MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE – CARBON TAX
February 23, 2011
Mr CHESTER (Gippsland) (4.07 pm) — I have just listened with great interest to the contribution of the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency on the matter of public importance proposed by the member for Flinders. My electorate has a number of lower socioeconomic areas, and I admit I am a fairly simple country fellow, but I picked up on some of the minister’s comments there. Why would you need to compensate people if electricity and petrol prices are not going to go through the roof? Simply by its very design, isn’t the carbon tax’s intention to drive up the cost of living and to try to change people’s behaviour? I can understand that the minister is a bit embarrassed about his government’s position, in particular when it comes to lower income earners.
It gives me no pleasure whatsoever to report to the House today that it is only 127 days until the lunatics take charge of the asylum. That is right—in 127 days, the Greens will have the balance of power in the Senate, and all of their watermelon policies will come rolling through the corridors of this place. Every one of their red-on-the-inside-and-green-on-the-outside policies will be rolled out as the Greens strut their stuff on the national stage. It will not just be this carbon tax: if the Greens have their way, in 127 days we will start paying more for electricity, more for petrol and more for food, and businesses will be hit with extra taxes just to make sure they do not make too much money and actually employ Australians in meaningful jobs.
I raise that point in the context of today’s debate because we are already seeing the impact of the Greens on this Labor government. From the moment the Prime Minister signed her agreement with the Greens leader, Bob Brown, it has been hard to tell who is in charge. Is it Julia Brown or is it Bob Gillard? At first it was a bit hard to tell. How the Prime Minister must regret that photo opportunity in her office. In amongst that nest of grinning Greens, her cover was blown to pieces. The Labor Party is in government, but the Greens are in charge. How else do we explain the backflip on the carbon tax? The Labor Party was saying ‘Absolutely not, no way’ before the election, but now just a few months later it is the only way to go.
People listening at home and in the gallery may be saying: ‘So what? Those Greens seem like a nice bunch—all warm and fuzzy, cuddling up to koalas, strapping themselves to a few gum trees every now and then and maybe saving a few whales. What’s this bloke from Gippsland whingeing about? Why is he so worried about these Greens?’ All I can say is: don’t be fooled—I have seen the Greens at work in my electorate. Don’t be fooled by their empty rhetoric about saving the planet. Don’t be fooled by the happy snaps with koalas and the watermelon style policies of the Greens. Between them, the Greens and Labor are the greatest threat that regional Australia has ever experienced.
The Greens want higher taxes on the mining industry. They want a big new electricity tax, to ban live exports of animals, to ban rodeos, to shut down commercial fishing and to shut down the timber industry. They hate recreational anglers, and they are already talking about a private member’s bill to kick the cattlemen out of the high country. I noticed that the minister agrees with the Greens on that point. You have to ask yourself what is next for the Greens. Will it be pony clubs? Zoos? Horse racing? Where does it stop for the Greens, and where does it stop for the Labor Party? When are they going to cut their ties with the Greens?
I have a suggestion: let the member for Melbourne trial the Greens policies in the next 127 days and see how the people in his electorate go. Let us make a little trial project out of his electorate. If you do not want those nasty coal fired power stations providing energy, good luck with your solar panels in Melbourne in the middle of winter. I am happy for the Greens to eat their mung beans and sit around wearing their hemp underpants, but they should stop telling the rest of Australia how to live their lives. As I have told the House before and have said in my electorate on many occasions, there is a boiling resentment in my community. People have had an absolute gutful of city based Greens and Labor MPs telling them how to live their lives. The Greens have never helped to create a single job in regional Australia, and they are a direct threat to jobs in many of our traditional industries.
Mr Perrett — Adam Bandt got a job.
Mr CHESTER — I take up the member for Moreton’s interjection. I said that the Greens have never helped to create a job in regional Australia and they are a direct threat to every person’s job in many of our traditional industries. Has anyone in this place ever taken a close look at the Greens elected representatives and taken notice of where they draw their vote? Let us start with Victoria—in Melbourne, where the new member for Melbourne recorded a healthy 36 per cent of the primary vote. Let us next move a few kilometres out of the city to the seat of La Trobe, where the Greens picked up 12 per cent and handed the seat to the Labor Party. There is a pattern of that right around Australia. There are 44 Labor MPs who owe their seats to the Greens, but we will talk about that topic on another day.
Mr Burke interjecting —
Mr CHESTER — It is no wonder that Labor MPs will never speak out against the Greens. The minister at the table will never speak out against the Greens in his new role as Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities. They will never speak out against the Greens because they cannot win their seats without them—44 Labor MPs in this place relying on preferences from the Greens to get them across the line. The Greens own the Labor Party, lock, stock and barrel.
Let us move out to some semiregional seats. In McEwen and Corangamite, the Greens’ vote is down to
11 per cent, and—surprise, surprise!—their preferences got the Labor candidate across the line again. Let us now move out to the true regional seats in Victoria. In the seat of Mallee, the Greens vote is just 7.8 per cent. In Gippsland, my own seat, they get 6.5 per cent of the vote and in Murray they get six per cent. Isn’t it funny that the further you move away from the city and the closer you get to the natural environment the fewer people believe the Greens and all their bulldust. There is a very good reason for that. It is that country people are practical people. They understand that to make an omelette you have to break an egg. They know that if you want to have a high-grade feature red gum dining table in your kitchen you need to use some timber from a tree. They know that if we want to feed our nation we have to balance the needs of the rivers and the soil with the crops we are growing and the animals we are feeding. That is the grand hypocrisy of the Greens and the people who vote for them. Go around to the houses of some of the Greens and their supporters and check what they are made from. Is it Australian timber or illegally grown Indonesian rainforest timber? Check in their fridges. No, they would not have fridges, would they, because of all that nasty pollution from burning coal? But, if they did have fridges, they would be full of fresh products from Australian farmers—probably those same horrible irrigators they want to shut down in the Murray-Darling irrigation district.
Then check their power supply—if they are they on the grid. Are they getting some of that cheap and reliable baseload energy from the Latrobe Valley in my electorate? I am sick to death of people in my community being vilified for working in power stations while the same people attacking them are running air conditioners on hot summer days and benefiting from the cheap and reliable energy we provide.
And while I am on the power industry I want to mention the Greens’ plan to shut down the Hazelwood power station. The Greens say they can shut it down and replace it with renewable energy. Give us all a break! Hazelwood generates about 1,600 megawatts of power each year. The average wind turbine can do 1.5 megawatts of installed capacity, so you would need to build 1,000 of them in Victoria just to replace Hazelwood. But—hang on a second—they only work for about 30 per cent of the time, so you would have to build three times as many wind turbines to achieve that same level of installed capacity. So we are talking about 3,000 wind turbines in Victoria to replace Hazelwood power station.
The Greens are conning Australians and it is about time that the Labor Party called their bluff. Our economy has been built on access to cheap, reliable baseload power—and I stress the word ‘baseload’. When we talk about energy security policies, we need to talk about the baseload power that powers our factories, hospitals, small businesses and households. They rely on it. Under the Greens’ and Labor’s plans for an electricity tax—let us call it what it is—power prices will go through the roof, small businesses will suffer and households will suffer, and it will not make a single bit of difference to the environment.
I know that the other side will not change their minds, because they owe everything to the Greens. They know they need the Greens’ preferences. But I have a bit of electoral advice for them—just for free— and the minister for the environment might want to listen to this very closely as well. Yesterday in the House, it was like The Sound of Music as the minister held hands with the member for Melbourne and danced through the fields in his tirade against the mountain cattlemen. You could almost hear the von Trapps singing in the background as he raced across the chamber in this embrace with the member for Melbourne in his opposition to the mountain cattlemen. It was beautiful to watch: the Greens and Labor, hand in hand, attacking a great and iconic tradition of Australian regional life.
Mr Burke interjecting —
Mr CHESTER — Minister, you may laugh; and the members may laugh. Funnily enough, it was good enough for Sydney to have the cattlemen on horseback parading in the Olympics opening ceremony. The men were in their Driza-Bones, and you all cheered madly. But it is not good enough to let them do their job for regional Australia. The sheer impracticality of Labor and the Greens is on show again: ‘We don’t mind a bit of theatre when it is in Sydney, but we really don’t want those nasty cows eating any grass.’ Heaven forbid that they reduce the fuel load in the forest and actually help to reduce the severity of future fires. We would not want that to happen, would we? No. They were happy to cheer the mountain cattlemen at the Sydney Olympics but they do not actually want them doing their job out in regional Australia.
Make no mistake: Labor will pay a heavy electoral price for its dalliance and unquestioning service to the Greens. In Victoria we remember the member for Narracan, Ian Maxfield. This was the man who chaired the committee which did the hatchet job on the mountain cattlemen for Steve Bracks; he has gone, defeated by a Liberal candidate. Remember Brendan Jenkins, the member for Morwell—the man who sat back and failed to stand up to Melbourne Labor and the Greens on anything? He has gone too, defeated by the Nationals.
Mr Broadbent — Nice bloke.
Mr CHESTER — Nice bloke. Labor has been wiped out in eastern Victoria because they refused to listen to the people who live and work in those communities. They just took their orders from their Melbourne and Canberra bosses. It is time for the members opposite to show some courage. It is time for them to start putting the Greens last on their how-to-vote cards and to start protecting jobs in regional Australia. I can tell you now, Minister, that when you put the Greens last on your how-to-vote cards it is a very satisfying feeling, and I invite you to do so.
(Time expired)