Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Joyce, she is a capable woman. You are not telling us what we have got to know. It does not matter what Senator Joyce wants—or Senator Nash or Senator Milne. It is irrelevant. But you have to tell us what you are going to spend and how you are going to raise the money—whether it is going to be by a tax, a levy or any other means. If you do not, you are deceiving the Senate, and when you deceive the Senate you are deceiving the Australian people. This is a parliament and we are all gathered here because we have been elected to represent our constituents. Whether they are to the far left or the right or the middle, they all have to vote, and they all want to know how much this is going to cost and how we are going to finance it.

If it is a levy on aviation fuel and bunker fuel, that is going to impact on Australia more than any other country in the world, because we are a trading nation. As I said in my speech on the second reading, we have been a trading nation since Macarthur sent the first bale of wool overseas. And we are a long way away from anywhere. We are down at the bottom end of the world, so our transport costs are going to be more than others. We will be impacted on more by levies and taxes. If you want to get this through, that is okay; I do not know whether you have the numbers. But surely there is nothing wrong with telling us that. Are you ashamed? Are you frightened? Are you observing the polls, as I am, and finding that the ETS is going down like a brick and you do not want to frighten the horses? Your polling must be the same as ours, and ours is saying it is going down in front of your eyes. That is a fact of life. You cannot escape it. People have a view and they express that view in the polls. But it is wrong for you to stand here and abuse Senator Macdonald, Senator Milne and Senator Joyce. Senator Joyce is pretty thick-skinned and he can cop it, but Senator Milne does not like it, and I do not think you should abuse her. Chivalry is not dead in the National Party, and we respect women.

We can be flippant about this, but I do not think you can escape it: you cannot deny telling us how you are going to raise the money, what the money is, what taxes are going to be paid, what is going to be on revenue and how you are going to raise the money. The figure is going to be around $3.8 billion, I suspect. You can deny that, but that is what Oxfam have said. I do not know what they have got to do with the price of fish. They are a charity organisation and they probably do a pretty good job as a charity organisation, but when they stray from their knitting I do not think they have any expertise to make these claims. Then you have got the EU, which has put us down for $3.8 billion. So we can assume that we are in the ballpark, give or take a billion, but we would actually like to know the figure and how you are going to raise the figure, whether it is going to be by taxes, levies or raiding the budget. They are not unreasonable questions, I would have thought. So can you please give us some answers or, as Senator Macdonald said, we will be here until Christmas. We are prepared to stay here as long as you like. Do not try and obfuscate, because you can only obfuscate for so long. In the end, the truth will come out. You will have to give us the truth and you are trying to avoid that at the moment. The questions I ask you are: how much is it, and how are you going to raise the money—are you going to invoke a levy on fuel or is it going to be through taxation or a raid on the budget or something else?