Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to thank all those senators who have contributed to this extensive debate, which has been going for some months. Some people would even say that there has been a bit of a filibuster going on by people who still cannot accept that there was an election last year and that the Labor Party and the Greens lost and the coalition won. We have these election deniers over there who cannot get used to the fact that the Australian people have already debated the carbon tax imposed on them by the previous Labor government quite extensively over a very long time and that people decided on 7 September that they do not want Labor's carbon tax and they do not want higher electricity prices which come with Labor's carbon tax. The government is delivering on the commitments that we made to the Australian people at the last election.

Passing this carbon tax repeal legislation will help reduce the cost of electricity. It will help reduce the cost of gas. It will help reduce the cost of living. It will help reduce the cost of doing business in Australia. It will help to boost economic growth. And it will help create jobs, because not only is Labor's carbon tax bad for the economy but it does nothing whatsoever to help reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. All it does is shift emissions from Australia to other parts of the world, because Labor's carbon tax is helping overseas emitters take market share away from environmentally more efficient businesses here in Australia.

It is a bad tax. It is a tax which is bad for the economy. It is bad for families. It is bad for business, and it does nothing to help the environment. It does nothing to help reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. It is a terrible hoax that the Australian Labor Party has played on the Australian people. The Labor Party wants to force people to make a sacrifice for something that they think will make a difference when the Labor Party well knows that the carbon tax does not make any difference at all, and it is low-income earners who are hit particularly hard by the carbon tax.

This bill and the associated bills will boost Australia's economic growth, increase jobs and enhance Australia's international competitiveness by removing an unnecessary tax which hurts businesses and families. We have to remember: Labor imposed this carbon tax on Australian families and business at the worst possible time. As a nation we were already facing some challenges which came from tougher global economic conditions. Instead of making sure that Australian business could be as competitive as possible, instead of making sure that Australian businesses were able to employ more people, what did the Labor Party do? The Labor Party imposed additional costs, making it harder for business to employ people while not doing anything to help the environment.

A US congressman quite aptly described Labor's carbon tax as an act of unilateral economic self-harm. If at least it made a difference, you could have an argument. But it does not make a difference. Arguably, it actually makes the situation worse. For example, if the intent truly were to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, we would have a conversation in Australia about how Australia can best help the world reduce those emissions. And guess what? It might well be that the best way we can help the world reduce emissions is by increasing emissions in Australia—for example, by producing more LNG which, when exported to China where it can displace coal as an energy source, would lead to significant net reductions in emissions. For every tonne of additional emissions from LNG production in Australia, we can save five to nine tonnes of emissions—that is, by displacing a high-emissions-intensive energy source with LNG.

The Labor Party completely ignored these realities. The Labor Party's carbon tax is making it harder for Australia to help the world reduce global greenhouse-gas emissions. The magnetite industry in the great state of Western Australia is emissions intensive, but it helps reduce emissions by so much through manufacturing in China. Magnetite as an input into steel production—if you look at the whole process, from the beginning to the end—helps reduce emissions by more than the additional emissions intensity here in Australia.

Of the top 20 carbon tax bills 16 have been sent to electricity companies, which shows that what we said all along was right: this is only an electricity tax. This is a tax paid by everyone. It is pushing up the cost of electricity for everyone. These electricity companies, which are being slugged by a total carbon tax bill of more than $3.5 billion, are passing those increased costs onto households and businesses. In New South Wales, Macquarie Generation and Delta Electricity are being slugged around $900 million. Victoria's power stations are being slugged over $1.3 billion. In Queensland, power stations are being slugged over $800 billion and in Western Australia the Electricity Generation Corporation is being slugged around $200 million. And it is increasing. Labor's electricity tax is then passed onto families, businesses, hospitals, schools, aged care facilities, local councils and sports and community organisations.

The government is committed to repealing the carbon tax and removing these costs from every Australian household's electricity bill. Treasury has estimated that repealing the carbon tax will lower retail electricity prices by around nine per cent and retail gas prices by around seven per cent compared to what they would have been with the carbon tax. Repealing the carbon tax will also help streamline business and administration costs. Repealing the carbon tax will reduce annual ongoing compliance costs for around 350 liable entities by around $90 million per annum. It will remove over 1,000 pages of primary and subordinate legislation. Lower costs of compliance will mean lower prices for businesses, which will mean lower prices for consumers.

The government is also abolishing the carbon tax because it does not actually work. It does not work because, at its heart, the carbon tax is an electricity tax. It relies upon the assumption that people will change their demand for electricity. The problem is that the demand for electricity is largely inelastic because it is an essential service. This means the carbon tax pushes up the cost of electricity without actually reducing emissions and, at best, it shifts emissions overseas. Production in Australia is now less competitive than in places like China that have not placed the same impost as the Labor Party's carbon tax. Competitors in other countries take market share away from us and take economic activity away from us. Jobs and emissions go overseas, where those emissions are arguably higher for the same amount of economic output than they are Australia. It just does not make sense.

Mindful of the time, these bills have been debated long enough. It would be good to put them to a vote before question time and, as such, I commend these bills to the Senate.