Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

You are absolutely right: we will never agree on abandoning the carbon price, but that is not what we are doing here. We are actually trying to understand this legislation that you have now agreed with Mr Palmer. You agreed with Mr Palmer last week that you were going to legislate exactly the amendment he had. It was changed over the weekend. We have not canvassed this before because we did not have it in front of us before. It has never been debated in here, and you are now humiliated, Minister, because you do not know your own legislation. You have no idea who it covers. You have no idea who the penalties apply to. But I can tell you one thing: the Palmer United Party have been conned because none of these things will actually apply across the board, as you are suggesting.

I want to ask another specific one—and just a yes or no will suffice—and I go back to this Canberra company, Frozpak. Minister Hunt said, with the Prime Minister there, that the refrigerant gas costs to that company would triple and that the effect of the carbon price was a $60,000 a year impost. That is what the minister and the Prime Minister said when they went to visit this company. Does that company have a legal obligation now to remove the tax impost and where will I be able to go to see that they have removed $60,000 worth of impost to their customers? As I read the bill, they will not have to do that at all.

The only people captured in synthetic gases in this are the importers, not who they sell it to. So the importer will be able to say, 'Yes, I imported the gas at X price.' But this company, Frozpak, will not have to say anything at all that will land them in trouble unless they make a false and misleading statement. If they stay mum, nothing will happen. They don't have to substantiate the claim of $60,000 that they busily got themselves and the Prime Minister into the media with—they can say nothing. Minister, is Frozpak captured by this legislation? Does that company have a legal obligation to take the price off carbon and exclude that from making false and misleading statements? Do or don't they?