Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I withdraw. One of those misleading statements is that citizens elsewhere in the world are being subjected to and punished by a carbon tax like the one here in Australia. But the facts are, as the Productivity Commission research report noted:

… no country currently imposes an economy-wide tax on greenhouse emissions or has in place an economy-wide ETS.

We have heard another absurd statement tonight: that this carbon tax somehow creates jobs. It is a very dangerous assumption for members of the government to think that you create jobs by taxing. Taxes do not create jobs; they destroy them.

Let us look at the things that many of us on both sides of this parliament want to do in the next coming years. We want to fund things like the National Disability Insurance Scheme. We want to provide more resources for our schools. We want to pay for more hospital beds, to fund medical research and to clean up our environment. Doing those things depends on our ability to lift our national productivity and both sustain and develop our national competitive advantage. But this carbon tax is like firing a laser-guided missile to destroy our national competitive advantage. It seeks to promote the use of hopelessly inefficient methods of electricity production that will only lower our national productivity and lower our living standards.

Just have a look at what our competitors are really doing—not the spin that we hear from the other side. If you listened to this Labor government, you would believe that China is acting to reduce its carbon emissions. But the facts are that China's emissions are forecast to rise by no less than 500 per cent between 1990 and 2020. In fact, between 2005 and 2020, Chinese emissions will increase from approximately five billion tonnes of CO2 per annum to over 12 billion tonnes. The Prime Minister has tried to highlight in this parliament that China is closing some of its coal fired power stations, but she neglects that the ones they are closing are their small, inefficient ones and they are replacing them with much larger ones. Data from the World Resources Institute says that China has plans to build over 300 new coal fired power stations to produce electricity.

Let us look at India. Again this government has come into this parliament and made the claim that India is taking national action on carbon pricing with a clean energy tax on coal. But what the government failed to mention is that that tax is $1—one single dollar—a tonne. A recent article from Scientific American titled 'India has big plans for burning coal' details how India, as it lifts its population out of poverty, is poised to become the world's top consumer of coal and has plans to build no less than 455 new coal fired power stations.

In the USA we know that there is virtually no prospect of a cap-and-trade system being adopted. We know that Korea have deferred the introduction of their ETS until after 2015, and even then 95 per cent of the permits will be free. Our nearest neighbour, Indonesia, has no plans for a carbon tax. Canada has an economy that is probably closest to ours in design, shape, population and industry. Yesterday I had the opportunity to put three questions to the Canadian ambassador. The first question was, 'How much is the carbon tax in Canada?' The second question was, 'How much will it increase over the next three years?' The third question was, 'How are you planning to link it to Europe?' The answers were, 'No,' 'Nothing,' and, 'You must be joking.'

Tonight we heard the member for Throsby talk about New Zealand. What he failed or neglected to say is that Australia's carbon tax is 15 times higher than the New Zealand equivalent. The Australian carbon tax is $23 a tonne. In New Zealand, the carbon tax is—wait for it—$1.85. And New Zealand's business, community and parliamentary leaders have made it very clear that they are not going to impose a further increase and a further electricity tax on their people.

Our global competitors are laughing at us. We are becoming the laughing stock of the world. That brings us to Europe. Firstly, the European emissions trading scheme does not even cover the whole economy. It provides many industries with free permits. And the European ETS only raises about 500 million a year, while Labor's carbon tax here in Australia will raise more in the first three months than the entire European scheme has done in five years. In fact, the European scheme works out at about A$1 per person per year, but in Australia the equivalent is $400 per person per year.

Linking our carbon tax to that of Europe—the economic basket case of Europe—illustrates the complete insanity of this proposal. Just look at what is happening in Europe at the moment. In Spain, the unemployment rate is over 25 per cent. There are riots on the streets. In Madrid, people have resorted to stealing from trash cans. The supermarkets in Spain are having to put locks on their rubbish bins to stop people scavenging for leftover food. The government health system is collapsing. We have read in recent days of police throughout Europe firing tear gas and stun grenades to break up protests, all because of failed socialist government policies. And yet this is what the Australian government want us to copy. They want us to head down that disastrous track that has destroyed the European economy.

If it is such a brilliant idea to link Australia—to hogtie us—to the carbon tax at the same rate as Europe, why wait? Why not do it straightaway? We know the reason for that: it is complete insanity when our carbon tax is $23 and the equivalent carbon tax in Europe at the moment is less than $10. This puts our entire industrial base at a competitive disadvantage and makes us all poorer as a nation.

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