The National Party today honoured its commitment to the people of rural and regional Australia by fighting for the rejection of Labor’s ETS and we were successful.
Labor’s ETS would have brought about the immoral and illogical demise of the economy of regional Australia, whilst delivering an economic golden casket to carbon traders and the climate would have gone on exactly as before.
We realise this is merely a reprieve unless pressure can be maintained on the Rudd Government. The ETS would have put up the price of anything attached to electricity, whether that be ironing or washing your clothes, watching the television running the fridge or reading a book before you go to bed. The ETS would have been the Labor Party in every corner of your life.
Those associated with the coal mining industry however, can continue to bring into our Nation the wealth that supports our standard of living and this resource can remain the cornerstone of our capacity to continue to build the prosperity of our country.
Farming families and those associated with the agricultural industry whether they are dairy farmers, abattoir workers or station hands, can continue to bring food to the Australian table at a price that those living in metropolitan Australia can afford. This will maintain fundamental representation of our standard of living seen in the food we eat.
The Labor Party never constructively engaged in any amendments to the ETS. Labor arrogantly stood by a scheme that was totally friendless. This was displayed in a vote where both sides of the political spectrum saw Labor’s ETS, the Employment Termination Scheme, as nothing more than a political fascinator to beguile the Australian public into the belief that the world as we know it was going to be saved by Kevin Rudd.
In reality, Labor’s ETS is just an elaborate appendage which would have no effect in changing the climate, no effect in influencing global politics on this issue, but poisonous in what it would do to our own domestic economy. The Labor Party should be very cautious of standing behind their most prominent and vociferous policy tenant which is now seen by the majority of Australians as merely a massive tax grab.
The electorate is not very kind on you when you offer a moral argument that you cannot enforce for a new tax, especially when you are incapable of handling the money you had to start with!
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