Mark Bishop (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Western Australia Sometimes in a debate you really do have to have someone who tries to avoid the hyperbole and the exaggeration and the political pointscoring and the Chicken Little statements that we have had from the two opposition speakers to date—someone who is prepared to address the issue at hand, the facts in a debate. Fortunately for the chamber, I am the person who is more than comfortable to address just the facts concerning the climate change issue and the carbon tax debate.

Let us go right back to the beginning, to basics. Some six or nine months ago, the Prime Minister made it quite clear that we were going to introduce a carbon tax. She made it quite clear at the time as to why we were seeking to introduce a carbon tax: to cut pollution and to drive investment in clean energy. She also made the point at the time, and has repeated it regularly since, as has the relevant minister, that there would be some modest cost impact through the imposition of the carbon tax. Of course, that modest cost impact will be paid by fewer than 1,000 of the companies that are the largest emitters in industry around the Commonwealth of Australia. So, yes, there was going to be a carbon tax. It was there to cut pollution and to drive investment in clean energy. It would have modest cost impacts, and those modest cost impacts would be paid by fewer than 1,000 of the largest emitters, the largest polluters, in this country.

We acknowledged at the outset that some industries would pass on all or part of that cost to consumers, and we also said at the outset that it would be terribly unfair that those who are least fortunate in our community, those who are least able to bear the cost, should wear that cost from that modest cost impact. That is why we said up-front that the cost impact would be modest and that there would be fair and generous assistance to households. The government made its position quite clear at the outset and time and time again the relevant minister has repeated that. We said that we would help pensioners and we would help low-income earners. But, more than that, it is not a revenue grab, a revenue take, a revenue steal, as Senator Bernardi constantly recited; 100 per cent of the revenue raised from this carbon tax will be returned to industry, to consumers or to those low-income house­holds around Australia—pensioners and low-income persons generally—who are least able to bear that price. Almost 3½ million maximum-rate and part-rate pensioners will receive assistance—assistance in addition to the normal indexation of their pension and their welfare entitlements—to compensate them for the burden that they will wear.

We say that the approach of the government will have the outcome that the carbon price, which is a price on emissions and pollution, will make dirty energy more expensive and clean energy, like the alternatives we have been talking about for some time—solar, wind and gas—cheaper. In that context, as I said, the tax is only going to fall on the largest 1,000 emitters in this country. Some of those emitters will have the ability to pass on the price increase—some in whole, some in part. But we are very concerned about where it is passed on. We have been concerned from the outset that it does not fall unfairly on those parts of the community least able to bear it. That is why we said up-front that there is going to be significant compensation to low-income families, there is going to be significant compensation to low-income households and there is going to be significant compensation to those who are on the pension—whether on a part pension or on a full pension. That is going to be done in addition, as I said before, to the normal indexation requirements that pensioners enjoy when their pension goes up on a regular basis.

We are about having a sustainable economy, efficient industries, growth in the economy, additional jobs, less pollution and less pollutants, and we are about having altered energy supplies and alternate energy firms— (Time expired)