Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

A failed climate change minister. Out of the mouths of babes come these comments on the carbon tax. We know that the Prime Minister promised before the last election there would be no carbon tax. We know that 72 lower house members were elected on the back of a lie, including the Labor Party members in Corangamite, Corio, Bendigo and Ballarat—they were all re-elected on a lie. So how is it that we have got to the position where we are debating a carbon tax some 12 months later? We know what the reason is, and the reason is that a desperate Prime Minister, elected on the back of a lie, did a dirty, grubby deal with the Australian Greens.

I say to my colleagues opposite—I am not going to name names but you know who you are—that you know it is a grubby deal and you know you do not support one single thing that the Australian Greens stand for. Are you, over the next month, eventually going to side with a party that you do not support and a party with whom the Prime Minister did this grubby deal? Are you going to join your colleagues in the other place by being part of this web of deceit? I suspect that you are not going to have the guts to do what you know you should be doing, and I think you will carve your names in this dirty piece of history and will support this carbon tax. You will vote against what you know is the right thing to do and vote for this grubby, grubby deal between the current Prime Minister and the Leader of the Australian Greens, Senator Brown.

I hope that those on the other side will view this morning's footage from the House of Representatives. It was quite sickening. When you celebrate a lie with a celebratory kiss, what does it say about what drives the current government? I think it says that we have a Prime Minister whom every single person in this chamber and the other place knows is under incredible pressure to hold a job, and we know that the former Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, is on a mission to destroy the person who he believes destroyed him. So the Australian people are going to get lumbered with a carbon tax, ahead of the rest of the world—a carbon tax that the Prime Minister promised she would not introduce, that Minister Wong said would not work—to save the Prime Minister's job. Is that what politics has got to in this country—that we have a Prime Minister who will desperately sell out herself and her party to keep her job? Is that the stage we have got to? I notice Senator Cormann is in the chamber today. I encourage people to read the report he tabled last Friday and see what damage a carbon tax will do to this country. I encourage people to make a judgement about a government that would do that to its own people, and I encourage them to look at the sort of price impacts we are going to see as a result of this toxic carbon tax.

I am a resident of regional Australia, and every person representing regional and rural areas in this place knows full well that the impact of prices on electricity and other energy bills falls heavier outside the metropolitan areas of Australia—in my own state, there is a difference of some 30 per cent. So here we have a country that is on the precipice, along with the rest of the world, of a double-dip recession. Not one person on either side of this chamber wants us to return to recession. But it is a real risk—and that is not Chicken Little stuff; it is coming from the head of the IMF and from other organisations. We are on the cusp. So what does this government do to protect the country from that? It puts in a carbon tax that is going to export not only emissions but also Australians' dollars.

If ever we needed a government in this country that was prepared to stand up for its people, it is now. Now is the time for this Prime Minister to stand up for the people who elected her. Now is the time for the Prime Minister to stand up for those people who did not vote for her. Now is the time for some national leadership in extraordinarily difficult international times. What are we left with? We are left with the remnants of a grubby, get me re-elected deal. That is what it has come down to. When we need leadership, we get a lack of leadership. When we need a Prime Minister to stand up for us, we get a Prime Minister who is only interested in one job, and that is her own. The Prime Minister does not care about the jobs of working men and women in this country. The 72 Labor Party members in the other place who voted for this toxic tax do not care about those people. Those opposite have the opportunity in this chamber over the next month to say to the Australian people, 'We think your job is more important than the Prime Minister's job.' Let us see whether those on the other side have the intestinal fortitude to do that. I think I have a rough idea of what the answer is.