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

A reverse tariff is exactly what it is. We need to look at what will happen unless this carbon tax in Europe rises. We know it is $10 at the moment. What will this do to the budget, because our budget forecasts are based on the carbon price, that European price, rising to $29 a tonne by 2015-16? Nine point four billion dollars of revenue is written into the forward estimates in the budget based on that $29 price. So what happens if we do not get to that, if it does not rise, if it stays where it is? Henry Ergas has done the sums, and he has worked out that, if that carbon tax stays at $10 by 2015 and rises at four per cent per annum for the next five years, it is going to create a $25 billion black hole in the budget forecasts.

But the government tells us: 'Don't worry. We predict that the EU carbon price will recover. It's three years away. We stand by the Treasury modelling.' This is from the same government that stuffed up the budget so much in the last financial year. It originally predicted the 2011-12 budget. When the Treasurer came in here, he forecast that it would be $22 billion in deficit. The sums have come in: $43 billion. He is only $21 billion out—and that is a year. Now the public is expected to believe that this government can forecast, that it has a crystal ball to see, in three years time, what the EU carbon price will be. It is just a sham.

The complete lunacy of this scheme goes on the fact that we are contracting out our taxation policy to bureaucrats in Brussels, but the real lunacy of this is that we actually will be sending Australian money, money raised in this country, to foreign carbon traders. Words cannot describe the insanity of this scheme. By 2050, we are going to have to send $58 billion that will be raised from Australian consumers, families, pensioners, aged people and children—$58 billion will be raised, and that will be packed up and sent off to overseas carbon traders. In return, we will get glossy pieces of paper that say, 'You are permitted to emit a unit of carbon dioxide.' This is insanity. If the Nigerian scamsters came up with this, you would think that only the most stupid and gullible people would send their money overseas and get in return a glossy piece of paper, but that is what this government plans to do.

The next election will be a referendum on the carbon tax. The public will finally have their say. The coalition will get rid of this carbon tax. The floor price will be zero. It will be gone after the next election.

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