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

Yes, she did say that, Senator Brown. Do you understand what that means? I am a practical person. I know what this means. During the last break, people came to me and said, ‘With the dollar where it is, we just can’t take any more; we’re up to where pussy wore the bow—right up to the neck.’ Let us take groceries as an example. We are importing $181 million worth of groceries. We have lost 330,000 people in the grocery industry and are down to 285,000. That is because our costs are going up and the dollar is higher—put an ETS on top of that and you will blow Australian industry right out of the game.

That is what we have to face. Whoever is right—whether it is those who say we will all be doomed if we do not do something about climate change or it is those who say it is not real—it will not matter one iota if China, India, Russia and America are not on board. America have said: ‘We can’t do this. If we put an emissions trading scheme or a cap-and-trade scheme on our people, on our industry, we won’t have 9.6 per cent unemployment; we’ll have 15 per cent unemployment.’ It is just not politically acceptable for them to do it—they cannot do it. India cannot do it. China cannot do it. Yet you want us to do it. You want us to take this suicidal step and blow our industries out when no-one else will.

At the same time as we are supposed to cut our emissions down by 25 per cent of business as usual, the Chinese will go from putting five billion tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere to putting 10 billion. Where is the sense in this? What are you going to say to the Indians? What are you going to say to the Chinese: ‘Sorry, guys, just let your people to starve, let them live in cardboard boxes, let them beg in the streets’? That is the alternative—they have to compete in the world.

I listened to Senator Cameron, who called me an extremist. I was out the other day and I saw a car called a ‘Great Wall’—nice car. (Time expired)