Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to raise a grievance on behalf of the people of Paterson. Their will has been ignored by the current Labor government. My constituents do not want a carbon tax, and they deserve at the very least a plebiscite to make it clear to the Labor government that refuses to listen to what ordinary Australians want. I turned on the radio last week and the top national news story was a piece about seven eminent Australians who supported the carbon tax. It made me furious. Why? Not because eminent Australians do not deserve to have a point of view or to express it—of course they do. As a matter of fact, I welcome it. What made me furious was that the residents of Paterson have never been at the top of the news bulletin, yet their views matter every bit as much as any prominent Australian's. I am not talking about seven Paterson residents who do not support a carbon tax; I am talking about the seven or so people that are calling or emailing my office every single hour of every single day. The number of people who have contacted me to oppose the carbon tax is in the thousands.

I would like to read a couple of emails that I have received from my constituents. First, a bit of a tongue-in-cheek email from Peter and Janet regarding recent carbon tax advertising:

We were so pleased to see the advertisement on TV last night asking us to say yes to a carbon tax as finally the government is asking us to decide. Can you please keep us informed as to the date set for either the referendum or the election? We cannot wait to cast our vote on this incompetent and lying government.

Judy wrote to me:

Please let Julia Gillard know we do not believe in a carbon tax. As far as I am concerned this will just be another tax, and as a self-funded retiree we certainly cannot afford any more taxes as the standard of living for older Australians is being eroded every day.

Then there is Colin:

We contribute 1.4 per cent of the world's carbon emissions. The aim of the carbon tax is to reduce our emissions by five per cent. So that means we are going to disrupt and damage our economy, put many people out of work and increase our inflation by five to 10 per cent just to save seven parts in 10,000 of the world's emissions. What a great idea.

Lastly there is Kevin, who wrote:

If the Prime Minister believes she has a mandate to introduce a carbon tax, she should be prepared to do the following: to every enrolled voter in Australia she sends a simple question to the voters with a reply paid envelope: do you support the introduction of a carbon tax, yes or no. The result then would be to support or dismiss her policy. On a personal note, she lied and misled the public on this matter.

These people might not get a spot on the news but they have a voice here in this parliament, and I will ensure that it is heard by the Prime Minister.

People in my electorate not only do not want this tax; they simply cannot afford it. This time last year in the Hunter, electricity prices rose between 17 and 13 per cent, gas prices went up by 13 per cent, water bills went up by five per cent, council rates went up by 2.6 per cent and taxi fares went up by 3 per cent—and that is without the rise in petrol, grocery and rent bills that have occurred across New South Wales. Now Labor wants to add $860 a year to the household budget with a $30 per tonne carbon price, and that is just the start. The Greens want a price of $100 per tonne, and there is no telling how far Labor will go to keep de facto prime minister Bob Brown happy. But what exactly is the point of putting a tax on carbon, you might ask. How will extra expense help the environment? Labor says that adding the extra cost will stop people using things, reducing energy consumption and therefore reducing emissions. But you cannot cut back on essentials, and power, groceries and fuel are essentials. You only have to look at history to see that the Labor government's theory is flawed. Between 2000 and 2008 the cost of electricity in Australia rose by 55.9 per cent. Yet over that same period, consumption rose by 10 per cent, from 10,194 kilowatt-hours per capita to 11,217 kilowatt-hours per capita. I repeat: you cannot cut back on essentials and this insidious Labor tax grab will not reduce emissions; it will only reduce the affordability for average Australians.

It is not just the household budget that will take a hit from a carbon tax. Costs for industry will also skyrocket and those costs will either be passed on to consumers, absorbed in job cuts or indeed both. In the Hunter region, thousands rely on the mining and aluminium industries for their work. That includes 1,070 permanent staff and 250 contractors at Tomago Aluminium, the 395 staff and 16 apprentices at Port Waratah Coal Services, the 540 permanent and 38 casual staff at Four Jacks, and the 537 workers at the Hydro Aluminium Kurri Kurri, to name but a few. That is not even mentioning the indirect jobs that those businesses generate, which number in the tens of thousands. Whichever way you look at it, Labor's carbon tax will cost jobs. It is going to put a huge financial strain on the companies that provide work for my constituents.

The Leader of the Opposition, the Hon. Tony Abbott, visited one of these companies just this weekend, the Drayton Mine at Muswellbrook. I note that local federal member, Joel Fitzgibbon, was absent. It is not the first time he has failed to show to such meetings. His Hunter colleagues, Jill Hall, Sharon Grierson, Greg Combet and, further north, Rob Oakeshott have all been surprisingly quiet on this issue in the local area. I fear it is because they have decided to toe the party line on the carbon tax rather than represent their constituents. It is probably because they have heard the figures. AngloCoal, for example, which owns the Drayton Mine, would invest $3.4 billion over the next decade, creating 3,000 new jobs, in the absence of a carbon tax. Those jobs would support families who would spend on local goods and services, in turn boosting the local economy and providing more jobs. Labor does not understand the flow-on affect nor the multipliers of investment. Yet despite all this, Labor wants to put a huge tax on the companies that invest in Australia. It not only wants to tax big businesses, its tax will cripple small, family-run businesses too. If power bills go up thousands of dollars a year, small businesses already struggling to cope will have no choice but to pass on the cost. Jodie who runs the Donut King in my electorate says that if power bills skyrocket with a carbon tax she will have no choice but to put up the cost of a cup of coffee or cut back staff hours. She cannot cut her electricity use any further.

Local Labor members are willing to sell out their workers and send our emissions overseas to less efficient producers, all to appease the Greens. Talk about a government that has lost its way. I want to make this clear: this debate is not about whether we should do something about the environment. It is not about cutting emissions by five per cent by 2020 because we all agree: coalition, Labor, Greens, Independents alike. That is something that needs to be done to reduce our CO2 output. In fact, the government and the coalition have the same target of five per cent reduction by 2020. This debate is about the best way to achieve that aim. A tax that will force emissions and jobs offshore is not the way.

If Prime Minister Gillard, Labor, the Greens and the Independents were convinced that the Australian people wanted a carbon tax they should put it to a vote. The people of Paterson and Australia deserve to have their say. That is why the coalition and I call on this government to hold a plebiscite because it is just too scared to call an election. A plebiscite will give our people the power to say yes or no to a carbon tax that will increase the price of just about every good and service in this nation. It would be the chance we never got before the election. If Prime Minister Gillard had been honest with the people back in August, the public would have had the chance to decide whether it would support a carbon tax. Instead, the Prime Minister stared into the camera five days prior to the polls and ruled out a tax with that famous quote, 'There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.' Former Prime Minister Rudd said that addressing climate change through tax was the greatest moral challenge this country faces. I put it to the current Prime Minister: the greatest moral challenge now is to be honest with the people she purports to represent. This government needs to call an election or at the very least hold a plebiscite to get a mandate from the Australian people for its carbon tax. To do otherwise would leave this moribund government with a moral dilemma: after all, it was the Prime Minister who said there would be no carbon tax under the government she led. Therefore, in closing, I call on the Gillard Labor government to take its tax to the people for a decisive answer.