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

Today all Australians, whether they are businesses or families, stand at the edge. Families are very worried about their future. Business confidence has fallen to the sort of level you see in a depression. Closed shops and silent factories are a monument to Labor's economic failure. There have been 68,000 jobs lost since April and unemployment is rising across the nation. In my own electorate of Wide Bay the unemployment rate has increased from 3.4 per cent when the coalition left office to over 12.5 per cent under Labor. What a shameful record for a government to treble the unemployment rate in a fast-growing area of regional Australia.

This government seems not to care about the economic pain and hardship that it is are imposing on Australian families. But before them now is the prospect of an Australian government offering them up as sacrificial lambs on the altar of the carbon tax. The government concedes that this carbon tax will do nothing to change the climate. The government acknowledges that it will not work as an initiative to lower the temperatures. Of course, it never could. At around 1.4 per cent of global emissions, even if we sacrificed all of Australian industry, if we produced zero emissions, if we stopped breathing, if we lived in the trees, it would make absolutely no difference to the global climate. You only have to listen to the recent words of the UK chancellor, who said that the UK's two per cent of emissions are irrelevant when it comes to the world's climate. Why do members opposite think that Australia's 1.4 per cent can single-handedly change the world's climate, save the polar bears and save the Great Barrier Reef? This is simply nonsense. For the member who has just spoken to suggest that the rest of the world is rushing headlong into introducing taxes of this nature is simply misreading or dishonestly reporting the true situation.

The reality is that when President Obama comes to Australia he will not have a story to tell of an economy-wide carbon tax in the US. Indeed, it will only take one month of Australia's carbon tax to collect more money than the Americans have collected from their carbon taxation since it began several years ago—only one month under our scheme to collect more than the Americans have ever collected! We are not catching up with the rest of the world; we are implementing the world's harshest carbon tax. The Europeans are currently collecting, from their 30-country scheme referred to by the Assistant Treasurer, about $1 per person per year from the people of Europe. Our tax collects $400 per person per year right at the outset. This is a haunting prospect for Australian families. Their costs are going up enough as it is under this incompetent government, but now to add the impact of the world's biggest carbon tax is something that surely can only be seen as shameful. The Gillard government intends to consign future generations of Australians to massive cost hikes in perpetuity. This tax starts at $400 per person per year and goes up every year from then on. The carbon price will inevitably increase the cost-of-living pressures. Competitiveness with our trading partners will plummet and Australian jobs will be fewer and harder to come by.

I know that there are those in the government ranks who do not really in their heart of hearts support this legislation but they are tied to the carbon tax for two reasons. Firstly, it may even be that the Prime Minister believed what she said before the election—that is, there would be no carbon tax under the government she led. Maybe she was trying to tell the truth, but the Green zealots have more say over government policy than Labor's backbench—more say it seems than even the Prime Minister. When Bob Brown is grinning like a Cheshire cat at Labor rubber-stamping his legislative agenda and proclaiming it is a great day, you know there is something very, very wrong.

Secondly, the powers that be within Labor have punted the ALP's political future on a carbon tax, bloody-mindedly pushing this legislation through regardless of its impact on the nation—regardless that all other countries in the world are moving in a different direction—all in the hope that people will perhaps get used to it before the next election. The faceless men have determined the direction and the Australian people will have to bear the consequences. They surged forward regardless of the prevailing economic uncertainty engulfing the globe and have failed to heed the world financial storm clouds that are approaching. Instead they are putting political self-interest ahead of the national interest yet again. To those Labor members of parliament whose constituents are screaming out for their members to stand up for them, I urge them to listen and obey the will of their own people. They know that their constituents do not support this great big new tax. They know it is bad for the country; they know it is bad for their jobs. Their constituents are telling them, but they put their hands over their ears like the honourable member opposite, the member for Isaacs, pretending not to hear.

What about the members for New England and for Lyne, who are being very active in supporting the carbon tax. They did not even bother to ask the people of their electorates for their opinions. They have conducted surveys on various issues, but never once chose to ask their own electors what they thought about the carbon tax. Fortunately, Senator Williams has taken on that task for himself. He sent a questionnaire to all the people in Lyne and New England and he got a significant number of answers back. Thousands of people have responded to his survey and on the latest count I saw 83 per cent of the people of Lyne and New England are saying they do not want a carbon tax. These Independent members like to say they are the voice of the people. Well, the people have spoken: the people in Lyne and the people in New England do not want the carbon tax. If they really believe they are representing their own people, they have no option tonight other than to vote against this evil tax.

It is bad enough that the Prime Minister has misled Australians in the name of political expediency and bowed to the will of the Greens and Independents to remain in the Lodge, but what of those in the party behind her who just blindly follow? It is a bound and gagged caucus that fails to stand up in the wake of those backroom deals. They should not be passive passengers going along for the ride, but their inaction makes every one of them complicit in this base betrayal of the Australian people. The only community consensus that the Prime Minister has rallied around her in relation to the carbon tax is one of comprehensive rejection. Labor members who do not have the fortitude to cross the floor and be heroes for the working men and women across their electorates are letting down their voters, because in the end it is going to be ordinary families that will cop this carbon tax. They are the ones who are going to pay and keep on paying and pay more every year. It is their jobs that will be lost; it is their future that is being compromised. Electricity bills will blow out; gas, groceries, everything they need. In fact from 1 July 2012, if Labor, the Greens and the Independents get their way, Australians will start paying $105 billion in tax between then and 2020. And it gets worse and worse: around $1 trillion will be ripped from our economy at a time when our economy is already in such great difficulties. One trillion dollars is not much less than the Australian economy turns over in a year these days, and the government is going to throw all that away.

This tax will cost jobs, destroy manufacturing and certainly result in a deteriorating standard of living for all Australians. This is a tax that will deliver nothing of good for this country. It will do nothing to boost employment. There will be no new green jobs; whatever there are are being created in China. Australia's last solar panels manufacturer is closing along with so many other manufacturing industries in this country. This is a tax that will hurt this country and this day will be a day of infamy in the minds of future generations of Australians. Worst of all, it will do nothing for the global environment. It will do nothing to improve the climate; it will do nothing for this country and nothing for our planet. (Time expired)

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