Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

What an extraordinary scene we have just witnessed: the Prime Minister of this country and all her ministers walking out at the very beginning of question time after taking only one question for the day. They have run away from any kind of questioning—any scrutiny—by the Australian parliament. They are so worried about the personal affairs of the member for Dobell that they are not prepared to be here to stand up and answer the simplest of questions. The Prime Minister is not prepared to take the 10 minutes offered to her to explain her situation to the people of Australia. They have run out of this parliament and closed down question time. Have we ever seen anything like it? But have we ever seen a government anything like this one? It is a disgrace to the Australian people. It is a disgrace to the democracy of our land—a bad government with bad policy delivering bad outcomes. And now they run away from scrutiny.

Over the last couple of weeks, people have been travelling in convoys from all across our continent to Canberra to have their voices heard. They were angry. They had been lied to. The government was not listening to what they had to say. They came from the Kimberleys, from North Queensland, from Darwin, from Victoria, from Western Australia and from all over this country at considerable personal expense and considerable personal inconvenience. They used money that they do not have. They came here because they were angry. Many of them had never been to Canberra before in their lives. Most of them had certainly never been in a protest before in their lives, but they know that the future of our country is at risk because of this government and its policies. They endured the personal expense because they wanted to have their voice heard in the national capital.

But they received the same treatment from this government as the parliament has today in question time. The government would not go out and talk to them. The government would not listen to them. The government would not hear what they had travelled from the far corners of the continent to say. This was a convoy that had no confidence in this government—and didn't they have every good reason to have no confidence in this government and the way it has performed.

Not only would the government not talk to them, not only would the government not listen to what they had to say; the government actually ridiculed them. The Minister for Infrastructure and Transport called them 'the convoy of no consequence'. This is the man who used to be minister for regional development. How much does he care about regional Australians? How much does he care about the delivery of infrastructure in this country when he dismisses those people who have come from all corners of the continent to have their say as being a convoy of no consequence? The member for Wills was even worse, shamefully worse, ridiculing the older people in this convoy and calling them a 'convoy of incontinence'. What sort of language will these people use to denigrate those who have come here to have their say? They were a convoy that had no confidence in the government, and, of course, this is a government that is itself a convoy of incompetence, stumbling from one disaster to another. Not only will it not listen to the constructive suggestions of people who want our country to be better; it ridicules and insults them and will not talk to them.

The Prime Minister was going to wear out her shoe leather across the country explaining the carbon tax, but she put the shoes away in two or three days and quickly got back to the comfort of the carpets. She was never willing to explain her tax. She walked away from it. Is it any wonder that the people of Australia are a convoy with no confidence in this government?

I received a number of letters, and I know other members have, from some of the people in this convoy, who expressed their dismay and their annoyance at the way in which they were treated by the government. Let me read part of a letter to you:

These participants are not just the visible contingent who braved the back roads, and the time, the expense, the early starts and cold showers at truck stops, to make it all the way to Canberra. They also include all those who stood by the roadsides to wave, all those who cooked up sausages in small country towns, decorated their streets with coloured balloons and took a hat around for petrol money, all those who grieved that they couldn't make it but sent their best wishes and words of support, all those who walked the streets to collect petition signatures. In short, this convoy includes all those who wanted to say, 'We have no confidence in the current federal government.' Instead today, all these people, ordinary Australians, were labelled as being of no consequence and were metaphorically spat upon. I ask you: how dare our elected representatives treat these people with outright contempt? Will Julia Gillard and Bob Brown have the courage to meet with the participants in Canberra?

The reality is that they have not been prepared to meet. These people who travelled all the way across the country to deliver a clear message to the federal government that they were unhappy were not listened to; they were scoffed at, they were talked down and they were metaphorically spat upon because this government will not listen to what the people have to say about the carbon tax and its impact on ordinary Australians.

The Prime Minister promised us all—she promised them; she promised all Australians—that there would be no carbon tax under a government she led, but then Bob Brown, Christine Milne, the member for Lyne and the member for New England handed her government. A part of the price was that she had to institute a carbon tax upon which they had long campaigned. The Greens wanted an 80 per cent cut in emissions by 2050. They got it. The Greens said in January 2010 that they wanted a transitional carbon tax to start at $23. After the charade of the multi-party committee, the Greens got exactly what they had asked for in 2010: a $23 per tonne price. The member for New England wanted to legislate an 80 per cent target even earlier than the Greens, back in 2008. So he got what he wanted as well. The member for Lyne simply repeated his call during the CPRS debates to 'let the markets rip'. They got what they wanted. Due to its weakness the government was held to ransom, and now the Australian people will pay right across the country.

Other countries have exempted their industries from any responsibility to pay this tax. They wanted to save local jobs. This government has offered little or no protection in Australia, and what protection that there is will quickly be eroded. This is a recipe for economic and social disaster, which the Prime Minister has been prepared to inflict it upon Australian business and Australian families. Is it any wonder that the people are angry? Is it any wonder that there were people who were prepared to spend, in some cases, their last dollar to come to Canberra and have their voices heard—only to be spurned by a government that simply does not care?

There is going to be an enormous impact on state and local governments as a result of this carbon tax. Their costs will go up. Just as the cost of electricity will go up for households, the cost of electricity will go up for state governments and councils. For instance, if we work only on the $20 cost of carbon that was proposed, according to the Dubbo City Council, the extra cost of electricity to light the streets of Dubbo will be about half a million dollars. Tamworth, in the electorate of New England, says that it will cost $300,000 a year more to light the streets of Tamworth. So there will be higher rates. The reality is that, if we are going to get a warm inner glow from having a carbon tax, it will also light up the streets at a much greater cost.

Let me talk about another impact on local government. They have a lot of responsibility in caring for rubbish. So let us talk about some rubbish other than government policy. Of the 500 emitters who are going to have to buy carbon permits, we are told that perhaps 190 of them are likely to be landfills. We know the list is a state secret as to who will pay and who will not have to pay. Only 70 actually emit the 25,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent that would essentially bring them into the target, but the government intend to rope in another 120 of these landfill sites. These are the sorts of tips and dumps that we all go to every so often with our load of rubbish, and the government are dragging all of these in. Because they would not want the price to be cheaper at one dump than another, they are putting the carbon tax on others. It does not seem to worry them that one dairy factory has to pay and another does not or that carbon tax is not charged on imported cars but it is on Australians cars, but they want to make sure the dumps are all treated the same.

What is worse—and the Prime Minister could not explain this the other day—is how they have to calculate how much carbon tax they have to pay. When you turn up with your load of garbage, somebody will have to calculate the amount of CO2 emissions there are going to be from your truckload or ute load of garbage for the next 30 years and then estimate the cost so they can calculate what they have to charge you for the carbon tax on the delivery of your rubbish. So there will be a council officer there with his computer and he will have to go through each piece and measure it all up and try to calculate how long it is going to be there so he knows how much to charge. Then of course you will have the government inspector from the new carbon tax police there to make sure that the council has not got it wrong.

This is the kind of bureaucratic nonsense that the government propose to put in place. And, once more, in the process, they are going to kill off the methane electricity generation industry that is currently making a significant contribution to our renewable electricity generation—that will no longer be eligible for subsidies under the New South Wales greenhouse gas reduction program.

Now let us turn to roads. Victoria and Western Australia have both done studies on road cost increases. They estimate that it will add around five per cent to the cost of building roads. And that is only in the first year—after that it goes up again and again and again. So $400 million will have to be added to the national building program if it is just going to deliver what the government originally said. There are no proposals to increase Roads to Recovery money—so important for local government to be able to build their roads—so they will just build fewer roads.

I notice that the member for Lyne is here. He is a very keen supporter of the Pacific Highway. As a result of the tax that he is supporting, the government will have to find hundreds of millions of dollars extra to be able to build the Pacific Highway because of the extra cost of building roads in Australia. There is no proposal by the government to provide additional road funding. There are no proposals to provide additional local government grants. There are no proposals to increase Roads to Recovery funding. That means fewer roads and less infrastructure. And, of course, if you drive on a better road up the Pacific Highway, one of the benefits is that you emit less CO2. If the government are really serious about reducing carbon emissions, why do they put these penalties on road building and make it so expensive for councils to be able to deliver their services?

There is no doubt that this government has been a convoy of incompetence ever since it was elected. There has just been one thing after the other—the refugee policy, the pink batts mess, the incompetence in dealing with live cattle, the incompetence over renewable energy and the incompetence of school halls. The incompetence just goes on and on. This convoy of incompetence deserves to be brought to account.

People have come from across the nation to deliver the message. If the government was not satisfied with the numbers who were driving around Parliament House that day, maybe it could look back a week to when there were 5,000 people assembled on the lawns with exactly the same message. They may not have travelled as far, but their message was just as strong and just as powerful.

In addition to the government promising that there would be no carbon tax while they were in government, they said that they would not introduce a carbon tax unless there was a consensus of the Australian people. I have been watching the crowds on the lawns of Parliament House, I have been listening to the media coverage and I have been reading the letters that I receive from my constituents, and I have to say that there is a consensus in Australia, and the consensus is that we do not want a carbon tax. The people do not want it. And no convoy of incompetence, no closing down of question time, no avoidance of the issue and no unwillingness to speak to people on the laws will get away from that fact. The people do not want the carbon tax. It will not be good for Australia. It will hurt Australian jobs. It will make sure that the economic prosperity of this country stalls. That is not a price that Australian people are prepared to pay.

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