Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister is absolutely right: it is a cold war mentality in the Labor Party. If the Leader of the Opposition were game enough to walk into a household or small business in Western Sydney, they would articulate very clearly to the Leader of the Opposition that there are better and other ways of dealing with climate change that do not involve them paying higher power bills. This is considering the low number of emissions that Australia produces, in a global context, and the fact that we have seen even Japan revise down its targets this week. Japan acknowledges that with its nuclear switch-off it is now going to be responsible for three per cent increased emissions by 2020—they will not be dropping emissions, they will be increasing them.

The member for Kingsford Smith opposite, at the table, is saying 'Oh, well, nuclear power—we can't use the technological solutions available to the world today to reduce emissions. We have to cut ourselves off from the technological solutions, but we also have to somehow reduce emissions while increasing the size of our economy.' It does not stack up. But we have seen Japan acknowledge that. We have seen Canada say that they are changing their approach on this, in favour of more direct action on the environment.

That is what the government is saying. We have better ways of spending money, in a more direct fashion, and the Minister for the Environment will be putting together a full white-paper process on developing the best ways to reduce emissions. It will do this by directly targeting the worst of our polluters in Australia today and helping them do something about it, not by saying that everybody has to pay an increased rate of tax and then go around handing the money back out and not requiring any environmental fix, not requiring any change in those businesses that will produce any environmental benefit.

We sit here today, listening to member opposite, as I think the minister in question time eloquently said, in government-change denial. They are in denial of the fact that the coalition—the government—has a mandate to repeal the carbon tax. It is one of the clearest mandates that I can remember in following politics for 25 years. It is clear. It is unequivocal. It is directly from the voters from Australia. It is directly from all segments of Australia.

If you see a poll put up on the Sydney Morning Herald website, you sometimes see some pretty skewed results in favour of the left-of-centre of politics, but when it asked about climate change, 54 per cent of people said that ,yes, we have a mandate to remove the carbon tax. If you are getting 54 per cent polled on the Sydney Morning Herald website telling us we have a mandate to repeal the carbon tax, I think members opposite should look very closely at this, because the Australian voters have been clear and unequivocal. They have said: 'Yes, we want to get rid of this tax. We do not want to be paying the highest carbon tax in the world without any environmental benefit, and we do want to make sure that when the government designs schemes it does not add burdens to the prosperity of our society.'

Why is that important? It is because, if our economy grows at a slower rate, if our society is held back by the world's biggest tax in a trade exposed world, we will not have the level of prosperity we could attain. Without the level of prosperity we might attain, we will not have technological and other advancements that will enable better environmental outcomes. This is where the Labor Party fundamentally fails. A strong economy, a prosperous society, is the best way to obtain better environmental outcomes. The only way to produce a stronger economy and a more prosperous society is to let government let our businesses—our large businesses, our small businesses, our medium businesses, our families, households and individuals—develop the goods, services and products that we need, and to do so unrestricted from tax and regulatory burdens.

It is no accident that the further advanced a society gets, the better the environmental outcome. We need to go forward. That is where the member for Fraser, the Leader of the Opposition and the Labor Party are failing here in this debate today. They are looking backwards. They are looking at the past. They are saying: 'Well, why can't we have an ETS?' or 'Why couldn't we do that?', 'Why didn't we do that?' then 'Oh, this person said that three years ago'—or five years ago or eight years ago. Going forward, the Australian people have very clearly said to give us the strength to build a strong economy—and we will deliver better environmental outcomes.

We have seen attitudes in our community change. We have seen people listening to the science. We have seen people listening to the concerns of the scientific community saying that we need to do better as a society in the environment. Do not use your political ideology to highjack this debate, to turn it into something it is not, and above all, in a democratic society, respect the mandate of the Australian people—the clearest mandate that the Australian people have given any political party in the last 30 years. (Time expired)

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