Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

The previous senator asked where the coalition got the idea that the government is considering reducing speed limits based on the potential reduction in carbon emissions that would follow. We got that from the government's own documents. The government released a consultation regulatory impact assessment in September this year. It was a document released by the department of infrastructure. I have it here in front of me. Obviously, their minister doesn't seem to have read it, seemingly neither has the senator who just spoke, so I'm happy to read some extracts to the Senate so we can all be well informed here.

The regulatory impact assessment has a section saying 'cost-of-carbon benefit' that says—the whole section is about three or four pages. The document says:

Consumption of petrol and diesel in petrol and diesel vehicles produce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

It goes on to say:

There is evidence to suggest that increased speed can increase fuel consumption and therefore increase CO2 emissions.

Later on in the document, it says:

The value of GHG emissions—

greenhouse gas emissions, that is—

therefore, is not internalised in the market, which means that individuals do not make decisions based on the overall impact. This is a classic market failure, making the value of emissions difficult to estimate accurately.

Despite that difficulty, the document goes on to try to do that and says:

This RIA—

regulatory impact assessment—

will use the AER's—

Australian Energy Regulator's—

Cost of carbon estimates as shown in figure 11 below. The total dollar value of the reduction in emissions is therefore the total tonnes of abated carbon per year multiplied by the social cost of carbon in that year.

If you go to that figure 11, it has a range of carbon value estimates that start at $79 a tonne—three times the size of Julia Gillard's carbon tax—and goes to a total of $179 a tonne by the year 2036.

The question here is not whether or not a government should consider reducing the speed to save Australian lives. The question is: should a government decide on the speed limit to reach a reduction in carbon emissions? That's the question. The government's own document says, 'We will make this decision on whether to reduce speed limits not just on what it means for safety'—it's very important; I agree with that—'we will also consider whether or not reducing emissions justifies making Australians go slower on their own roads.' That is in their own documents. It is what they put out publicly. They have whole armies of bureaucrats in this town estimating these costs of carbon. It's wasting a huge amount of money. They're not doing much for our economy, for our productivity or to help Australians survive and pay their bills, but they are imposing new imposts and new means and reasons to tell Australians what to do, based on rules in Canberra. It's in their own documents.

What is worse here, as someone in the National Party, is that this document relates only to unsealed roads and roads without speed limits. Obviously almost all of those are outside our major cities, so the question that has to be asked, which my colleague Senator Cadell did today, is: why is the government considering the benefits—they say 'benefits'—of reducing emissions for slower speed limits only in rural areas? They're imposing this $179 carbon tax on driving in rural areas. Why is that happening? Why would your own government be making a decision about the safety of roads, only in country areas, based on, 'That might create a few emissions'?

Obviously it is in country areas that we often have to drive quite large vehicles. It can be quite dangerous on some of these roads, so you probably don't want to be driving a Ford Focus down by Mistake Creek on the Clermont-Alpha Road. I wouldn't advise that. You probably would want to be in, if you can, a Toyota LandCruiser. That would be the ideal vehicle. It's heavy, and you'll probably have a bull bar on the front of it to keep you and your family safe—and that's heavy; that'll create more emissions. And the government is using that data from those larger cars, which necessarily do create more emissions—and cost us more money, too, to drive—to justify making us go slower.

This shows that this whole net zero idea is about control. It is about controlling your life, because the only way the government can meet net zero is if it tells you what car you can drive, how fast you can drive, what food you can eat, what energy you can use and what clothes you can wear. Everything you do has to be controlled to reach net zero emissions. I don't think the Australian people want to be told what to do by a bunch of rich, self-entitled politicians, investors and bankers. I think they want their freedom back. I think they want their standard of living back, and most of all we want our jobs back.