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Wednesday, 25 May 2011
Page: 4591

Mr TRUSS (Wide Bay—Leader of The Nationals) (16:06): This carbon tax is an all-consuming black hole from which no Australian family will escape. Labor in question time today showed absolutely no sympathy for the people they intend to hurt. Labor, the Greens and the Independents are simply out of touch with the feelings and the impact of their policies on real people. It is not 1,000 big companies that have to bear the impact of this tax; it is ordinary Australians, real Australian families. Do they really believe that these 1,000 companies, which they are not prepared to name, will simply absorb the billions of dollars that Labor expects to raise from its new tax? Of course they will not. Every dollar of it will be either passed on to consumers or it will have to be spent on redundancy payments for workers who will lose their jobs. They are not going to continue operating in Australia and absorb these costs when they can work in other places around the world where they do not have a tax like this, where it is cheaper to produce goods and where there is not this government imposed artificial imposition placed upon their business. The real cost of this giant tax does not fall on the 1,000 big companies; it falls on all Australians. This tax will mean higher electricity, higher food prices, higher transport costs and sacked staff. Ordinary families are going to cop this carbon tax in the neck.

We saw today how little government members actually care about the impact of this tax on ordinary families. The Treasurer showed absolutely no sympathy for the families identified by the Queensland Council of Social Service in its Cost of living report 2011—no sympathy whatsoever. He does not seem to care that the people in his very own electorate—Brisbane residents—are paying 23 per cent more for food, 35 per cent more for rent, 48 per cent more for public transport and 63 per cent more for electricity, gas and water since Labor came to office. Labor simply does not care.

Yet they are now proposing another new impost on all of these families. A $26-per-tonne carbon price will add another $300 to the price of electricity that Brisbane consumers will have to pay. Gas will be up 10 per cent; petrol will be up 6.5 cents a litre, plus GST; and of course water and groceries will all be slugged. We also heard today—and again the Treasurer just simply did not care—that rates are going to go up in Victoria by three per cent, and the Treasurer is not proposing any compensation and has no plan to deal with this extra cost to the people who live in Victoria.

Also, Rex will have to increase airfares. The city based backbenchers just scoffed. They do not care about country communities being denied air services. They have hourly flights to wherever they want to go—around the world if you happen to be the foreign minister—but those who have to depend upon a regional airline like Rex are going to have extra costs, and this government could not care less.

And what about Aarons Linen Service—$1 million in extra costs and 200 jobs at risk—and the Leader of the House and the 'minister for blocking roads in his own electorate' accuse Aarons of making it all up. They do not actually care about the jobs that will be lost and the impact on ordinary people.

All of that is at just a $26-a-tonne carbon price. That will be the highest carbon tax anywhere in the world. We are going to start off with the highest carbon tax anywhere in the world—higher than the European Union, who have been fiddling around and messing this up for years and higher than any of the countries that are held up to us as great examples. The Chinese, who we are supposed to be following in this, are actually going to increase their emissions by 500 per cent. Those are the sorts of people being used as examples. We will have the highest carbon tax in the world, and that is if it starts at only $26. We know the Greens want $40 to start with, rising very quickly to $100. They also want fuel to be included in the carbon tax regime and we all know that fuel prices are one of the many things that are guaranteed to feed into the cost of living again and again. It does not get refunded along the way; it gets added on again every time a new transaction occurs. And of course people in regional areas are the most affected because they have to travel greater distances as a matter of necessity. Regional families driving to work, getting the kids to and from school and going to the doctor will more often than not involve lengthy road trips.

The government is suggesting that people should change their behaviour. Are they suggesting that families should not take their children to the doctor? Are they suggesting that they should give up their job or live nearer to the factory or the school? It is not possible to change your behaviour in that way to deliver the carbon savings that the government is talking about. Families will just have to cop it in the neck. The basic household cost will go up and mums and dads will have to find ways to bear that cost.

This is not some kind of scare tactic on the part of the opposition. We did not make this up. This is a regressive tax and increasing people's costs is precisely what it is supposed to do. It is designed to make people think twice before switching on the heater in winter. You are supposed to freeze in the Canberra winter and not put on your heater, just so you can be more friendly to the environment. Frankly I am not quite sure that Canberra families are going to do that. I think they may still use their heaters, and they will pay the cost. So the tax will not work.

The tax will therefore have to go higher and higher, hurt more and more and cut deeper and deeper, so it will inevitably have a huge impact on the lifestyle of all Australian families.

Australian families feel deeply let down by this government, particularly since the Prime Minister's election promise was that there would be no carbon tax under the government she leads. The Prime Minister and her carbon tax must surely lie uncomfortably together. She said there would not be one and now she is proposing to deliver it. But she made another promise and that was that she would build a community consensus before doing anything at all. In reality, we have got pretty much of a community consensus at the present time—over 60 per cent of Australians have said 'no'. They do not want the tax. So there is a consensus and the Prime Minister should honour her promise and withdraw this whole silly idea. The reality is she has a consensus and the consensus is 'no'. The Australian people do not want it.

This is the tax that of course is going to reduce the temperature, and that is supposed to make us all feel great. Frankly I thought we had enough taxes in Australia already to freeze the entire continent, if taxes actually worked to lower the temperature. Greenland is not frozen because it has more taxes than Saudi Arabia. It is frozen because it is where it is—because that is the way the climate is. This government believes it can change a country that is a desert into a frozen ice land simply by raising taxes. It simply will not work.

The Prime Minister is struggling to get the message across, so she got big business into Kirribilli House over the recent break to try to persuade them to support her carbon tax. Again, it was very, very interesting, I thought, that no representatives of small business were invited. It sounds a bit like the mining tax debacle. Families were not invited to her home. There was a big dinner that none of the families could afford and, over a glass of port that they could not afford, the Prime Minister tried to do a deal with big business to get them onside. Small business and families did not get a seat at her table, and they do not get a seat when it comes to considering the real impact of this tax on the men and women of Australia.

As we move towards the introduction of this tax, this horrendous burden on all Australians, the Prime Minister needs to acknowledge that she has no mandate. Even if she can keep her duct taped Labor-Greens-Independents alliance together, she has no mandate from the Australian people. At least 86 per cent of the voters voted for parties and candidates who were opposed to a carbon tax before the last election and for candidates who said that they would not do it. All Labor Party, all Liberal Party and all Nationals members said there would be no tax. So the Prime Minister has no mandate. If she wants one, she must call an election.