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

I think that everybody in this chamber knows that Australians absolutely despise liars, and they despise more those unmitigated liars who deliberately tell untruths. Australians are embarrassed when our standard bearers overseas are known by our overseas friends as unmitigated liars. And, rightly, we are all embarrassed when we find that we are now led by a Prime Minister who simply cannot discern what the truth is.

Madam Acting Deputy President Boyce, I will just give you a couple of quotes. In an interview on 10 May, Neil Mitchell said:

So will you promise you will not be the leader at the next federal election?

And the respondent said:

I can, completely. Neil, this is, you know, it makes good copy for newspapers but it is not within cooee of my day to day reality. You may as well ask me am I anticipating a trip to Mars. No, I’m not, Neil.

And who said that? It was Julia Gillard, the person who 13 days later participated in one of the most brutal political executions in this country, after promising just 10 days earlier that she would not be the leader of the Australian Labor Party.

On 17 May Julia Gillard was quoted as saying:

... there’s more chance of me becoming the full forward for the Dogs than there is of any change in the Labor Party.

Yet six short days later she actually became the leader of the Labor Party, after the most brutal backstabbing known in Australian political history.

On 14 May, in an interview with Chris Smith, she was asked:

Now the NAPLAN issue is a second, but I first want to talk to you about when you are going to become Prime Minister, firstly. Has there been a Hawke-Keating or a Howard-Costello deal done with Kevin Rudd yet?

Julia Gillard replied:

No, no. Nice try but no news. I know we’ll be welcoming Jessica back to Sydney this weekend after her round the world epic feat. I tell you there’s more chance of me going around the world sailing solo a dozen times than this chatter in the media becoming anything more than that.

There are three deliberate examples of untruthfulness from the person who is now our Prime Minister.

So we go to the election campaign and the subject of this debate before the parliament at the moment, the imposing on Australians of a carbon tax by the Greens-Labor alliance. On the Friday before the election Ms Gillard deliberately and emphatically said:

I rule out a carbon tax.

On 12 August the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Swan, was equally unequivocal when he told Kerry O’Brien in answer to a question about whether there would be a carbon tax:

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

On 16 August, five days before the election, Ms Gillard stated on Channel 10:

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

Yet here we are, a few short weeks later, debating—and we will be debating in this parliament in the very near future—the imposition of a Labor Party carbon tax.

It is one thing to promise verbally just before an election and break the promise verbally a few days later. In this case, though, our Prime Minister went even further and not just verbally broke her promise but signed her name to a document that said:

Australia will reduce carbon pollution by 2020 and this will require a price on carbon.

That is the written agreement with the Greens political party signed by our Prime Minister. How can any Australian trust anything this person says? She has shown that she simply is incapable of understanding the truth and keeping her word and her promises.

In relation to the carbon tax, my view on emissions trading schemes and carbon taxes has always been the same. I confess that I do not know whether greenhouse emissions are causing climate change. I have always accepted that there is climate change—it changes all the time. That is a given. But is it carbon emissions that are doing it? I do not know. I have said time and time again that the world’s 10,000 top scientists are split about fifty-fifty on the cause of global warming or climate change, so I do not get into that.

What I say is that, if the rest of the world is doing it, Australia might as well do it too. We will keep pace and keep faith with the rest of the world. But if Australia does it before the rest of the world, all we do is put a financial impediment on all of our industries, on all of our exports, making them less competitive overseas, therefore returning Australia less income and reducing the standard of living of all Australians. It is such a no-brainer, Madam Acting Deputy President. Why would you penalise Australia’s economy and our way of life and our standard of living for absolutely no benefit to the environment? Until China and the United States and Russia actually do something—they are the big emitters; remember Australia emits less than 1.4 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions—nothing we will do will make any difference to the changing climate of the world, if that is the cause of it. Until the major emitters do something, Australia taxing itself will only mean Australians will lose. This was the point that the coalition made in the 12 months before the election.

I refer my colleagues in the Labor Party to some results in the recent election. I will mention a number of electorates: Flynn, Dawson, Herbert, Durack, O’Connor, Grey and Capricornia. I ask Labor members what those seats have in common. I will tell you. All of Australia’s mining industries are in those seats. I will tell you what happened in those seats in the election. In Flynn, which is a very important mining and minerals-processing town, Labor lost the seat in a landslide and it was won by the Liberal-National Party. What happened in Dawson, another seat that is very reliant on mining industries? Again, it was lost by Labor and won by the coalition. Herbert, which is a big minerals-processing town that has a lot of fly-in and fly-out miners, was lost by Labor and won by the Liberal-National Party. What happened in Durack, the big Western Australian seat that contains most of the Pilbara and the Kimberley? The Labor vote in Durack was 24 per cent. The Liberal-National vote in Durack was 62 per cent. That seat contains the most substantial amount of Australia’s mining industry. In the electorate of O’Connor the Labor Party could not even come second in the poll; they came third with 17 per cent of the vote as opposed to 67 per cent to Liberal-National Party.

The Labor Party do not understand that miners, blue-collar workers do not like emissions trading schemes and do not like carbon taxes. If I were being political, I would say, ‘Bring it on,’ because the only two seats which Labor holds north of the Tropic of Capricorn would fall to us in a shot. In the seat of Capricornia—one of the few seats that Labor holds—which contains all of the big Bowen Basin mining towns, Labor’s vote went backwards by eight per cent. There was a massive swing against the incumbent Labor member of some eight per cent.

I refer my Labor friends to the mining town of Moranbah, which is a big unionised town that is full of traditional unionists and Labor supporters. What happened in the last election in Moranbah? Labor’s vote plummeted by about 10 per cent. Doesn’t that mean something to the Labor Party? People do not want a carbon tax that will only impact on their standard of living and have no positive benefit for the environment.

I refer senators to the electorate of Kennedy, which is a very substantial mining electorate. I quote here the Senate results because you would appreciate that this is the seat that Mr Katter won as an Independent. For the Senate in Kennedy the Labor Party vote again crashed by 10 per cent and they ended up getting only some 26 per cent of the vote. People might say that that is because Ingham, Innisfail and the Atherton Tableland are seen as being traditionally conservative. I want to point out the results in the Senate in the polling booths in Mount Isa. Everybody knows that Mount Isa is a big mining town that is full of miners, blue-collar workers and traditional supporters of the Labor Party. What happened to the Labor Party Senate vote in Mount Isa? The Labor Party got 32 per cent of the vote and the Liberal-National Party got 37 per cent. So even in the heartland territory of the Labor Party their vote plummeted in places like Mount Isa.

Similarly, in Cloncurry, a town that is substantially involved in and reliant on mining, Labor got the massive sum total in the Senate of 27 per cent, as opposed to the Liberal-National Party, which got 41 per cent. What happened to the Labor Party vote in Charters Towers, which, again, is a town that is very reliant on mining and has a lot of miners living in it? The Labor Party got a princely 28 per cent of the vote, as opposed to the Liberal-National Party, which got some 43 per cent.

The Labor Party must understand that their traditional supporters—the unionists and the blue-collar workers—do not believe, as I do not, that a carbon tax is good for Australia. Why are the Labor Party bringing back an emissions trading scheme or a carbon price after their leader promised faithfully on the Bible before the election that there would be no carbon tax? I digress by saying that you could see the relief on the faces of many of my friends in the Labor Party on the other side of the chamber when we defeated the emissions trading scheme. Perhaps the next speaker will confirm or deny what I say. It is a case of no name, no pack drill in these committees, but I know there were many Labor senators who were desperate for us to knock off the emissions trading scheme legislation because they knew what it would do to them politically and they knew that their union members, who have traditionally supported the Labor Party, did not want it and do not want it now.

So why are the Labor Party, when they know all of this, now, contrary to Julia Gillard’s solemn promise before the election, going to bring in a price on carbon? It is because they have reached this unholy agreement with the ultra left-wing political party in this parliament: the Greens.

Those of us who follow history know that years ago in Europe and in Asia parties of the extreme Left were called the Communist Party. They realised that, as the world got more wealthy, no-one would be interested in their extreme left-wing economic and social ideology. So what did they all do? They said, ‘We need to get votes. We want to stay in power. We know that nobody is at all interested in our ultra left-wing economic and social philosophies anymore. So we’ll take on the mantle of something that people do like: animals and trees.’ And so the Greens political movement across the world was formed. It was formed from those ultra left-wing people who realised they would never succeed politically with an ultra left-wing platform but they might just succeed if they hid those ultra left-wing economic and social philosophies behind the facade of looking after the environment. Now the Labor Party have got into bed with this ultra left-wing faction of the Left of Australian politics.

The Greens care little for Australia’s economy. They care little for the standard of living we enjoy so much in this country through hard work and effort. The Labor Party are being led along by this ultra left-wing group to introduce this carbon tax. The Labor Party know, as I do, that they will never have any success electorally in their traditional areas whilst they embrace the carbon tax or ETS; call it what you will. They know that their members, as I do, see how futile it is to destroy our standard of living for no benefit for the environment. And so to retain power, power for power’s sake, the Labor Party have agreed to ignore their traditional supporters, ignore their traditional base and go along with the Greens in their crazy left-wing radical agenda—just so Ms Gillard can remain as Prime Minister and all of her team can have the quite substantial trappings of office.

It is power for power’s sake; it is remaining in power to have the glory and indeed the rewards of being a minister and of running the government. To retain that power and to retain those personal embellishments, they are prepared to sup with the devil to bring in policies which they know will be bad for Australia—and many of my friends on the other side know that a carbon tax will be bad for Australia. We will, I predict, in the next several weeks or few months have again an uprising of that popular vote—that popular voice that was so prominent when the Labor Party’s last attempted emissions trading scheme was around. Australians will not stand for this, and the people will let their voices be heard.

I love my country; that is why I am opposing the carbon tax. If I were being maliciously political then I would encourage the Labor Party to do this because I know that politically it would be great for our side of politics. But I do not want it to happen because I do not want to be part of destroying the sort of lifestyle and the fabulous economy that this nation has. I would certainly hope that those listening to this debate will make it known to their Labor member, if they can find him or her, that this is not on for Australia. It should be put aside. Ms Gillard should be made to honour her promises. (Time expired)