Wyatt Roy (Longman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to again speak out in support of locals who are being hit hard by the carbon tax. Last week marked the shameful anniversary oftwo years since our Prime Minister misled theAustralian people and declared that there would be nocarbon tax under a government she led. Local smallbusinesses in our community are now bearing theweight of this deception about a tax that is not onlymaking life much more expensive, but squeezingsmall businesses who are already doing it tough.

On Friday I visited a small business in my electorate , a business that is being hit hard by the carbon tax and is receiving no assistance from the federal Labor government for the pain it is causing. I spoke with Craig , from the local Foodworks in Burpengary, who has just been notified by his electricity company that his costs have gone up

dramatically due to the carbon tax. Craig receives monthly accounts for his electricity and , upon receiving his July account, realised that his business was footing a $1 , 300 carbon tax bill for one month alone! Th at amount is exactly what Craig's bill actually specifies he is paying for the carbon tax alone. What is clear is that, in contrast with what this Labor government is trying to spin, small businesses are indeed facing huge costs under the carbon tax. Craig's b usiness will be paying more than $15, 500 each year in carbon tax on his electricity alone , which does no t account for his increased costs in fresh produce, freight or meat products, despite the fact that he has had assurances from supplie r s that prices will definitely be rising as a result of the carbon tax. Craig pointed out that :

The carbon tax is going to cost people their jobs and hurt them in the hip pocket. We'll absorb as much as we can but we can't possibly absorb 100 per cent of the cost of the carbon tax.

I was also speaking with another local business on Friday, Redsell Air, whose costs are also rising. The main impost for Redsell Air is refrigeration gas. The cost of the most common type of refrigeration gas has increased by over 350 per cent with the carbon tax. Tony from Redsell Air told me that he was already well aware of the ways the carbon tax will hurt his business. Tony said:

The carbon tax is already having a clear impact on costs for our business. Refrigerant gas has been hit hard with the carbon tax. Prior to 1st July, our most common type of refrigerant gas was $31.40 per kilo. After the 1st of July, it is $112.82 per kilo, directly due to the impact of the carbon tax. This is more than a 350 per cent rise in the cost for what is a key factor in our business.

Last week I also spoke extensively with my two local chambers of commerce. The President of the Bribie Island Chamber of Commerce told me that her members are very concerned about their future prospects under the carbon tax. She said:

People know they will be hit hard with the carbon tax, and many people just aren't spending money. Local businesses are the ones who ultimately lose out.

She further said:

More businesses are closing now than with the GFC. For small business the killer is that customers are not spending money because they are frightened to get their electricity bills.

Commerce Caboolture reports a similar story, saying:

There is little doubt that the recently introduced carbon tax will increase the costs of all businesses. With consumer and business confidence low, there is a great deal of uncertainty about how much of those costs can be passed on. This means that businesses that have been doing it tough already may be squeezed even further.

I note with some obvious interest tonight that the Labor party has preselected its candidate for the Federal seat of Longman at the next election. Let me take this, the first available opportunity, to sincerely congratulate my opponent. I know it is not an easy thing to be preselected by a major political party. I note that he stated in his media release:

I believe our MPs should understand the day to day cost of living pressures in our area.

Well, I would love to know how the carbon tax is going to help one person in our local community. How is any one of the 26 new or increased taxes since federal Labor came to power going to help locals in our community?

The coalition has a very clear plan for how it will help Australians. We will restore hope, reward and opportunity. We will reduce cost-of-living pressures, grow the economy, strengthen the nation and deliver the stable and accountable government Australians deserve.

Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This motion continues the regrettable opposition tradition of not letting the facts get in the way of a good story when it comes to the carbon price. The motion says the carbon price will have a disproportionate impact on regional industries. The Leader of the Opposition went further, saying in June last year that there will be 45,000 jobs lost in energy-intensive industries and there will be 126,000 jobs lost, mainly in regional Australia. The claim is nonsense. Employment will continue to grow strongly under a carbon price, with 1.6 million new jobs being created by 2020. New jobs and industries in regional Australia will be created from investment in clean technology, and I urge the state governments of Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland not to put planning roadblocks in the way of wind energy jobs in regional Australia.

In June last year the Leader of the Opposition claimed, 'A carbon tax ultimately means death to the coal industry.' In fact, Treasury modelling shows the Australian coal mining industry's output will more than double over the period from 2010 to 2050. More than $96 billion worth of investment in the coal industry is currently in the pipeline—$96 billion.

And of course the opposition—and we heard it again tonight—has been endeavouring to blame the carbon price for electricity price rises. The Leader of the Opposition said last October: 'It will lead to massive increases in power prices.' In fact, the carbon price will increase household electricity prices by $3.30 a week on average, and households will receive $10.10 a week on average under the government's Household Assistance Package.

The opposition are Johnny-come-latelys to the issue of electricity prices. In November 2010 I expressed great concern in this House that over the past 10 years electricity prices in both Melbourne and Sydney had more than doubled: Melbourne prices had risen by more than 52 per cent in real terms and so had Sydney's, at 51 per cent. It is high time pensioners and other household electricity consumers got some relief from ever-rising electricity prices. I believe that regulatory authorities should limit electricity price rises for household consumers to the percentage amount by which pensions rise. This would give pensioners and fixed income earners some badly needed respite. I urge electricity pricing regulatory authorities to consider the hardship the rises over the past decade have caused and think about pensioners who are struggling to make ends meet.

My view is that the cost of investing in new electricity infrastructure should be borne by the beneficiaries of growth: the property industry. Electricity companies should not be prevented from recovering the costs of new infrastructure from the new developments that necessitate it. Household customers should not be asked to subsidise infrastructure development over which they have no control.

I welcome recent statements by the Prime Minister on the causes of rising electricity prices and on the debate we are now having about the gold-plating of electricity networks, with pensioners and household consumers footing the bill. The more that power companies spend, the more money they receive. This gives them an incentive to gold-plate their networks. I draw the attention of the House to an example of this in my own electorate. At the Brunswick Terminal Station, CitiPower and SP AusNet, majority owned by the Singaporean government, have turned what should have been a $107 million spend in 2006 on an enhancement to Melbourne's CBD network into a $271 million spend, and still counting, this year. What is called the 'reg test' is the green light for the owners of transmission assets to build something and then lift the prices charged to consumers, via their power bills, to recover the costs. Yet the 2008 'reg test' for the Brunswick Terminal Station did not consider the possibility that the air insulated system that it had identified for the site was unlikely to receive local council planning approval. This was notwithstanding that the Brunswick site was zoned residential and even a cursory inquiry would have revealed entrenched local opposition. Four years later the plan is to spend $271 million. This is a far cry from the original $107 million earmarked for the site or the $135 million considered for the Bouverie Street alternative. The federal government should launch an investigation into how it is that a $100 million proposal can become a $271 million one.

As long as this kind of thing continues to happen, we will continue to see electricity supply companies making large, unwarranted profits at the expense of pensioners and ordinary households. This is what this motion should be about. If the opposition were fair dinkum, that is what they would be talking about tonight.

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek the indulgence of the House just for a moment before I speak to the bill. I was looking tonight at this book, Lake Eyre: A Journey Through the Heart of the Continent, and it had the name Paul Lockyer on it, with photographs and support by John Bean and Gary Ticehurst. It is 12 months since that inexplicable, tragic accident happened. I know that for us, life moves on. I did not know any of these three people, but those family members, and those who were close to them, and many in outback Australia, will be really feeling it at this time. I would just like to identify with them, 12 months on from that accident, and to say what wonderful men they were and what a wonderful contribution they made to this nation.

Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for McMillan for his well-chosen words.

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is 40 days since I sent a letter out to my electorate through the local newspapers, mentioning the Greg Sheridan article in the Weekend Australian of 11-12 July. All I asked in that letter was that Minister Combet answer the queries put within that article that were negative about the carbon tax and what it will do for Australia. All I asked for was some veracity, some truth. But at this stage neither the minister, Greg Combet, nor any of his colleagues have addressed the specific issues raised by Sheridan—namely, the Productivity Commission findings that no economy in the world has produced a scheme such as Australia's tax at $23 a tonne. The US does not have a national scheme, nor Canada, nor China. South Korea is yet to develop one. New Zealand has modified its already low-price scheme. India is not considering anything until after 2020, and then only wants Western dollars.

Despite the minister's answer to the dorothy dixer in question time last Thursday, the EU, where some trading exists, has a permit price as low as $7 or $8—which would make an enormous difference to my power station or, rather, to the member for Gippsland's power station—and to my workers as well as to his workers. According to Swiss banking giant UBS Investment Research, the EU ETS cost $278 billion through 2011, and its effect on the reduction of emissions was 'almost zero impact'. Experts doubt that an international trading scheme will ever work. For example, there are doubts over the veracity of the permits emanating out of China. Lastly, there is no evidence to show that a market based system of trading actually reduces carbon emissions.

These are only the reasons that I am asking Greg Combet, the minister, to look at the Sheridan article of 40 days ago, to take it apart piece by piece, and give the Australian people the opportunity to say: 'Righto, there is a criticism—and here is the answer from the government. Here is a definitive response from the government on these issues.' My workers in the Latrobe Valley, along with the member for Gippsland's workers in the Latrobe Valley, actually deserve a response. They deserve a response to an article that clearly says, this puts Australia at a disadvantage. And it was not just Greg Sheridan; he was quoting two other experts.

Now the member opposite may grin and have a little cheer, but he should come down and see my workers, who are really concerned about their futures and who are really concerned that they have been dudded by the party that they voted for. Do you know what sort of vote I get in their area? Twenty-five per cent. And if I have a good election campaign, I get 26 per cent. They are solid, down-to-earth, hardworking Labor voters. The member opposite can grin all he likes, because he is not grinning at me—he is grinning at those voters. And I can tell you something, if they vote the way they voted during the last election campaign, that grin will be wiped so far off his face he will not know which way to run.

Having said that, all I am asking tonight is for one minister in the government of the day to go and answer a simple article that was put in the Australian on 11 July. That was 40 days ago, and there has not been one response. And if I have to get up in this parliament tomorrow, and the day after, it will be 41 days, and 42 days, and he will not have answered the question.

I know there are really good reasons for this nation to reduce its emissions and, perhaps, take a world lead. But this government is not going about it in a way that is good for this nation. It is certainly not good for Gippsland. We are the ones who are, once again, going to take the brunt of massive changes in Australia's approach to emissions. We have already been through the privatisation of the power industry, where we lost as many as 8,000 jobs in one hit. And now here we are at the forefront of this whole issue again. I am out of time, but I look forward to the next five days, when the minister may consider a response.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is not for me to respond, but I would point the member for McMillan to the experience in the United States of market based mechanisms to reduce pollution. In the United States, they used a market based mechanism—a trading scheme—to eliminate acid rain. Deputy Speaker Leigh could give the member various articles about how that was done through a trading system, and that would be proof that such systems work.

Earlier, we heard the member for Longman complain about business confidence. He talked about how small businesses in his electorate were complaining about business confidence and were worried about the future. The main reason they are worried about the future is that we have an opposition that is not playing the role of the loyal opposition but rather playing the role of the tea party in Australia.

They are running around the place, increasingly shrill and unbelievable—as this motion demonstrates—in this Henny Penny fashion saying: 'The sky is going to fall. You've got to be scared. You've got to be frightened. It's just around the corner.' We got to 1 July and it was: 'It's just around the corner. Wait until the power bills come in.' After that it will be: 'Wait for this. Wait for that.'

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's a python, not a cobra.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's a python, not a cobra. We have seen Whyalla survive. Whyalla is still there. We have seen the opposition leader previously describe the lifts in the cost of living as 'unimaginable', and yet the TD Securities inflation figure for July was 0.2 per cent. We have heard the Leader of the Opposition say that every Australian job would be less secure, yet unemployment remains low. Wages continue to grow. Australians in all walks of life continue to get on with their daily lives. What we have seen over the last year is the most irresponsible scare campaign in this nation's history.

I have been out to my electorate and talked to people. I used to do the piece-of-steak test. I knew that the average piece of steak would rise by half a cent under the carbon price. I would go out there and ask people, 'How much do you think it's going up?' Because of the scare campaign of those opposite, you got anywhere from 15c to $2 a piece. People have fertile imaginations these days. Of course members opposite have played upon those imaginations and turned them into an incense burner to their own political vanity. Unfortunately, this all has to stop. At some point, reality has to set in. And of course it has set in.

What this price is all about—and it is a price, and it is a market based mechanism—is a transformation in our economy, mainly to drive efficiency. That is what this price does: it mainly drives efficiency. Sure, some costs are passed on. That is why consumers—particularly consumers on fixed incomes—are compensated. But what this price really is designed to do is drive efficiency in business.

I have seen that in my own electorate, in a big bottling plant. Obviously it was energy intensive. They were fearful of what Europe might do in terms of trade barriers. They were fearful that wineries might ship their wine over there and bottle in the United Kingdom rather than bottle here. So they halved the amount of glass in the bottles. They invested in a very efficient manufacturing plant and reduced the amount of glass they used. Because they reduced the amount of glass they used, they reduced their energy intensity. Because they reduced that, they pump out less carbon. That is what market based systems do: they promote efficiency. Members opposite know this. But they just do not want to talk about it.

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'll talk about it.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You did your whole thesis on it. You should know it back to front. We are waiting for you to tell us.

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I know a bit about this.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You claim that your own scheme is a market based mechanism. I wonder how you are going to justify that.

Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member will direct his comments through the chair.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is going to be the greatest public subsidy for heavy industry since Stalin was around. State based socialism is what you are proposing.

George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Did you get your car subsidies?

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member opposite should not knock Holdens. Holden is a great Australian brand. You should not knock them in this place. I will leave it to the other side to explain their policy and the merits of it. (Time expired)

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let me deal with this carbon tax. It does not work, nobody else is doing it and there is a better way. Let me deal with the fact that it does not work. I will take the member for Wakefield to page 18 of the summary modelling document in Treasury's own modelling. What does that say? That between 2010 and 2020 Australia's emissions will go up from 578 million tonnes to 621 million tonnes. Hang on. We have a carbon tax. It has been brought about to reduce emissions. Yet Australia's emissions go up by 43 million tonnes or almost two tonnes per person. The raison d'etre, the purpose, the cause, the reason for being of this carbon tax is to reduce Australia's emissions—and it does not. It does not work. It does not achieve its basics. It does not achieve the very thing for which it was created. That is why, before you even get to the issue of electricity prices, gas prices and refrigeration costs, Australians are saying very simply, 'What's the point?' I am one that does believe that we need to take action, that does want to reduce emissions. This carbon tax does not do it, because electricity is a fundamentally inelastic good—not perfectly inelastic, but it is an essential service. That means its susceptibility to price change is limited. That is why around the world an electricity tax is not what is actually happening.

This brings me to the second point: nobody else is doing it. What the government would have us believe is that everybody is rushing to the carbon tax, right around the world. Let us look at the reality. The United States has made sure that there will be no carbon tax under a government that anybody leads in that country over the next 10 years. Of that I am as certain as I could possibly be in terms of anything at the geostrategic level. Canada has just held an effective referendum with its last election, and the proponents of the carbon tax were decimated, destroyed, obliterated. That was the electoral fate of the carbon tax in Canada. In Japan it has been deferred indefinitely. In Korea it was not brought forward; it was put back. And the amount of free permits is up to 100 per cent in the vast majority of cases. So the reality is that there is the fig leaf but no actual functioning tax remotely like anything else. In India, no chance. In China they are seeing the greatest growth in coal emissions in human history.

What we are seeing is a growth in coal from 1.4 billion tonnes in 2002 to up to four billion tonnes in 2015. That is the reality. In Europe—which the government cites as if it is the great saviour of the drowning government—over their first five years they averaged a take of $500 million, for a population of 500 million, so it was $1 per person. In Australia, we will make $9 billion from the carbon tax by taking it from the people in the first year. In the first year we will have approximately 18 times the take of Europe's first five-year average, and our population is 22½ million people. So the difference is between $1 per person and $400 per person. That is why there can be no comparison between Europe and Australia.

As the Productivity Commission said, no other country has an economy-wide carbon tax or emissions trading scheme equivalent to that which is being proposed in Australia—all of which leads to the knowledge that there is a better way. And it is very simple: we just hold a reverse auction. All we do is what we do with water. We buy the lowest cost emissions reduction, the lowest cost abatement—whether it is capturing carbon in soil, capturing carbon in trees, cleaning up waste landfill gas, cleaning up waste coalmine gas, cleaning up our power stations or pursuing energy efficiency at the industrial, domestic or commercial level. That is what we do. It is not difficult. It is in fact exactly as the UN's Clean Development Mechanism operates. This carbon tax is lonely. It is a failure. It does not work, and that is why it should be utterly rejected.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Deputy Speaker Leigh; your earlier motion up in the Federation Chamber was a noble point for this parliament to consider. This motion, put forward by the member for La Trobe, is not so noble.

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Regional Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was the member for Gippsland.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I beg your pardon, Member for Gippsland. The member for Gippsland put up this motion. I could not sign up quickly enough to talk about the price on carbon. Obviously, firstly, we need to turn to the motion put forward by the member for Gippsland. It talked about the impact of the carbon price. As the first thing we do, let's look at the facts. Let's have a look at the economy. I wondered whether, if we went back 10 years, the Treasurer at the time, Peter Costello, had a set of figures like this, with 4.3 per cent growth, especially compared to the rest of the world—

Mr Chester interjecting—

Yes, a surplus. I take that interjection from the member opposite. That is certainly what we are predicting in our budget, with 14,000 jobs created in the month of July. That is despite the Premier of Queensland sacking thousands of people. The number was 5,000, then 6,000, and then 7,000, and they are on track to having sacked 20,000—some say even 30,000—people. When we look at private investment in the economy, we see the highest percentage of GDP in almost 40 years. The investment pipeline lined up to come in, especially in resources but also across Australia, is $500 billion, or half a trillion dollars. And look at the TD Securities results in terms of inflation. Surely with those figures, inflation must be out of control, or unemployment must be a problem. But, no, we have unemployment at around the five per cent mark. Since back in July when the carbon tax was introduced, we have had inflation at 0.2 per cent.

I remember a time when it was said that there would be serious price increases, or, according to the member for Warringah, 'astronomical and unimaginable price increases'. I am not using his imagination as a yardstick for what people are doing. He talked about it being a 'wrecking ball' on the economy. Surely the Treasurer 10 years ago would have been in raptures over those sorts of economic figures. We heard it was a cobra poised to strike the economy, and then it transmogrified into a carpet snake—

Ms Rishworth interjecting—

Sorry, a python. A carpet snake is a type of python. Anyone from the bush knows that a carpet snake will not hurt you. You probably don’t want to put your finger in its mouth, but a carpet snake won't do any harm. Most carpet snakes do good things around the home. They get rid of mice and a few things like that.

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Regional Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We should all have one!

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, definitely, a carpet snake is a good thing. Anyone from country Queensland would agree. Even an amethystine python from North Queensland, up around the member for Dawson's area, is a good thing.

The reality is that the predicted impact of this price on carbon has been bang on the money, the predictions from Treasury have been bang on. Treasury are the very same people that predicted how the GST would impact on the economy. Lo and behold, it is exactly the same impact.

Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A lot less than the GST.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Definitely a lot less than the GST. It will be two years tomorrow since the 2010 election, and I can assure those opposite that the people that turned out to vote for me in Moreton would have been horrified if we had not gone ahead with pricing carbon the way we had promised in 2007, the way the member for Warringah promised in 2007 and the way the member for Wentworth promised up until 2 December 2009, when the member for Warringah took control of the opposition by one vote—with one donkey vote and one missing vote. It was so close, we could have had a completely different approach to this problem. Instead we have seen political opportunism still coming out tonight, with this motion, and with members saying the price on carbon is having a significant impact. The economic figures laugh in the face of such an accusation from the member for— (Time expired)