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Tuesday, 13 September 2011
Page: 5896

Senator ABETZ (Tasmania—Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) (15:01): I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister representing the Prime Minister (Senator Chris Evans ) to a question without notice asked by Senator B randis today relating to carbon pricing.

Today, 13 September 2011, is the day that Labor has irrevocably turned its back on the Australian people. Eyes firmly fixed down the camera lens, Ms Gillard solemnly promised there would be no carbon tax under a government that she led. In the most desperate grab for power in Australian political history, that promise has been discarded as lightly as one would discard a soiled tissue. I detect the Australian people may be returning the compliment to the Green-Labor government. Having promised no carbon tax, Labor broke their word. Having promised a people's convention to establish a community consensus on climate change, Labor broke their word. But one thing I do congratulate Labor on is their having built a community consensus on action on climate change. That community consensus is a huge consensus against the carbon tax. All the advertising dollars that they have taken out of Australian taxpayers' pockets have not convinced those Australian taxpayers that this carbon tax is a good idea.

In the face of breach of promises to the people, strong community opposition to carbon tax, countries all over the world backpedalling on a carbon tax—and you can go from Japan to France, to the United States, to New Zealand and then off to Canada and elsewhere in the world—Labor still insists it wants this job- and wealth-destroying tax that will do nothing for the environment. In the face of all this, why does Labor continue with this foolish and destructive policy? Labor may have changed leaders, but it clearly has not changed policy. The rush with Labor's collapsed and discredited Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme had nothing to do with the world's physical environment; it had everything to do with the position of Mr Rudd and Labor in the environs of the United Nations.

If we had followed Labor's foolish path, we would now be known as the clowns of Copenhagen. Having failed to get the global agreement at Copenhagen, we would have been the laughing stock of the world and would have destroyed our economy at the same time. But, not able to learn from history, Labor is prepared to yet again take us down the same foolish path. Instead of being the clowns of Copenhagen, it wants Australia to be the dunces of Durban by legislating the world's most extensive and expensive scheme—a scheme which by 2020 will see over $3 billion per annum of Australian income going overseas to buy so-called carbon credits. The trading scheme that we are told to look at is that of Europe, which is only one-tenth of the size of our proposed carbon tax, a scheme which is now acknowledged to be corrupt and rorted and is now being fully investigated in countries even as sophisticated as Norway. But Labor simply ignores the facts, ignores its promises, ignores the wishes of the Australian people and ignores the facts of the rest of the world.

This deceit by Labor will be remembered by all Australians as the grossest and most deliberate betrayal of their trust by a political party in our nation's history. As Labor look high and low for an alternative leader, we know they are all complicit. A change of leader will not change their policy. It will not change anything, just like Labor's carbon tax will not change the environment of the world. But it will change the jobs environment in this country and it will change the environment of the family budget for millions of Australians. Today marks the occasion of the biggest betrayal of the Australian people by an elected government. I trust the Australian people will respond—(Time expired)