Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party, Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Finance and Deregulation (Senator Wong) to questions without notice asked by Senators Cormann, Joyce and Edwards today relating to the carbon tax.

It has been confirmed today that there is an acknowledgement that the state most affected by a carbon tax will be the state of Queensland—the state of Queensland, which this weekend goes to an election; the state of Queensland, where currently the Labor Party's approach is, 'Feel sorry for us, and that is why you must vote for us.' They have given up trying to win the election. They are basically saying, 'You must feel sorry for us.' You must feel sorry that they have been so totally and utterly incompetent. You would not marry someone you felt sorry for. You certainly would not go to a dentist and say: 'Can you stick that drill in my mouth and have a bit of a scrape around even though you are inherently clumsy and incompetent but you've got a nice smile? I feel sorry for you.' The people of Queensland this weekend will not be voting for somebody they feel sorry for; they will be voting for somebody they believe is competent. That means that the Labor Party are gone. We had this ridiculous position where we had Kate Jones and the member for Toowoomba North running around pretending they are not actually in the Labor Party anymore. But it is the same Labor Party up there that we see down here. We can go through all the manifestations of this, but one of the greatest assets that I have had to campaign against the Australian Labor Party, the Greens and the Independents is the carbon tax. When everything else might be letting you down and you are losing the crowd a bit, you just go back to the carbon tax—talk about the carbon tax because they absolutely hate it; they are pathological in their hatred of it. But you have said that it is your major accomplishment. Unfortunately, it is not going to be the major accomplishment for the people of Mackay, Rockhampton or Gladstone because these are the people who will lose their jobs—41,000 jobs are going. We have also found out that, even by 2050, the effect on the Queensland economy is equivalent to the size of the current Queensland economy.

This is what is happening with this mad tax. Apparently over here we are endowed with the capacity to change the temperature of the globe. They can do it; they can change it. It is not God; it is the Labor Party. They can make it rain, they can make it cold, they can change the temperature of the globe and all they have to do is just bang a new broad based consumption tax on you. It is all so simple. Why didn't we think of that? A new broad based consumption tax that affects the climate is just so logical.

We have seen, up hill and down dale, the Labor Party's total and utter incompetence. One of the other areas of incompetence is their debt. It is always the same—you can always track them down. When they cannot do something, they get in a consultant and borrow the money from somewhere else. That is basically how it works: using consultants, public servants and debt. In Queensland they are currently at $62.3 billion in gross debt. They are heading towards $85.4 billion in gross debt. Down here we are currently at $233 billion in gross debt. We only have another $17 billion left on the overdraft before the cheques start bouncing. That is what is happening. This is what you have.

In the midst of that, when we should be trying to get the economy moving along what are we doing? We are going to cool the planet. We are going to recalibrate our nation and my state's economy with a colourless, odourless gas. We are going to work out how we are going to fix it all. We are going to get something that was formerly free—that is the air you breathe--and we are going to charge people for it. Because we know they might try and get out of that, we will find a very sneaky way to hit them up with this tax. We will make it a consumption tax based primarily on electricity.

What drives Queensland's economy? It is coal. It drives our nation's economy as our biggest export. Coal is carbon, but under the Labor Party carbon is evil. It is evil rock, naughty rock. We cannot have any of that. But, apparently, when it passes over water it becomes righteous, and then it becomes righteous rock, but whilst it is here it is naughty rock and naughty rock must be taxed. We must have a massive tax to stop people using it, stop people staying warm. You cannot be warm anymore—turn off those heaters, turn off those air conditioners and stop cooking toast. This is the message from the Labor Party to you. It is evil to watch television. Stop it. Do not iron the clothes anymore, naughty housewife. Stop it immediately. We must all return to the caves. Let us return to being content hunters and gatherers on the forest floor. There goes the Labor Party.

David Feeney (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

These are dark days indeed. The air is thick with conspiracy. We heard earlier from the spiritual leader of the Liberal-National Party, Clive Palmer, that the Greens party has in fact become a CIA front. We learnt the extraordinary news that the Greens are a CIA front that have been engaged to attack the coal industry in this country for the betterment of the US economy. This extraordinary revelation was fresh in the political debate when we also learnt from Laurie Oakes this morning that the US faked the moon landing.

The immediate thought I had upon this extraordinary news was that, if the Greens are a CIA front and not the reservoir of Marxist-Leninist thinking that the Liberal Party tell us they are, where did all the Marxist-Leninists go? Ladies and gentlemen of the Senate, the next conspiracy theory for me to reveal is that the Marxist-Leninists have all gone to Menzies House, where they are busy writing the Liberal Party's policy. When one looks at the policy proposition that those opposite are putting to the people of Australia, one sees that they have immediately eschewed any notion of using market forces and any notion of using modern economic thinking in their policies. What they are offering to the people of Australia is a command economy model of which North Korea would be proud. So perhaps there we find a hint of where all the Marxist-Leninists we thought were hiding in the Greens have actually migrated to.

Senator Joyce talked to us for the last few moments about the carbon tax. Upon listening to his words—empty of fact but occasionally witty—I thought to myself: 'Goodness gracious me! What a wonderful thing it would be if Senator Joyce were to read his own policy on carbon abatement.' As he mocks the Labor Party's policy, he also mocks his own. Is Senator Joyce aware of the fact that our plan to abate carbon has a target that is the same as that of the coalition policy? Has anybody told Senator Joyce that he himself has signed up to a policy whereby he says carbon should be abated? Has anybody revealed to Senator Joyce that his strategy for reaching the same target as ours is rather than having the cumbersome, dreadful notion of a market of supply and demand—of an emissions based scheme, a cap-and-trade scheme which engages the entrepreneurialism and the incentivation of the market—instead we have in the Liberal-National Party corner the plan of Chairman Abbott? It is a plan that Castro would be proud of, a plan which is to dispense with these old-fashioned and irritating notions of supply and demand, to get rid of this idea that the private sector can unlock the thinking and the investment that is required. Instead, the plan that Senator Joyce has signed up to, apparently without his own knowledge—the conspiracy deepens—is that the carbon tax will be repealed and $24 billion will be used to refund the big polluters for the carbon permits they have bought. But $3 billion of taxpayers' money will become a giant command economy scheme where Chairman Abbott and his inner circle will nominate those grand plans that they say will abate carbon, perhaps attract a command in the Urals or a five-year plan in the Gobi Desert. Who can imagine what Chairman Abbott and his inner circle will come up with? The point is this: the National Party cannot come into this place and rail about the carbon tax, and denounce and vilify and make nonsense of the fact that carbon pollution is a real danger to this country. They ignore the fact that they have a policy that says those very things.

Somebody on the other side of the chamber desperately needs to introduce Senator Joyce to his own policies. This is not a new problem. This is something the coalition has confronted for many years. Getting poor old Senator Joyce up to the starting point where he has read the policies and is able to talk about them has always been difficult. We on this side of the chamber understand the enormity of your challenge, but you must take it on. You must introduce the National Party to your own policies or else you run the continuing risk of having them and their spiritual leader, Clive Palmer, speaking for you. Personally, I welcome it; I think Clive Palmer brings a refreshing sense of honesty to the nonsense that is the coalition. (Time expired)

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Feeney, on behalf of the Labor Party, again promotes what a wonderful idea the new carbon tax is for all Australians. I ask Senator Feeney, as I have asked every Labor senator: if the carbon tax is so good why did your leader promise before the last election that there would be no carbon tax under a government she led? If it is that good why did she promise that?

What concerns me about the Labor Party—we all know that they cannot manage money—is that they cannot manage the truth. The Labor Party president at the time Ms Gillard made that wonderful promise of not introducing a carbon tax was none other than the Queensland Premier, Anna Bligh. Ms Bligh was also the president of the Labor Party nationally when Ms Gillard gave a rock-solid guarantee that she would not do away with the rebate on private health insurance. That is the trouble: whether it be Ms Gillard or Ms Bligh, you simply cannot believe anything leaders of the Labor Party say.

Senators may be aware that we are involved in an election campaign in my state of Queensland at the moment. And I have heard Ms Bligh promising to spend more money on absolutely everything. She has got her lead from her federal leader, Ms Gillard: whatever you want, whatever will buy a vote, promise some money. But we all know that Queensland has lost its AAA credit rating. The Queensland government is broke. It is a state with the most wonderful natural resources for mining, agriculture and tourism, yet the state is broke.

Ms Bligh will, as Ms Gillard did, continue to promise to spend any money to buy a vote or two in a desperate attempt to retain the trappings of power. We know that, typical of any Labor leader, anything Ms Bligh promises cannot be believed. Whatever she promises today you can be assured that, like Ms Gillard, in a couple of months time, should she win government again, she will ignore that promise completely.

I ask the people of my state of Queensland: can you believe anything the Labor Party tells you? Ms Bligh certainly cannot go on her record. She cannot go on the sagacity of her cabinet; that would just be a joke. What does her campaign involve? She has made up lies about the leader of the Liberal National Party Campbell Newman—'Can-do Campbell Newman'—who will be next premier of Queensland. Ms Bligh's only campaign is to make up lies about Mr Newman—lies which the Crime and Misconduct Commission have dismissed summarily.

We talked today in question time about the carbon tax. I would like to ask a question of any Labor member—I would particularly like to ask the Labor candidates from the Central Queensland area in the state election of Queensland. I noticed that Senator Kim Carr was being very particular about Central Queensland, obviously because he has seen the polls. The miners who work in the mines in Central Queensland—the mines that the Greens and the Labor Party want to shut down—are big-money earners. They know that their jobs and their mortgages are on the line because of Labor's carbon tax and because of Labor's mining tax. It does not matter what the heavies and apparatchiks in the unions say, the workers in the mines know what it is about. That is why the Queensland Premier is running a mile away from anything to do with the carbon tax although as state premier she did nothing to oppose it and as president of the Labor Party she was privy to the breach of promise made by Ms Gillard when she said that she would not introduce that tax but did so immediately she was elected. You simply cannot trust Labor with money or the truth. (Time expired)

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

After listening to Senator Joyce and Senator Macdonald you have to wonder how you could ever get the coalition to develop a proper policy on climate change. It is clear that the National Party and the North Queenslanders are actually promoting climate change denial within the coalition and ensuring that the coalition do not do anything appropriate about climate change.

Senator Macdonald could not even last two minutes talking about climate change before he wandered all over the place. Senator Joyce is the clown prince of the Senate in terms of one-liners but does not deal with any of the scientific funds or any of the economic issues that are important for this country.

I want to briefly go to a couple of areas. I want to briefly go to a couple of areas. I am not usually one who quotes the pontiff or the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in Rome, but the Pontifical Academy of Sciences said this:

We call on all people and nations to recognise the serious and potentially irreversible impacts of global warming caused by the anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases …

This is not the Labor Party; it is not some socialist group that are saying you have to deal with climate change; it is not the Greens. This is a commission of scientists reporting to the Pope who say we must treat this seriously. So that is one area.

And then there are our own scientific advisers the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology. They have only just put out a booklet called State of the climate 2012. And what do they say in that? They say that temperatures are rising. They say that rainfall is becoming intermittent in some areas and very, very strong in other areas. They say the global average mean sea level is rising. They say that the ocean heat content is rising. They say that carbon dioxide is rising. And this has got serious economic and environmental implications for Australia.

You see, the coalition used to treat this seriously; they actually used to say we have to deal with this. And they set up a task group headed by Dr Peter Shergold, a key adviser to John Howard. What that group's report said was this:

Australia has a vital interest in the form of any emerging global response. Given our exposure to the impacts of climate change we want an approach that is effective.

They then went on to say:

However, waiting until a truly global response emerges before imposing an emissions cap will place costs on Australia by increasing business uncertainty and delaying or losing investment. Already there is evidence that investment in key emissions-intensive industries and energy infrastructure is being deferred.

They come in here and they argue that, under Labor, there is a problem with energy infrastructure. But in 2007, the year the public threw them out of office, they were getting reports saying energy infrastructure is a problem, that investment in energy infrastructure has not taken place. And what is the big cost in electricity increases? It is not a carbon price; it is energy infrastructure. Dr Peter Shergold recognised that. John Howard was told about this in 2007 but did nothing about it.

George Megalogenis has just written a book about politics in this country and he says John Howard introduced what he calls a 'chameleon approach' to climate change: one minute you are for it, the next minute you are against it. And Tony Abbott is the chief coalition chameleon on climate change. He is for it one minute and against it the next. He is an absolute disgrace. The coalition is a disgrace. Think of the future of this country. Do something about climate change. Stop denying. (Time expired)

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

As my coalition colleagues have pointed out, there is an election taking place in Queensland on Saturday. One might normally expect in the course of the political toing and froing in this chamber that there would be Queensland Labor senators in this place supporting, defending and encouraging votes for the Bligh Labor government come Saturday. But there is not one here at the moment. There is not one of them to support—

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy President, I rise on a point of order. I do not understand how what the senator is now putting to this chamber has got any relevance to the issues that we are debating. It has absolutely no relevance whatsoever and she is out of order.

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Cameron. I will draw your attention, Senator Boyce, to the motion before the chair, which is to take note of the answers of Senator Wong.

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

Let me come to that, because time to take note of answers given in question time would generally be given to members of the government who have something relevant to say on the subject. Clearly, there is no-one here who can say a relevant thing, not one Queensland senator who can speak on the record of the Queensland Bligh government. That just follows on from—

Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy President, I rise on a point of order. I have to indicate that this senator has got five minutes; she has spoken for more than one minute and she has not for one second dealt with the issues that are before the chamber. You must draw her attention to the issues before the chamber.

Opposition senators interjecting—

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order on my left! Senator Cameron, thank you. There was some leniency shown to Senator Feeney, who commenced his contribution in exactly the same manner. Senator Boyce, I draw your attention to the question before the chair. You have three minutes and 42 seconds remaining.

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

Could I point out, Mr Deputy President, that the clock only just stopped at the end of the point of order, not at the beginning; there was some time missed there. I certainly want to speak about the answers given on carbon tax. The evil twins of tax—carbon tax and mining tax—will hurt my state of Queensland worse than any other state or territory in the country. There is a Treasury analysis by the Bligh Labor government which found that Queensland's gross state product will be 0.4 per cent lower by 2019-20 than it would be without the carbon price. The net cost over the forward estimates period to the Queensland economy and, therefore, the Queensland people will be between $351 million and $360 million a year. That is what it will cost our economy to have a carbon tax. And heaven forbid that the Bligh Labor government or any shade of Labor government should still be in power in Queensland with the evil taxes in place by 2049-50, when gross state product in Queensland would be 3½ per cent lower than it currently is. And these are figures from the Queensland Labor managed Treasury. In Queensland it is going to cost everyone an absolute fortune. We have one business owner with a chain of stores across Queensland, South Australia, New South Wales and Victoria who says that it will add $250,000 a year to his costs. That will include an extra $100,000 a year in rent. Lease agreements being drawn up right now for the badly struggling commercial sector and the industrial sector in Queensland all have a new clause in them that allows the landlords to pass on carbon and greenhouse gas emission related charges and to get those back from the lessee. These are people who are already struggling. Retailers know that the carbon tax in Queensland will add thousands of dollars to their annual rent, power and outgoings.

The reason that it will affect Queensland more than any other state—why these evil twins of tax, the carbon and mining taxes, will affect us more—is that we are the highest users of coal fired power. That is where the carbon tax will desperately affect us. In the mining area—nine per cent of the state revenues come from royalties from the mining industry—a growing, developing industry, we still have this government desperately trying to rip as much of that money out of the system as it can, to slow down investment in that area when you already have businesses being very seriously targeted in the other.

There is likely to be a court challenge around the mining tax. Certainly, we would hope that Queensland, with an LNP government in place after Saturday, will join that challenge and will try to stop at least one of those evil taxes. We have referred to these taxes as the 'evil twins of tax'. I would hope that come next Saturday we will get rid of the first of the 'evil twins' of Labor. Ms Bligh will be gone, and one hopes—certainly the mood of the Queensland voters is such—that Ms Gillard will soon follow her.

Question agreed to.