Mary Fisher (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Jobs and Workplace Relations (Senator Evans), the Minister for Sport (Senator Arbib) and the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research (Senator Carr) to questions without notice asked by Senators Fifield, Payne and Colbeck today.

I might as well start off by commenting that I find it absolutely remarkable that Senator Arbib, the minister, in his response to Senator Payne, would dare mutter the words ‘here comes the scare campaign’ when Senator Payne was asking the very proper question about the impacts of the carbon tax on public housing recipients. How dare Minister Arbib suggest, ‘Here comes the scare campaign.’

The scare campaign is the government’s and the government’s very own. Forget about ‘here comes the opposition scare campaign’, because ‘Here comes the sun’ is as sophisticated as the government scare campaign. That is all it is: a scare campaign as sophisticated as: ‘Here comes the sun. Therefore thou shalt have a carbon tax’—a carbon tax with no detail. It is a carbon tax at what price per tonne? We do not know. The government’s carbon tax adviser himself, Ross Garnaut, speculates that it will be something between $20 and $30 a tonne.

Who will have to pay this carbon tax? For now, apparently not agriculture. That has to reassure the nation’s farmers. Who will be exempt from having to pay the carbon tax? Who else? Which other industries? We know not. How much extra will people have to pay at the bowser and at the supermarket if a carbon tax is to be imposed? We know not. Who will be compensated? And by how much? Who will not be compensated? We know not. What we know—and all we know—is the government scare campaign: ‘Here comes the sun; thou shalt have a carbon tax.’ We know a bit more though. We know that this government is hell-bent on expending taxpayer funds on an advertising campaign. You could ask: for what? They have funded all these experts to tell them about the carbon tax.

We still do not know the details of it so who is the government going to call? Minister Combet says, ‘Thankyou, Senator Nash, now I will not call ghost busters. I will not call myth busters. Who I will call is spin meisters.’ Minister Combet said overnight that the government is examining ‘a number of options for public communications’—about a scare campaign and a policy intent about which we do not know the detail. So Minister Combet said the government is examining ‘a number of options for public communications’ and that this will involve contact with public relations agencies as was ‘standard practice’. You are not wrong about that, Minister. So when this government knows not they call in the spin meisters. That is where they go for their answers, which is a bit intriguing given that the same minister told the Australian public some two weeks ago on Lateline:

It is perfectly valid when developing an important public policy like this that you release your policy intentions in the way that we have ...

So he has conceded that is all the government has: a scare campaign—here comes the sun, thou shalt have a carbon tax. It is full of intention but no detail; we do not know it yet. But a public communications firm might help with the detail—let’s hope so—because this government is going to spend our taxpayer funds on advertising it. Will the advertising campaign cost $30 million or perhaps $40 million? Will it cost the amount that you set aside to advertise your CTS?