Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

I think I was a bit of a lyricist there, Senator Scarr! Every time they make a decision they make the situation worse. We've got this Frankenstein energy legislation that came in last year, about which everyone, including the ACCC, has said time and time again, 'This is going to push up power prices.' Guess what, guys? That contributes to inflationary pressures, which then leads to the RBA taking action on interest rates. There is actually some rhyme and reason to why these things occur. They do follow suit.

We know the Labor Party is just obsessed with a carbon tax and it is now proposing one at three times the level that the Gillard government tried to legislate and put into place. I am just amazed that those in government are completely unaware of the impact that is going to have on businesses and on manufacturing. Look around this building. We are all sitting in a building here. It has an awful lot of concrete in it. Concrete uses a product called clinker to be produced. It is all about to go offshore because, if this carbon tax comes into play, there will be no Australian cement manufacturers. That would mean we would lose our sovereignty. We would put ourselves at risk. It's one of the most common products. It's used in every building and every road. How are you going to get over a river? That was put to me yesterday when we were looking at some of this stuff. How will you build a bridge? We know that they don't want to build some of that stuff if it's in a Liberal seat or in Mayo, but others will still want to build things. They are about to implement a carbon tax that will send all this manufacturing offshore. We are talking about hundreds of jobs that will be lost. It is going to increase the cost of absolutely everything. And that's just one industry.

We also know that this new gas supply issue is seeing investments go offshore, and there is a high likelihood we will see blackouts this year. This is something that's going to have ramifications for decades as investment is leaving this country. It is going elsewhere because those in the resources sector know that this government cannot be trusted to put policy settings in place that will allow them to safely invest in Australia and continue to grow our nation.