Peter Hendy (Eden-Monaro, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister: I refer the Prime Minister to the government's plan to abolish the carbon tax. Would the Prime Minister tell the House what impact this will have on costs for small business in my electorate of Eden-Monaro and jobs in trade exposed industries around Australia?

Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Eden-Monaro for his question and I congratulate him on his excellent maiden speech yesterday. The carbon tax certainly is hurting businesses and costing jobs right around Australia, particularly in the small businesses of which the member spoke so eloquently yesterday.

Over the past year I have visited at least 80 businesses right around our country that are being hurt by the carbon tax, including quite a few in his electorate of Eden-Monaro such as ACT Steelworks, a small business which is going to be thousands of dollars a year worse off because of the carbon tax.

In every single one of those businesses right around the country, the workers of Australia have had a very simple message: axe the tax—axe the tax which is making their jobs less secure and hurting their prospects of future employment.

So the good news is that the government has been elected to do just that: to axe the tax. The bad news is that members opposite are still in denial, which raises a question: just who are the real friends of the workers of this country? Is it the party who wants to take taxes off them and improve their job security or is it the party that thinks that what the workers of Australia need is just more taxes?

Under members opposite, unemployment queues lengthened by 200,000, because this was a government that just did not get it when it came to the economy. Under the former coalition government we had two million new jobs created, and that is precisely the record that this government is determined to emulate.

It is very clear exactly what the situation is here: the former government left a mess; the new government has been elected to fix it. We are fixing up the mess, and it is high time that members opposite got out of the way of the repair job that this country so desperately needs.