the Hunter Valley—do they deserve this? Does the home of Les Darcy deserve this? Have they descended that much that they have to put up with these Greens frolics, these Independents?
Labor are completely out of tune with their own electorate. Why do you think your polling went down to 32 per cent and is falling through the floor? Does it ever resonate with you? You listen to the wondrous illuminati who listen to themselves but you do not go out and listen to the people—listen to them talk, listen to what they are saying. It is all very well for white-collar upper middle-class suburbia to make a proclamation that puts the pump on the people who live in the outer suburbs and who live in the regional towns. It is all very well to say to them, ‘Well, it’s not right that you should turn on your heater, it’s not right that you should turn on your air conditioner and it’s not right that you should be able to afford the fundamentals’—which is the power delivered to this nation. It is only just that the people of Korea get their power 30 per cent cheaper than Australians, yet they use Australians’ coal to make it.
They say they want certainty. We in the National Party will give you certainty. There is no more certain word in this place than the word ‘no’—those wondrous two letters, that single syllable. That is a very certain word. It is a word the Australian people thought they could trust from you. When you said no, you would not bring in a carbon tax, they thought they could trust you on that. This is about trust and it is a trust that has been deserted. Now they have to sit back and listen to their Prime Minister using weasel words. They have to deal with the fact that the Prime Minister gave a warrant to the Australian people of a certain outcome. On that warrant they cast their ballot. On that ballot the Labor Party, with the assistance of Mr Oakeshott and Mr Windsor, formed a government. Now it has been deserted. If those people, all of them—the Greens, the Labor Party, Mr Oakeshott and Mr Windsor—believe in honour then it should be honour to stick to your word. If they are not sticking to their word then the dishonour rests on all their heads.
I just want to close in quoting our Prime Minister. This was from her magnum opus, her speech to the Australian people about why she should be elected:
I stand for tax cuts, tax benefits, tax relief for every Australian business.
Those are her words, not mine. Those opposite are trying to weasel their way out of this carbon tax by calling it a carbon price—by tomorrow morning, gosh knows, it will be a geranium. Who knows? We have this morphing lingua franca of the Labor Party as they try to enmesh themselves in some sort of convoluted process so that the Australian people cannot wise up to what they are doing.
How does your standing for tax cuts, tax benefits and tax relief for every Australian business fit in with the new tax? What is your answer? Will you be upfront in telling the Australian people how you are going to basically put a new tax on the fundamentals of their life? We are sitting here in a room with concrete under our floor, concrete that will be taxed. We are sitting here with lights that are on, lights that will be taxed. We are sitting here with steel purlins on trusses that will be taxed. Motor vehicles out there in the street will be taxed.
I said about Mr Rudd that every time you open your fridge a little white light will go on to remind you that Mr Rudd is taxing you. We cannot use that metaphor anymore, so I say to the Australian people: turn to your clock radios and, when you see the red light on your clock radio, think of the big red lady and remind yourself that that red light is there because you are being taxed by this government, which lied to you.
4:21 pm
Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I rise to oppose this motion of censure against the government after quite an hysterical contribution by Senator Joyce, full of a whole range of inaccurate assertions. I do not propose to go through all of them, but I have to say that if opposition senators come into this place to talk about the cost of living the first thing the Australian people should remind them of is that they are the senators who voted for Work Choices, to rip away wages and conditions from working people. They are the senators who voted for Work Choices and are still wishing to do more on that front. We know that Senator Abetz cannot help himself. He really wants to revive that policy and every time it comes up you see him say something on discipline until they put him back in his box again.
I remind Senator Joyce, who talks about the cost of living, that this is a government that put in place a stimulus package to protect the jobs of working Australians families. It was a stimulus package that you opposed. We know you would have been happier if hundreds of thousands of Australians were on the unemployment queues. This is also an opposition that, when it talks about tax, let us remember, went to the last election with a tax hike. That was what was funding your paid parental leave scheme. You come in here and talk to us about taxation, but you do not remind people that not only did you propose increased taxation but also you are proposing to take over $10½ billion out of taxpayers’ funds and give it to polluters without any net environmental advantage. If you want to talk to us about a policy which is crazy, Senator Joyce, have a look at what Mr Hunt has cooked up for your side of politics.
At the last election the Labor Party said very clearly: we believe climate change is real, we believe carbon change is real, and we want to move to a market mechanism that puts a price on carbon. The Prime Minister announced a proposal to come to a market mechanism that puts a price on carbon. There has been a lot of talk about truth and people not telling the truth. I remind the opposition that Mr Abbott is the Leader of the Opposition who said that people should not take anything he says as the gospel truth unless it is written down—‘Don’t take it as the gospel truth unless I have actually written it down.’ I do not think anybody watching the debate on climate change over the last three years, including in the election campaign, would be under any allusions about the fact that the Labor Party believes that climate change is real and we wanted to introduce a market mechanism to price carbon. That is what has been announced.
George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Why did you not introduce a tax?
Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Senator Brandis keeps interjecting. One of the more ironic moments in this Senate was Senator George Brandis SC lecturing us about the common man. At least I will cop a bit of that from Senator Joyce because he might actually go to the pub occasionally but, seriously, Senator Brandis SC telling us that we should understand what working people want really is irony in the extreme.
Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
You are so close to working families, aren’t you?
Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Senator Cormann, if you want to go personal, we can, I am sure. One of the things that I think is important for us to remember is why we are doing this, because there has been an enormous amount of hysteria, yelling and screaming from the other side, and an enormous amount of chest beating, but very little discussion about the real policy issue here. After all the heat and light of this debate has finished, after all of the argument in the parliament and on talkback radio has passed, that in five or 10 years time will be the policy issue—
George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Why don’t you care about working families, Penny?
Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Dear me. We will come back to that another time. Where was I? The policy issue that really matters is the one that people will look back on in five or 10 or 15 years time and that is how did this government—how did this parliament—deal with the issue of climate change. Let us remind ourselves of what the big policy issues are, when we get beyond Senator Joyce screaming at us. First, the science: unlike the other side, we on this side have a belief that the science is clear—that climate change is real and human beings are contributing to it and, more importantly, that climate change poses a substantial risk not only to the globe but also to us in this country. If you do believe that, then the question really is: what do you want to do about it? The second point is that we are, if not the, certainly one of the highest per capita emitters in the world. What does that mean in simple terms? It means that we pollute more per person than almost any other country in the world. It is not viable for us to say that this is not something that we should deal with. It also tells us what sort of an economy we have. We have an economy that is very much predicated on putting a lot of pollution into the atmosphere.
George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
You believe it, but why did the Prime Minister lie about it?
Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Have you finished, George? I listened to you. Poor George SC. Mr Acting Deputy President, do we have to listen to the whining interjections all day?
Mark Bishop (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Order! Senator Wong, resume your seat, please. I remind all senators that interruption is disorderly. Senator Joyce was listened to in virtual silence for the entire period of his contribution and the same courtesy should be extended in a routine manner to Senator Wong.
Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Thank you. I was pointing out the fact that we as one of the highest polluters per head in the world shows our economy is predicated on putting a lot of carbon pollution into the atmosphere. There may be some in this chamber who think that that is a good thing and we do not have to worry about it. There are others who ask whether, in five or 10 or 20 years time, we want the same old-fashioned economy that polluted as much as we do today per person or an economy that is far more based on clean energy, on less polluting ways of doing things. Just as the rest of the world is seeking to move to cleaner energy, to less polluting ways of doing business, so too must Australia. If you believe that the world will increasingly put a premium on low-carbon goods and services, if you agree in the long term—as business does—that the world will move to pricing carbon, as it is, then really the question is: how do we move and how do we do it in a cost-effective way? We do not wish to lead the world, but we cannot afford to be left behind on this key economic reform. So the policy question is: how do you do this at the lowest cost?
We are a Labor government and there has been a lot of talk about us not reflecting Labor values in this policy—assertions from those opposite, which I completely reject. We are a Labor government and we will bring Labor values to this policy area as we bring Labor values to all policy areas. You saw that in how we approached this before; you will continue to see it in how we approach this.
As the Prime Minister has said, every cent that is raised through putting a price on carbon will go back to Australians—either households, which will be our first priority, or various other mechanisms—to help move us to a low-pollution economy of the future. That is the reality; that is how we will approach it. What we have seen today from the opposition, as we have seen from them since the announcement and over the last three years, is the same hysteria, fear campaign and bandying around of figures which are not true. They are led by a hollow man and they are hollow people. They are people without a vision for the challenge that is so important to Australia’s future. All they can come up with in the face of a challenge like climate change is a scare campaign. That is all they can do. They have no answer other than a fear campaign and a three-word slogan which has now morphed into something else.
They do, however, seem of late to have had a propensity to look outside of their own party for their policy announcements. It has been quite interesting to observe where they have got some of their savings ideas for the floods package. They appeared to be surprisingly similar to some of the things that we have seen on the One Nation website. We have seen Mr Morrison making a range of comments which sound surprisingly similar to some of the things we have heard in other political circles. I found an interesting quote from Mr Abbott on climate change. He said:
… medieval times they grew crops in Greenland. In the 1700s they had ice fairs on the Thames.
Interestingly, One Nation say on their website:
There have been times when it is a lot warmer than now, when Greenland was ice free and you could grow melons in the open in England … and even in the 1600s when the Thames River in London froze over.
Isn’t it interesting where the opposition are getting their advice? Why the surprising similarity between what Mr Abbott said and what has been said on the One Nation website? The reality is that those on that side have no policy on this area. They have no policy, actually, on very much at all. The only thing that they seem to be able to do is to say no and to say, ‘This is a really bad idea and we are going to campaign against it. We are going to run a scare campaign. We are going to run a fear campaign. This is a great big new tax,’ or some other slogan. That is their only policy position. This is an issue that is central to the nation’s future. It is about the competitiveness of this nation going forward. This is about dealing with an issue that will not go away, and all the opposition can do is oppose. That is all they can do—oppose. They have a leader whose knee-jerk response to any policy proposition that is put forward by the government is to oppose it.
I want to remind the opposition of some of their views previously, because they come in here beating their chests as if this is somehow something they have never agreed with and never wanted to do. In 2007 the then Prime Minister John Howard went to the election with a policy for an emissions trading scheme.
Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
In the event of world action, and you know that.
Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
No amount of interjecting, Senator Abetz, is going to change that. It was your policy. People like you inside the Liberal Party who have extreme views on this issue did not like it, but it was your policy. It was your policy because it was the most sensible policy response to climate change.
I also remind the opposition of what Mr Abbott is on the record as saying. He said:
I also think that if you want to put a price on carbon why not just do it with a simple tax.
Surprise, surprise! Now the sky is going to fall in because the government is proposing to price carbon when Mr Abbott is on the record as saying he wants a price on carbon through a tax. That is what Tony Abbott said. In July 2009 Mr Abbott went on the record supporting a carbon price through a tax. But, now, if we do price carbon then the sky will fall in. That is Senator Joyce’s position. That is your position, Senator Abetz.
We also heard Mr Turnbull describe Mr Abbott’s straight talking, or not straight talking, most pithily when he said:
Tony himself has, in just four or five months, publicly advocated the blocking of the ETS, the passing of the ETS, the amending of the ETS and, if the amendments were satisfactory, passing it, and now the blocking of it …
His only redeeming virtue in this remarkable lack of conviction is that every time he announced a new position to me he would preface it with “Mate, mate, I know I am a bit of a weather vane on this, but …”
Mr Abbott has altered his position many times on this issue because each time his judgment has been based only on what he thinks is politically necessary and not on what he thinks is the right thing to do. That is the true reason, Senator Abetz, your party have had so many different positions on this. You have previously advocated an emissions trading scheme. You have previously advocated passing the emissions trading scheme with amendments. You then tore down a leader rather than pass the emissions trading scheme, and now you are running a fear campaign. The reason you have had so many positions on this issue of importance to the nation is that you never judge it by what it means for the future. You only judge it by what it means for your political position today. That is the reason why you have no policy when it comes to climate change.
The world is moving on. We know that business is already recognising the importance of a carbon price. We know from talking to business that it believes a carbon price is coming, and many in the business community want the certainty that a carbon price will provide. When it comes to electricity prices—and I am happy to deal with that directly because Senator Joyce talked about it—what is the primary factor driving increases in electricity prices in this country? It is the need to invest further in the network. That investment is being recovered in part through electricity prices. What is one of the factors that is leading to investment uncertainty? It is the lack of a carbon price. This is something the electricity sector itself has said on a number of occasions, that the lack of certainty is leading to poor investment decisions and that if we want to do something sensible we need to give business that certainty because we know investment is a long-run proposition.
I also make this point about other countries. There continues to be peddled by the opposition this incorrect information—some might even call it a lie—that other countries are not acting. We know that emissions trading schemes are already in operation in 31 European countries and 10 US states. We also know that a recent economic study estimated that the US, the UK and China have implicit carbon prices well in excess of Australia’s. We do not believe we should lead the world but we do not believe we should be left behind as a nation. This nation does need to begin the economic reform, the economic change that is required to move to a lower carbon, cleaner energy economy. The cheapest way to do that is not the way you propose, which is both to say no but also to give polluters billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money. The cheapest way to do that is to price what is currently free, and that is pollution.
In closing I say this. This is a tough debate. This is a hard debate. This is a debate where it is easy for people to score political points today. But I have always been of the view that the climate change debate is a debate that will be best considered if you look at the longer term and, if you think forward, as I said, five or 10 or 20 years from now, what people will say and think about the decisions that were made. I hope that what we will see is people saying that we actually grasped the nettle, we actually faced the future with confidence, we priced carbon and we reformed our economy so today the nation is amongst the most competitive clean energy economies in the world. That is what I hope we do. If we take the path that those opposite demand, what we know is that we will continue to be one of the most highly polluting countries, an old-fashioned economy, and people will look back in 10 or 20 years time and say, ‘That Senate, that parliament, missed the opportunity to do the right thing for the next generations of Australians.’
4:39 pm
Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I can indicate that I will not be supporting the censure motion and I will outline my reasons why. I can say at the outset that if the Gillard government was a majority government I might be inclined to support this motion, but that is not the case. In what some have called the new paradigm after the election result, which very few foresaw, we see a minority government for the first time in something like 70 years. That has obviously caused a rethink of policies and priorities.
Let us look at the wording of this motion. I can understand and respect the opposition’s right to move this motion, but it uses the words ‘gross deception’. ‘Deception’ is an act of deceiving. It is a state of being deceived. It is intended to deceive. It is a case of fraud or artifice. In other words, it is something that is quite deliberately intended. In ‘gross deception’, the adjective says it is unqualified, it is complete, it is rank, it is flagrant and it is extreme. I think that if the Gillard government had been returned in its own right then this particular censure motion would have a lot of merit. Clearly as a result of being in minority government compromises have been made, and I think we on all sides know about politics sometimes being the art of the possible, of compromises being made if they are justified, and that they have to be justified in the context of circumstances.
It also is important to put on the record that the leader of the government said there has been consultation with Independents and the Greens. I am not one of those Independents. I am not on that committee, much as I would have liked to participate in that committee—
Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
They didn’t want you.
Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
I was not wanted for whatever reason. I am sure there were a couple of seats at the table. But I understand that. So I want to make it clear that not all Independents have been part of this committee process, and that is something that I regret.
We also need to look at the broader policy issues here. We will be debating this week the issue of the flood levy as a result of the catastrophic natural disasters that Queensland has faced in recent weeks. When you have some of the world’s biggest reinsurers, Munich Re, Swiss Re—and I do not think either of them could be accused of being wholly owned or part-owned subsidiaries of the Greens—predicting that there will be more natural disasters because of climate change, that there will need to be a rethink about how we deal with natural disasters, prepare for them and fund the reconstruction costs of those natural disasters, then I think we need to listen to the hard-headed bean counters of some of the world’s biggest reinsurers. There are compelling policy issues that need to be dealt with.
In terms of a carbon tax, I want to put on record that I am not supporting this motion because I do not believe that the government at the time that they made the promise sought to deceive the Australian people but by virtue of being a minority government they have entered into this arrangement, this agreement. I can understand the political realities of it. But I do have real problems with the idea of a carbon tax. I think that there is a lack of certainty at the moment for the government to say that this will give certainty. There is no certainty in the absence of a specific price for the carbon. There is no certainty in terms of the impact it will have.
A much better mechanism is to look at an efficient emissions trading scheme, which is something I unapologetically worked for through the report, through the research, through the work done by Frontier Economics which the coalition for a while seemed to be endorsing as a cheaper, cleaner, greener alternative way of reducing emissions, a way that was much more efficient on an intensity based approach. Having said that, I acknowledge that does not appear to be anyone’s policy at the moment apart from mine. But I think it is important that if we are going to look at reducing greenhouse gases we need to do it in a way that is efficient and that reduces revenue churn. My concern with a carbon tax is that there could be an enormous amount of revenue churn. There are huge direct and indirect tax costs to the economy if you have a system in place where you are recycling revenue as part of a compensation mechanism, but if you have an efficient emissions trading scheme you can actually maximise the environmental benefits whilst minimising the economic costs. So I have real concerns about a carbon tax.
I do not have an issue with using natural gas as a transitional fuel to achieve those targets; I think that needs to be looked at, whereas a carbon tax will not give the right price signals for that. Natural gas could be a good transitional fuel because, notwithstanding that it is a fossil fuel, it is much cleaner than coal. I also think we need to have some price mechanisms in place that would be consistent with some of the aims of Beyond Zero Emissions and the work they have done with the Energy Research Institute at the University of Melbourne about Zero Carbon Australia. We are now seeing in Spain the rollout of solar thermal plants which can provide baseload power for 17 hours a day. But in order for that to be economic and efficient you need to have incentives and signals in place, not necessarily a carbon tax, to provide for it. The more of these you build, the more prices will come down. That provides long-term baseload power.
Those are some of the issues. The issue here is: did the government intentionally deceive the Australian people at the last election? Given the result of the election, I cannot say in good faith that was the case. Is there a debate about whether we ought—
Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Delete the word ‘gross’; would you vote for it?
Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Senator Abetz asks about deleting the word ‘gross’ from the motion. The word ‘deception’ implies an element of intent: that at the time of the last election there was an intent to deceive the Australian people, that there was no intention of keeping that promise. The government is a minority government. I was in the state parliament when there was a minority Liberal government and when there was a minority Labor government, and I am aware of the policy compromises that are made in order for governments to be formed. That does not mean that there will not be or ought not to be a robust debate about the whole issue of a carbon tax—that is the best way to deal with this issue and to find the best way forward to reduce greenhouse gases in a way that is efficient and is economically and environmentally responsible. I am sure we will have debates in this place in the coming months and years about how we get the best policy outcome, but to censure the government in the context of its being a minority government is not, I believe, the right thing to do. I welcome an opportunity to debate this matter further, because the way that pricing of carbon is constructed in this country will have huge implications, not just for the environment but for the economic future of this nation.
4:47 pm
Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
What the Senate heard this afternoon is one of the most pathetic defences I have ever witnessed.
Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Yes, it was that bad, Senator Xenophon. Senator Evans could not fill his time and could not justify his position. Senator Brown was petulant and then could not come up with any defence and Senator Wong likewise. Even if all the allegations against the coalition were to be accepted, which of course they are not, it does not in any way, shape or form justify the deceit that was perpetrated on the Australian people. I say to you, Senator Xenophon, with the greatest of respect: this was deceit. For example, we went to the Australian people with a GST, the Australian people re-elected us and we came into the Senate and negotiated a compromise with the Australian Democrats. In those circumstances, compromise is acceptable and understandable. But when you go to an election saying, ‘Absolutely no carbon tax,’ there is no room for compromise unless you are willing to engage in deception of the Australian people.
As I said before, there were only two members of the House of Representatives elected in support of a carbon price or a carbon tax. There are only five senators who specifically said in their election materials that they support a carbon tax. As a result those seven are outweighing 210-plus other parliamentarians who have a mandate from the Australian people to oppose a carbon tax. Indeed, everyone on my side and everyone on the Labor Party’s side in both places was either elected or re-elected on that solemn promise of no carbon tax. So with the greatest of respect to Senator Xenophon, for whom I have a fondness and a great regard, there is no way you can argue that this is somehow compromise. If this is the new paradigm, the new paradigm is that the Greens have taken control of the Labor Party agenda. The tail on the Labor dog, which had been painted green, has now morphed into a full backbone and skeleton which are now in full control of Labor Party policy.
Many things have been said in this debate, including one which I want to debunk—indeed, Senator Wong debunked it herself. In one breath, she said, ‘The coalition has no policy on climate change,’ then, in her next breath, she said, ‘Their policy on climate change is far too expensive.’ You cannot have it both ways: we either do have a policy or we do not. Just in case there is any doubt, we had a specific policy at the last election entitled The coalition’s direct action plan: environment and climate change. When you open the cover you will see that the very first line reads:
A Coalition Government will implement a climate change strategy …
Then there are 30 pages of detailed policy outlining that strategy. So do not come in here and compound your deceit of the Australian people by saying that there was no coalition policy in this area, when there was a clear policy articulated in 30 pages in which we were willing to put ‘climate change’ in the very first sentence. That is in such stark contrast to the Labor Party policy speech where in 5,400-plus words ‘climate change’ was finally mentioned in the very last paragraph. In amongst a lot of the ‘Yes, we will,’ policies, climate change was No. 5 out of nine. So we clearly do have a policy, a practical direct action plan, which will not impact on everybody’s lifestyle.
Interestingly enough, when we made the allegation that this will impact on every single Australian household budget, not one of the government speakers referred to compensation. Not one of them referred to compensation as being part of their package—very telling. Not one of them was willing to answer Senator Barnaby Joyce’s question as to whether or not this would impact on the price of petrol. What they did was seek to obfuscate by mentioning all manner of things other than the actual issue that is at stake. The issue that is at stake is the deceit of the Australian people. It was writ large by Ms Gillard doing a complete backflip on this policy. She knows that the paradigm in this parliament, as determined by the will of the Australian people, is that over 90 per cent of the elected representatives in this place and the other place have their position courtesy of going to the Australian people saying, ‘We oppose a carbon tax.’
So I say yet again, in an appeal to Senator Xenophon at one minute to midnight: don’t say that this is a new paradigm because, if you are saying that this is a new paradigm, it means that 90 per cent of the parliament can be ignored in favour of 10 per cent. If that is the new paradigm, let that be recognised and noted by the Australian people. This paradigm is in fact a euphemism for deceit because this government knows that in relation to a carbon tax, if there were a vote of no confidence in this government on the basis that it had failed to introduce a carbon tax, we would not support it. We would support a vote of no confidence in this government, but not on its failure to introduce a carbon tax. So I cannot see the need for this compromise. If Labor were to say to the Greens, ‘Sorry, we made a solemn promise; we cannot agree to this carbon tax,’ on that issue Labor would have the full support of the coalition. If you are suggesting that everything that was promised before the last election can simply be jettisoned in some behind-the-scenes deal with the Greens and Independents then it is a sorry state of affairs and something which the Australian people, I am sure, never voted for.
I also say to the Australian people very clearly that it seems that Senator Wong, the former climate change minister, emboldened by the great success of the pink batts policy, emboldened by that great green loans policy, emboldened by the great cash for clunkers policy, thought, ‘There has got to be a fourth arm to this.’ Emboldened by the great success of those environmental policies, she thought, ‘Why not go the whole hog and just introduce a carbon tax?’ When you know how this government deals with public policy, when you have seen their failures in the area of the environment, I simply say: why would you trust them with a carbon tax?
I make the further observation that in the very interesting speech Ms Gillard gave at the Labor Party campaign launch she in fact ridiculed the coalition as being the only party that wanted to introduce a new tax. She said of Mr Abbott:
He stands for more tax in this campaign. I stand for tax cuts, tax benefits, tax relief for every Australian business.
That was after she had said to us, hand on heart:
… I want to speak to you from my heart, I want to speak to you about my values …
One of her great values that came straight from the heart was that she stood for ‘tax cuts, tax benefits, tax relief for every Australian business’. How does a carbon tax deliver on that specific promise? It does not; it is a complete breach of that promise.
Let me conclude as I started. The Labor-Green alliance carbon tax announced last week is one of the biggest deceptions ever perpetrated on the Australian people and that is why the government deserves to be censured. It is a gross betrayal of the Australian people by their government and that is why the government deserves to be censured. It is dishonesty writ large and that is why the government deserves to be censured. Every single senator will be brought to account by the Australian people on whether they believe that this gross dishonesty is acceptable. We make no apology from this side of the chamber for saying it is unacceptable and that is why we will be supporting this censure motion.
Question put:
That the motion (Senator Abetz’s) be agreed to.
Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source
Mr President, I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.