SENATE SPEECH - CARBON POLLUTION REDUCTION SCHEME

November 19, 2009 15:18

Right through this debate on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2009 [No. 2] and related bills, and from listening to my colleagues speak, it has been quite clear to me that this is not an issue that divides the coalition. It is not a National Party-Liberal Party issue or a National Party-Liberal Party-Independents issue, or a National Party-Liberal Party-Greens issue. This is a debate about whether a policy can bring about the outcome that the government prescribe. What the government prescribe is that this is going to have an effect in changing global warming. That is the premise of their argument.

Let us just look at the clear premise of that argument. Will the emissions trading scheme, the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, do anything to change the temperature of the globe? The answer is: categorically, no. I have to refer to the illustrious members of the fourth estate. Whenever you put forward this conjecture—that this legislation is going to have no effect—you may be referred to as being from the alumni of the university of east bum crack. This is all part of the peculiar process that is used at times to ridicule the self-evident argument. I acknowledge that there are people within the Labor Party who are as fervently against this ETS as any person on this side of the chamber but every time this debate moves to a position of dealing with the substance of the legislation and its capacity to bring about an effect, people move it into the rhetorical shrill of cataclysmic events. Even today we have heard that South Australia will fry. We have heard about extinction of species. We have heard that you do not have to bother going to the coast because the coast is coming to you. All these cataclysmic metaphors get rolled up and rolled up.

Even if you believe in global warming chapter and verse then you must ask the fundamental question: will this policy from two chambers in the nation of Australia change any of that? No, it will not—not one iota, not one jot. So what we really have here is a conceited belief that the unilateral actions of one nation within the globe are going to make a complete change in the dynamism of global politics. If that was the case you would start to see signs of it now. APEC fell flat on its face; it completely and utterly fell over. The whole 200-page Copenhagen agreement has now become—we do not really know—a 15-page or eight-page media release. This does not give a good warrant or premise that Mr Rudd is actually affecting global politics. In fact, it shows quite clearly that he is irrelevant to global politics. The only premise on which we should go forward on this is that somehow it would have a political global effect, but that just has not been seen; it is not there.

Let’s go through it. Will sea-level rises be affected by the emissions trading scheme? Even if you believe everything about the global warming debate, the answer is: categorically, no. Will species extinction be exacerbated if Australia does not take on the ETS? Categorically, no. Will polar icecaps melt if Australia does or does not takes on the ETS? There is no relationship whatsoever. Will the droughts of southern Australia be brought to a conclusion or extended by anything Australia does with the ETS? The answer is: no.

It has become a religious debate, not a debate about science, because every time you move into the science around whether this ETS will have an effect then straight away you are moved to the religious metaphors of damnation, cataclysmic events and another realm of Dante’s Inferno that is apparently prescribed for those who dare question the tenets of the Labor Party’s position on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. And now this new alternative form of religion, with its chapter and its ecclesiastical appeal, is now being prescribed by such wondrous lights as Clive Hamilton. People like him are now issuing forth the fervent endorsement of Labor policy. Is that what we want? Is that the gentleman who we are now going to fall into line with?

A tax does not inspire anything except tax avoidance. I can tell you that as an accountant. I am just looking at this through economic eyes, without looking at the science. A tax inspires nothing but tax avoidance. Man did not develop the wheel because someone developed a tax on walking. It was not a tax on equine species that led to the development of the automobile. There is nothing that I have seen in the history of mankind where taxes inspired anything except tax avoidance. We had an example today of a half-billion dollar hole, basically by reason of tax evasion. It is brilliant. You just cannot hold the world back when people decide that they can avoid tax. But the way you can avoid this tax is quite simple: you leave Australia. That is how you could avoid this tax. Avoid Australia and you avoid the tax.

If you want to inspire innovation and take your nation forward, if you want to be a clever nation that, as the Prime Minister says, makes things, you had better make something a little bit more inspiring than a new tax. On the global stage will be the Scandinavians who developed Nokia, nuclear physicists, Silicon Valley, the Japanese manufacturing miracle and the development of China. What will Australia take to this table? What we have developed for the world, the way we are taking it forward, is a new tax—a whole new bureaucracy, a whole new swathe of tin gods, marauding across the countryside and putting their paws into every corner

of people’s lives.

This new tax collects, even on the government’s rudimentary figures—and they are pretty rudimentary—$70.2 billion in the first six years. That kind of money does not grow on trees. Somebody somewhere will have to pay. That money will have to come from somewhere. The people who will pay will ultimately be those who cannot move that cost on. In the lingua franca of recent times, those people who cannot pass the cost on have been given a name. They are called working families. Working families cannot pass that cost on. They are the bunny at the end who will wear the cost. I hear the protestations of such people as Senator McEwen, who says that South Australia will fry. I cannot understand how turning off a pensioner’s air conditioner is solving the problem. I have not quite worked that one out. If the problem is heat, having no air conditioner is hardly the solution. This is the subject that the Labor Party avoids. They do not want to go into this prickle patch of who will pay.

The delivery of this tax is insidious, because it is a static tax. They do not have to prove profit to make you pay the tax. All they have to prove is that you exist. If you exist, you pay. How are you going to pay? The delivery mechanism of this tax will be associated with every corner of the house—every power point is a mechanism of revenue-raising for the government. How mad it is: if you fly to Cairns you pay the tax, but if you fly to Fiji you do not. That is a simple decision to make in a market based economy: fly to Fiji. We have devised a tax that is like the reintroduction of tariff barriers, but the only people who pay are Australians. The rest of the world do not. It is just so insanely illogical.

Every now and then the world goes off its head. This time, it is antipodean tulip mania, where the Australians, in our own peculiar form, have come up with this massive new tax. Basically the metaphor for this tax is going to the world and pulling our strides down while everybody else stands back and laughs at us. The world is watching us. Are the people who signed the Kyoto protocol abiding by it? No, they are not. It was marvellous to clap at Bali because it made people feel good, but then they have all gone on their merry way, and we are left with another encumbrance on our economy.

This tax is to inspire people to move away from the production of carbon. Unfortunately, our major export is a substance called coal, which is carbon. So we have now declared to the world that we are going to put an impost on our major export. That is a brilliant piece of economics—absolutely brilliant. We say: ‘Well, this is interesting. We’re moving away from that. Where are we going?’ And we always hear: ‘We’re going to green jobs.’ In one of the numerous Senate inquiries I have gone to, I remember asking Meghan Quinn: ‘Meghan, where are these green jobs? Can you name one?’ She said, ‘Well, what about wind farms?’ I said, ‘Have you been to a wind farm lately?’ She said, ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘How many people did you see working there?’ She said, and this is on the record: ‘Well, there was the person driving me round.’ So I asked, ‘Where else are these green jobs?’ and she answered, ‘Forestry.’ I asked, ‘Oh, have you been to a forest lately?’ She said, ‘Yes.’ I asked, ‘How many people did you see?’ She answered, ‘No-one.’ I asked, ‘Have you been to a coal mine lately?’ She said, ‘No, but I’ve seen them on television.’ That was her statement—‘I’ve seen them on television’! I asked, ‘Did you see many people working there?’ She answered, ‘Quite a few.’

You do not have to be Sigmund Freud to work this one out. If you want your economy to be like paths around duck ponds and new wondrous factories producing wind chimes in Nimbin then that is all right. If you want to turn yourself into a nation that takes in one another’s washing, that is fine. But you will be broke. You will be stone motherless broke. You can do that. It is possible to turn the place upside down and create a bureaucratic disaster, a new example of mankind coming up with a wondrous idea that only brings affliction.

A relevant question to ask is: what are the alternatives? There are numerous alternatives. There is a whole range of alternatives. We can look at such things as nuclear. We have to get our mind around the corner from 1954, start looking at where we are in the year of our Lord 2009 and start looking at nuclear. There are biofuels and rail. If you want a carbon-efficient investment allowance, transfer over time to gas. The Labor Party is inspiring a juncture where everything that was planned before becomes meaningless afterwards. The Labor Party have, by the deft hand of legislation, completely changed the tack of the economy. It just brings things unstuck. It brings capital projects unstuck.

Who are the people who want an emissions trading scheme? Quite obviously, the traders want a trading scheme. If we go back to the numbers, in the first year we have about $4 billion in permits going out, then there is $12.99 billion in permits going out—that is about $17 billion worth of permits. If you got a one per cent commission, you would have $170 million. If you had 1½ per cent—I suppose it would have to be 85 on that—it would be $225 million on one trade. In banking, if you churn that—and you could churn it three or four times a day—three or four times a year, we are looking at up to a billion dollars on commission, just on that. There are a lot of good reasons, there are billion-dollar reasons, to have a trading scheme if you are a trader.

I went into one of the banks the other day because I was fascinated. I had been labelled a Neanderthal, a redneck and a profligate student from the university of east bum-crack. If you do not agree with the University of Sydney or Annabel Crabb, you are in trouble. As I walked in the door of one illustrious institutions in Sydney—and they are marvellous people—I did not get an aura of environmental consciousness. I was looking around at the good men and women working in that institution and none of them seemed to be talking about the environment or panda bears or other things. They were talking about going to the pub, buying new cars and houses, and everything else available to them in life. I was told by those close to the executive that this was all about the environment; it was their conscience that was driving them down this path. In pursuing the question with them I said, ‘How much are you going to make?’ They said, ‘We have not calculated it.’ I said, ‘Don’t lie to me, how much are you going to make?’ Finally it was blurted out across the table, ‘A substantial amount of money.’ That is a substantially good reason to pursue an emissions trading scheme!

We are in this peculiar position after weeks of negotiations. I am very worried that this parliament and this Senate are getting themselves into a position of wedge politics. With a very tight time frame we have to make the most major decision in the economic direction of this nation—without a shadow of a doubt. The position of prudence and stewardship we hold in this chamber says that we should give that decision on how we vote the utmost sense of import. I am very much encouraged, when I listen to the speeches in this chamber, that all of a sudden people have picked up on this and have started to become discerning and really clinical in their assessment of this legislation.

It is humbling to see the Senate, once more, kick back into gear and do what it is supposed to do and say, ‘Is this good for my nation? Have these people proven their case? Does this warrant my vote?’ Your vote will change the direction of this nation. Each senator, and I know some are back in their rooms watching this debate at the moment, knows that their vote really is going to change the direction of the nation—it really is. More than anything else they ever do, this vote will change the direction of our nation and where it goes. Once this tax is in place it becomes set and virtually impossible to remove.

I warn you, though, that not far away from the time the Labor Party brings in this tax there will be a thing called an election. The election is a great mechanism that will make this issue not stop—it will continue. There is no way on earth people are going to be negligent in their duty to protect this nation from what is a ridiculous proposition. They will not be making up their minds based on what happens next week. It will be pursued and every time there is an amendment to a regulation it will back in this chamber.

There is only one question that people need to ask as they go forward with this vote, and that is this: what is the Labor government proposing to do? It is proposing to change the climate of the globe. That is exactly their metaphor. If it is not, tell me what your metaphor is. Your metaphor is that you are going to change the temperature of the globe. That is better than King Canute, but good luck! How are you going to do it? And this is where it goes to bathos: the Labor government is going to change the temperature of the globe with a new tax! With all the other things that could have been done, your remedy, your pill, for the wondrous cataclysmic events that have been described by a retinue of doomsayers walking into the chamber one after the other and outlining the next global affliction, is to introduce a massive new tax. Well, you have not won that argument. Not one of your senators, not one of your government representatives or your minister, has been able to clearly spell out how this tax changes the temperature of the globe. So I ask you, ‘How does this tax change the temperature of the globe?’ You show me how it does it. You have merely days to do so. If you cannot describe how this tax changes the temperature of the globe then there is only one thing that we must do, and that is we must take in the overwhelming sense that it will be disastrous for our economy. It will be an affliction on our economy. It will change the direction and the lives of working families across this nation. It is the working families who pay for the conceit of Kevin Rudd.

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SENATE SPEECH - CARBON POLLUTION REDUCTION SCHEME

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