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

The response of the two government speakers so far has been entirely predictable. They wail about a scare campaign, trying to divert the attention of the Australian public from the facts, which are that there will be a carbon tax, it will be taking effect on 1 July and it will cost all Australians, all Australian businesses and all Australian consumers. The other tactic, of course, that both government senators took was to attack the coalition's policy and the way that we propose to reduce carbon emissions. In both cases, they showed a patent lack of understanding that our process is to decide through a competitive tender which processes to follow to reduce emissions and that that competitive tender will be looking for the maximum reduction for the minimum cost. Of course, that has dual benefits, those being that it can ensure that there are real reductions, not just a shift of emissions out of Australia into other countries, which the carbon tax will effect, and also ensure that those real reductions are achieved at the lowest possible cost.

The fact is that the government like to say that only the top 300 emitters will pay this tax. Certainly the tax is only levied against the top 300—or, I think, 294—but the reality is that everybody will pay the tax. Businesses will pay it. Consumers will pay it. Businesses in particular receive no compensation. The government like to talk about the compensation that they will be paying to consumers, but of course the reality is that only half of the tax that they take is actually returned, which means that somebody is missing out. Half the tax that people pay is returned and the other half is not, so someone misses out, and I am sure it is not going to be just the big emitters that escape the compensation.

Senator Colbeck today asked a question about a garden centre in Tasmania. This just highlights the reality in Tasmania. The reality is that the real impact of this tax is becoming readily apparent in Tasmania, as it is all across the country. Right across Tasmania, small businesses are getting letters—small businesses that are dependent on the fact that they have imports that come into the state via freight and that their produce goes out of the state—from freight companies and from packaging companies, indicating that they are going to pay more because of the carbon tax. This is not just conjecture; these letters are arriving in their mail, saying, 'You will be receiving an increase in cost in terms of the freight you'll pay.' It might be 1.9 cent or it might be two per cent—whatever it is, they are getting letters from all of their suppliers telling them that the carbon tax is going to put up their costs.

We heard today about a garden and rural supplies centre in Sorell, in southern Tasmania. They have put a sign up warning their customers—as I think it is probably appropriate for a business to do—that they are going to have to put up their prices because of the impact that the carbon tax is having on them, particularly through the increased costs of their suppliers and those things that they then on-sell. But what did we hear today? That was pointed out to Minister Combet on 936 ABC radio this morning, and what did he do? He went off, typically, as this government does, in a half-cocked response to this without any idea of what the reality was and took the typical union boss approach to this. When faced with the hard truth, when faced with facts, the typical thing that a union boss does is that they threaten the person who is rashly raising the issue. He gets out the big stick and says, 'This isn't good enough, and we're going to set the ACCC onto that business.'

That is not really how a minister of the Crown should approach these issues. Minister Combet needs to remember that he is no longer a union boss; he is now responsible for taking a considered and reasonable approach to these issues. His going out and saying, 'We're going to set the ACCC on them,' and quotes like, 'It's like misleading conduct,' when he does not know the details at all were indicative of the way that the government approaches these issues when faced with the facts. It also shows that he is not even on top of his own brief, because the ACCC has confirmed that the particular garden centre are not at all in breach of the act. On hearing the minister say that he was going to set the ACCC onto them, what did they do? They rang the ACCC just to check the facts and make sure that they were not doing anything wrong, and they were told that they were not. And yet Minister Combet on the radio got stuck into them, pulled out the big stick and said: 'These guys are in trouble. They can't go round and say that their prices are going to go up because of the carbon tax.' I think this highlights the fact that Tasmanian businesses and businesses right across the country are going to pay much higher prices. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.