Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

We had Mr Rudd in the lead-up to the 2007 election talk about the greatest moral challenge of our time, about the need for Australia to help reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. What was his response to that challenge? Just another great big new tax. They called it, in Orwellian fashion, the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. When you looked at the detail you saw there was quite a process because they wanted to make it look like they had actually thought this through. We had a green paper, a white paper, Treasury modelling and a range of other bits and pieces floating out there, including the Garnaut review report. Ultimately they said that Australia should set up this great big Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, which essentially was the chosen method at the time to impose a price on carbon.

Australia is an economy that is in competition with economies around the world. We have businesses and industries that compete with equivalent businesses and industries around the world. For Australia to go down the path that was proposed by the then Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, would have actually made no difference to the stated objective of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions, yet it would have done significant damage to our economy. What Labor proposed in the last parliament would have pushed up the cost of everything, it would have put pressure on our economy and it would have cost jobs. It would have increased the cost of living and it would have increased electricity prices. And all of that for no beneficial outcome for the environment in terms of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. Our businesses that compete in the global environment access electricity from coal fired generators. If we reduce emissions in Australia in a way that increases emissions in other parts of the world then really we have asked Australians to make a sacrifice with absolutely no environmental benefit whatsoever. That is what the Labor Party wanted to do in the lead-up to the last election.

As the debate developed there were a lot of attempts to keep things secret. I remind the Senate that to this day the Treasury modelling that tried to downplay the impact of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme on our economy has not been released, so we never actually got the true picture. A whole range of assumptions in that Treasury modelling were false. For example, one assumption was that the United States would have an emissions trading scheme in place by the end of 2010. We now well know that that is not going to happen. It was never going to happen. There was also the assumption that China would have an emissions trading scheme by 2015 and that India would have an emissions trading scheme by 2020. That was never going to happen.

There were a lot of ups and downs in the debate, but clearly, at the end of the day, all the government proposed was a great big new tax on emissions that was not actually going to help reduce emissions. It was a new tax with supposedly a deserving objective—the objective of helping to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. It was not actually ever going to help achieve that objective. As the debate progressed—as we approached the election, as the pressure on the government increased and as the scrutiny imposed by this Senate forced the government to reconsider—what happened? Kevin Rudd backed down in the face of an election. Understanding the increasing levels of concern across the community, Kevin Rudd backed down. Then he made a few other mistakes trying to pursue yet other taxes without any evidence, like the mining tax. In relation to the mining tax the problem was that the mining industry, in the then Prime Minister’s view, was too successful. He came to Western Australia and said, ‘We’ve got a two-speed economy. We’ve got to have this mining tax to slow the Western Australian economy down.’ That was the then Prime Minister’s approach to the mining tax. And of course he lost his job in the wake of all of that.

So what did the new Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, say when it came to emissions trading, when it came to addressing the greatest moral challenge of our time and when it came to Australia’s commitment to helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions? She said there would not be a carbon tax over this next term of government. We are always very suspicious when it comes to Labor prime ministers making commitments because these Labor Party leaders come up with all sorts of pre-election commitments which they then do not follow through on once they get elected—in particular when it is in relation to taxes. I am just going to go through student taxes for a moment. This was another tax on which, before 2007, the Labor Party said, ‘No, we’re not going to introduce student taxes,’ and then of course after 2007 they did. And yesterday they reintroduced a punitive proposal to impose taxes on students across Australia.

Let us get back to the carbon tax. On the Friday before the election the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, stated categorically:

I rule out a carbon tax.

That was on the front page of the Australian on 20 August. The reason she said that was that she knew she had to say that in order to scrape in at the election on 21 August. The reason the Australian people turned against this government is these sorts of stunts. They made promise after promise before the 2007 election and then they broke them after that election. People were absolutely disgusted with this government for their broken promises, for their failure and for their incompetence, and they punished them for it. The Rudd Labor government got into trouble because of their broken promises and because they were a bad government. The Julia Gillard led government nearly lost the election because people were unsure as to whether that government would be any better. Of course, the evidence is starting to come in. This is a seamless transition from broken promises to broken promises, from incompetence to incompetence, from more taxes to more taxes. This is a high-spending government addicted to more new taxes, and the Senate, on behalf of the Australian people, has to stand up against this government’s high-taxing agenda. A big new tax does not solve the problem just by whacking on a tax.

I will just go through some more prime ministerial quotes. Julia Gillard, on 16 August, said on Channel 10:

There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.

Wayne Swan, on Meet the Press, on 15 August 2010, said:

Well, certainly what we rejected is this hysterical allegation somehow that we are moving towards a carbon tax …

Does that sound familiar? It reminds me of the promises made before the 2007 election that a Rudd Labor government would retain the existing private health insurance rebates and that allegations by the Liberal Party that the government had a secret agenda to get rid of them were hysterical. It is the same thing here. Again, on 12 August on The 7.30 Report, Treasurer Wayne Swan said:

We have made our position very clear. We have ruled it out.

Julia Gillard, of course, as we all know, has now broken that promise. I will quote Julia Gillard from 16 September. This is after the election and after she was able to—