Barnaby Joyce (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is a very important issue. The Labor government have lately gone into a path of censorship, whether it is censorship of what people can say when they are sending letters out to their community, the ridiculous proposition that we have some sort of propaganda unit that all letters have to be sent to before they can go out to constituents, or the overarching arm of Mr Rudd in every corner of people’s lives. A classic example of this is the situation with Dr Clive Spash. Dr Spash, who works for the CSIRO, had the gall to write a paper, which was peer reviewed, which disagreed with the Labor Party’s position. So what happens? He cannot publish his conclusions—not as a member of the CSIRO, not even as a private citizen. This is the world that we have evolved into with the pro ETS Labor Party.  If you dissent, not only in this chamber but in your public life or in your private life, the Labor Party will go after you. The Labor Party cannot abide the idea that someone has a different view to them. The Labor Party and the micromanaging of Mr Rudd are to make sure that every mechanism of the ventilation of an issue is controlled from the Prime Minister’s office. It is very peculiar and it falls in line with what we have seen with the curtailing of other views.

At the moment we are seeing Kevin Trenberth’s expose of the overseas emails. We are seeing the weight that has been put on the scientific community against those who dissent. Phil Jones, one of the leading IPCC scientists, was sent an email. He said that he was cheered by the death of John L. Daly in Launceston in 2004. This is the sort of culture that is present not only overseas but in Australia. This culture is present within the department. We have a clear example here of how the Labor Party have become arrogant, disconnected and belligerent in the pursuit of their goal of delivering this massive new tax to the Australian people.

It is vitally important that the Australian people understand that it is the Labor Party senators who are going to vote for this. It is of vital importance that the Australian people know that the Labor Party senators are going to bring this massive new tax in. Dr Clive Spash had the audacity to say there might be a better way. Whether he is right or wrong, I thought he had the liberty to express that, as we in this parliament do. We have found that the arms of this parliament and the arms of the Prime Minister’s office, with the complicit agreement of such people as the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Senator Carr, have now reached out and are affecting the engagement of a private citizen in expressing their views to the public in a paper.

Where did this culture evolve from? It was always the Labor Party that made the accusation about our side of parliament being arrogant and disconnected when we were in government. How quickly they have changed. Within two years we have the censorship of open public debate under the auspices of the Minister for Climate Change and Water, Senator Wong, and Minister Carr because they will not abide dissenting views. The Australian people are rightly suspicious. While they drive up and down the highway listening to this on broadcast, they must know that this Labor government does not want them to hear the alternative view. They do not want them to hear the alternative view on the climate debate and now they do not want them to hear the alternative view on the economic debate. They are covering for the bankers and brokers who are going to make billions in commission from the implementation of this ETS. Those billions of dollars in commission will come out of the wallets of working families in the western suburbs, farmers, graziers and pensioners.

Dr Clive Spash had the audacity to say there might be a better way and that we might be able to reduce the costs for working families. But no, you cannot have that view out there. There is only one way: you must have the bankers, brokers and bureaucrats. Minister Wong and Minister Carr, under the guidance of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, will ensure that there will be not just a micromanaging of everything that happens but now a micromanaging of public opinion.

Recently we celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall and the expression of liberty that was so well espoused by those people. The thing that they hated was the lack of capacity to present their private views. We celebrated that event, but at exactly the same time we were celebrating that event we in our nation are experiencing censorship of opinion by the Labor government. For what purpose? Why is the Labor Party censoring it? It is censoring it because it knows an open and transparent debate of all the facts would work against it. The Labor Party does not want people to see the exact cost of this on households and the complete abhorrence of pensioners who are at the edge at the moment, who are dealing with the fact that power prices have gone through the roof and are trying to work out how to find the money for that. They know and they are absolutely furious that prices are about to go up again.

One of the benefactors of those price increases, by a factor of billions of dollars, will be bankers, brokers and bureaucrats, who will collect the largesse of working families. The people whose jobs will be under threat in the Hunter Valley and the Illawarra will know that those jobs are under threat, but the benefactors will be people pushing permits around broker firms in Sydney and Melbourne. That is supposed to be a worthwhile outcome, a just outcome. It is not just, and the Australian people have a right to know the Labor senators who are going to vote for this. They have a right to know that their Labor senators in a matter of days will put their name to this legislation as it goes through, and that cost will go back to their working families—but I do not think they are their working families anymore. I think working families are a wake-up to the Labor Party. Working families are aware of the fact that the way that the Labor Party are going to ease the squeeze on working families is to put the price of everything in their lives up, from food to transport to power. Every corner of their lives will be affected by a tax they cannot do anything about. When Dr Clive Spash had the audacity to bell the cat, what do the government do? They come out and completely curtail debate. They put his job under threat.