Sean Edwards (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am. In relation to the carbon tax questions, I am not quite sure where I can go back to, whether to Prime Minister Rudd's ETS proposal for which he was axed and brought down without an election or whether to Prime Minister Gillard's carbon tax that she introduced after going to the election saying, 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead'. However, we have got a carbon tax. In actual fact it is the biggest carbon tax in the world by far. I point out that this week the price of carbon in Europe is around five euros, which is around $6.87 in our money. And you are proposing to put it up. I was very pleased to hear that the opposition climate spokesman, Greg Hunt, moved to suspend the standing orders to allow him to call on the government to scrap the increase which is proposed for 1 July, a five per cent increase on the biggest carbon tax in the world.

I really find it quite amusing when those on the other side, the Labor Party, talk about small business. They are the only government in this country that has taken big business to small business. I know because I still am involved in business. I do not know too many small businesses that use 10 megawatt hours a year. It must be somebody sitting at home with their computer on. It works out to a $260 increase. That is a lot of hot dinners. You can dumb it down. It is called reduction to the ridiculous: $5 a week, yes. Let us just reduce it. What is that a day? It is less than a dollar a day. It does not really matter, but, on top of all the other dollars a day that have gone on in the reign of this Rudd-Gillard government, there are just so many of them.

In answer to Senator Williams on fuel for heavy transport: 'Oh, it's only 29c.'