David Bushby (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Exactly—had the Prime Minister not gone to the people of Tasmania and said, hand on heart, two or three days before the election, 'There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.' If she had not said that in the lead-up to the election, Tasmanians would have voted with their feet, the Labor Party would not have received the votes needed to get that third Senate spot and Senator Singh would still be the failed minister, the dumped Labor member for Denison, that she was in Tasmania following the last state election, in which she could not even hold onto her seat. We have also heard today, in response to questions, about Coogee Chemicals, which is a Victorian company that was looking to make a $1 billion investment in methanol production in Australia. That has now been cancelled for the specific reason that the carbon tax is going to make them uncompetitive and they cannot do it. This comes at a loss of $14 billion of predicted exports and 150 jobs, but that is not the worst of it. Obviously it is a terrible thing that 150 people are not going to have jobs that they otherwise would have had and there will be $14 billion worth of exports that will not happen. But the fact is that Coogee Chemicals is the most efficient manufacturer of methanol in the world in terms of the emissions that it produces per output of production. So every single unit of methanol that is not produced by Coogee Chemicals and is produced by someone else—and remember that this is the only methanol producer in Australia, so all other methanol will be produced outside Australia—will be at higher emissions per unit of output than it would have been if it had been produced in Australia. So not only are we exporting the jobs of manufacturing that methanol, not only are we losing the export opportunities in respect of that methanol, but by putting in place this tax we are contributing towards a net increase in carbon dioxide and equivalent emissions as a direct result of a carbon tax that is going to drive this investment offshore.

The minister says that Coogee Chemicals will be fully compensated and so they are not right in making the decision not to proceed. On what basis? We heard from the answers that the assumptions that the Treasury modelling is based on have not been released. Therefore, the cost of— (Time expired)

Question agreed to.