Andrew Nikolic (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Can you believe that it is 10 months since the last election and still the Labor Party continue to betray the will of the Australian people? They had a chance on 20 March this year, 108 days after the carbon tax legislation was introduced, to do what the Australian people voted for at the last election, but instead, Labor continues to vote to keep the carbon tax. They continue to side with their Greens partners to keep the carbon tax, despite telling the Australian people at the last election that they had terminated it. On 16 July 2013, Kevin Rudd declared he had 'terminated' the carbon tax, except he did not. He was not a terminator and neither was now opposition leader Bill Shorten, who was standing next to him.

At the 2013 election, Anthony Albanese, the member for Grayndler, wanted to set the carbon tax rate to zero. Despite winning the Labor Party's popular vote, he was overruled by Bill Shorten and the union bosses both in relation to the leadership and the carbon price. After spending a full year defending the modest impacts of the carbon tax, the member for Port Adelaide confirmed on Sky on 4 November 2013 that the carbon tax was too high. But then he did nothing to address the effects of those impacts.

Ahead of the Senate by-election in Western Australia the Labor Party told the people of WA that they were scrapping the carbon tax and then in Canberra voted to keep it. They were lions in Perth and kittens in Canberra on this issue. The consequence of this deception by the Labor Party is that in less than a week, on 1 July 2014, the carbon tax will go up by more than five per cent, rising from $24.15 to $25.40 per tonne. So the unnecessary damage of Labor's carbon tax during the last two years not only continues but becomes even more of a burden on Australian families and on the more than 75,000 businesses across our country. I speak here of $15.4 billion in damages to the Australian economy over the last two years through the operation of the carbon tax—damage to our international competitiveness, higher electricity prices and even more jobs put at risk. Of all the states in the federation which can least afford pressure on jobs, my state of Tasmania sadly leads that list. We have the highest unemployment rate, both youth and adult, and the lowest participation rate in the country.

If Labor did what they should—that is, bend to the will of the Australian people—average living costs in Tasmania and around the country would be $550 lower than they would otherwise be, according to Treasury modelling. I had a Salvador Dali moment in the Federation Chamber earlier this morning where I heard the member for Franklin stand up and passionately argue against a 40c per tank rise in the fuel excise. This was, somehow, terrible for the people of Tasmania—but, at the same time, she joins her Labor-Green mates on the other side opposing a $550 easing of the cost-of-living expenses of Tasmanian families. If you are looking for a tier 1 example of hypocrisy, you would have seen it from the member for Franklin in the Federation Chamber earlier today. If Labor got out of the way and let the government implement what we were elected to do, the result would be reduced costs for businesses and households, a boost to local jobs and manufacturing, and the restoration of Australia's international competitiveness—yet, Labor simply refuse to accept the outcome of the election, despite the very clear mandate we campaigned on.

In my electorate of Bass, I was wearing out my shoe leather day after day on the four key things that we said we would do if we were to win the 2013 election. We said to the people of my electorate that we would stop the boats. And here we are and it has been over six months since a successful people smuggling venture to Australia—not a three-word slogan but real policy delivered with resolve by a government that does what it says. We said we would build the roads of the 21st century, and there in the budget we saw $50 billion—the largest infrastructure spend in this country's history. We said we would fix the budget. It is an enormous job of fixing that we have to do because those opposite, in just six years, achieved $191 billion in deficits. There was another $123 billion in projected deficits across the forward estimates and peak debt was rising to $667 billion. We have to borrow $1 billion every month just to pay the interest on our debt. If we were to do nothing, that would rise to $3 billion in loans each month just to repay the interest on our debt. So it is a big issue and a big problem that the Treasurer has to address—and we are fixing the budget.

The fourth of those promises— and the subject of these bills—was that we would repeal the carbon tax. That was, in my view, the most clear articulation of a policy intent in our history. We were specifically focused on redressing what many considered to be the greatest policy deception in our country's history—that famous statement, 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.' Just three days ago, on 23 June, the government reintroduced its carbon tax repeal legislation to the parliament—three months after Labor and the Greens combined to vote it down in the Senate.

We will persist until this toxic tax is repealed, because it does not achieve the policy effect it was intended to achieve. Domestic emissions continue to rise under the carbon tax. They go from 560 million tonnes in 2010 to 621 million tonnes in 2020—and the way we achieve the abatement effect is not by cutting emissions in our country but by investing billions of dollars of taxpayer's money in dodgy carbon credit schemes overseas to achieve that intended abatement effect. It is deception upon deception. How did we ever get to a situation where Labor and the Labor-Greens governments in this country were able to preside over $15 billion in damage to the Australian economy for a policy that does not even achieve its intended purpose? They do have form—and I will be speaking later on the minerals resource rent tax. It is one of many ideologically driven and costly policy promises that does not achieve that intended policy effect.

Let's consider the beneficial impacts for households and businesses of repealing the carbon tax. As I said earlier, the removal of the carbon tax in 2014-15 will save the average household over $550. Retail electricity prices will be around nine per cent lower and retail gas prices around seven per cent lower than they otherwise would be. On this basis, household average electricity bills will be around $200 lower than they otherwise would be in 2014-15 with a $25.40 carbon tax. Household average gas bills will be around $70 lower than they otherwise would be in 2014-15 with a $25.40 carbon tax. The removal of the carbon tax will reduce the consumer price index by around 0.7 of a percentage point than it otherwise would be, according to Treasury modelling. When the CPI is lower, that means less cost-of-living pressure on Australian families. Business compliance costs are also expected to fall by around $87.6 million per annum as a consequence of repealing the carbon tax.

Contrary to the quite mendacious claims of those opposite, power prices will fall. Consider this quote by Matthew Warren from the Energy Supply Association of Australia on 29 October last year:

Just as the carbon tax increased power prices when it was introduced in 2012, they will fall once it is removed.

And he was right. Consider the front page of the Launceston Examiner in my home state of Tasmania just six days ago on 20 June—and I quote:

Tasmania's Economic Regulator has approved a power decrease of 7.8 per cent, effective from July 1…to all Tasmanian residential customers and small business customers…[The regulator] Mr Appleyard said that the price decrease is primarily due to a reduction in Aurora Energy’s costs of buying electricity, which is as a result of the energy market’s expectation that the carbon price will be removed from July 1.

If you ever wanted to see a correlation between removal of the carbon tax and lower electricity prices, there it was in all its glory on the front page of the Launceston Examiner on 20 June. It is very clear proof that, if the carbon tax goes, cost-of-living pressures on families and business input costs from electricity go down.

There is nothing new in this simple fact. Labor was warned repeatedly about the consequences of their ill-considered policy. As Professor Sinclair Davidson of RMIT University pointed out on 30 June 2011, three years ago, in response to the Labor-Green deal and the disproportionate influence of then Greens leader Bob Brown:

Bob Brown hasn't explained how undermining the Australian economy would reduce that cost and why Australians should bear that cost when the UN hasn't managed to convince its members to act in concert on climate change ... The biggest problem Brown faces is that you can't intervene in the economy on the scale he desires without a massive reduction in our economic wellbeing. The problem Australia faces is that Brown doesn't understand that point.

I can recall then Climate Change Minister Greg Combet taking a delegation of 40 to Durban in late 2011—props for the Prime Minister's grandstanding. It is clear that Labor's national interest assessment on climate policy has been way off the mark since 2008. If climate change truly was 'the greatest moral challenge of our time', as former Labor PM Kevin Rudd so grandly professed, then Labor have failed to follow the careful and methodical approach to policy development that such a challenge demands. Labor relied on slogans like 'delay is the same as denial', a superficial excuse for failing to gain an unequivocal mandate for their environmental policies. Many will recall them back-pedalling on their return from Copenhagen, pledging that 'Australia would do no more and no less than the rest of the world.' What hollow words.

Despite the revisionist ideology of the member for left-wing ideology, two speakers ago, what we have seen under Labor is a long road from Kyoto, to Copenhagen, to Durban, and Rio that is littered with big promises but no binding, international action.    Instead the SS Carbon Australis steamed towards its inevitable iceberg—a policy that was all doorstop and no delivery. History records that Labor did not bring the Australian public along, as Prime Minister Gillard promised at the 2010 election. Her pre-emptive action locked us into a bad policy response ahead of the rest of the world.

As Professor Garnaut presciently observed in his 31 May 2011 report for the then government:

… every dollar of revenue from carbon pricing is collected from ... mostly households, ordinary Australians. Most of the costs will eventually be passed on to ordinary Australians.

And so it turned out. When other countries don't apply the same economy-wide tax then competitive disadvantage occurs.

Labor's continuing deception of the Australian people is evident also in their position on the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. On 18 June 2014, Labor again linked arms with their Greens Party mates to defy the will of the Australian people to vote down the abolition of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. You will recall, Deputy Speaker Broadbent, that we took the abolition of the carbon tax and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to the 2013 federal election. We said at the last election that we would support clean energy projects through Direct Action, and specifically through the Emissions Reduction Fund. This mandate has now been ignored by Labor and the Greens twice. We said that the Renewable Energy Target would provide strong incentives for business to develop clean energy solutions. When the Clean Energy Finance Corporation establishment bill was introduced, we made it clear that the Clean Energy Finance Corporation would displace projects that would have been undertaken anyway to meet the Renewable Energy Target. The Emissions Reduction Fund and the Renewable Energy Target are in addition to strong commercial incentives for businesses to undertake clean energy projects in order to reduce costs. The government simply does not believe it is prudent expenditure of taxpayer funds to keep borrowing money to underwrite a $10-billion taxpayer-funded bank that cherry-picks investments in direct competition with the private sector.

Consistent with the undertakings I made in Bass at the last election, consistent with our pledge to the Australian people, I strongly support this bill and call on the Labor Party to help families and small businesses by supporting this repeal legislation. The will of the Australian people is clear and it is time that the carbon tax was gone.

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