COMMITTEES

Environment and Communications References Committee

Meeting

Senator KROGER (Victoria—Chief Opposition Whip in the Senate) (09:31): by leave—I move:

That the Environment and Communications References Committee be authorised to hold a private meeting otherwise than in accordance with standing order 33(1) during the sitting of the Senate today, from 9.35 am.

Question agreed to.

BUSINESS

Days and Hours of Meeting

Senator LUDWIG (Queensland—Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Manager of Government Business in the Senate and Minister Assisting the Attorney-General on Queensland Floods Recovery) (09:32): I move:

That—

(1)   Divisions may take place before 12.30 pm on Monday, 31 October 2011 and 7 November 2011.

(2)   On Wednesday, 12 October 2011:

   (a)   the hours of meeting shall be 9.30 am to adjournment;

   (b)   the consideration of government documents shall not be proceeded with; and

   (b)   the question for the adjournment of the Senate shall be proposed after all questions relating to the introduction of the Clean Energy Bill 2011 and 17 related bills have been finally considered.

This motion ensures that the Senate has the capacity to introduce the clean energy package into the chamber today. It allows time for the message to come across from the House, which will occur at some point today. This hours motion allows that message to be disposed of so that the bills are then available for debate in the period that has been set aside in the next couple of weeks.

I anticipate the opposition will oppose this motion. They will again revisit the many arguments that they have already run. Their position of opposing the bills is quite well known. They do not want the legislation to be dealt with in the House and they do not want them to be dealt with in the Senate. They are using every procedural device to avoid the debate and to avoid the passage of this legislation. It is historic legislation. The opposition—

Opposition senators interjecting—

Senator LUDWIG: I hear the interjections. The chamber of course is familiar with the opposition arguments. In recent weeks, in addition to speaking against procedure motions such as this one on the clean energy bills, the opposition have also used every possible MPI to condemn the emerging consensus of the parliament on the need to place a price on carbon.

Opposition senators interjecting—

Senator LUDWIG: That the opposition are still denying that there is consensus, as we hear across the chamber today, is quite remarkable. They are now taking every opportunity to oppose what is simply a procedural motion that would be unnecessary if they were to treat the message as they would any other message that comes across from the House and is usually introduced and dealt with. We now hear from the opposition that they cannot even allow the usual message procedures of this house to be dealt with. That is why I now go to the extreme of putting in an hours motion to allow the message to come across. What that means is that those opposite are going to waste the Senate's time by arguing the same argument on procedural motions again and again.

The government maintains that these bills have had detailed scrutiny over the past year, with the policy issues subject to literally dozens of committee inquiries over the past 20 years. The issues are well settled. It is time to get on with the business of dealing with the legislation and of responding to the legislation. Those opposite do not need to take up the procedural issue to argue their case. They will have ample time set aside during the second reading debate for their speeches to argue their case. That is the appropriate time and place for that argument to be had. They will be able to use the time available, their 20 minutes, to argue these matters, as they have done in the past. Should it be passed, the hours motion will allow the message to come across so that the bills will be available for the debate. But we know that the opposition will take up the same argument at every opportunity. We will hear it again and again even during procedural motions on matters that this Senate would otherwise allow to come across as a simple message and be dealt with according to the usual Senate principles. Those opposite are condemning themselves by opposing legislation on which there is a consensus in this place.

I do not intend to take up the same time, but I encourage those opposite to confine themselves to the procedural matters of the Senate. In fact, even this one would be unnecessary if those opposite had taken the usual course of allowing these bills to come across from the House and be introduced so that they could put their case, so that they could use the time that the Senate has set aside for the bills to be debated. We now know that the clean energy bills have passed the third reading in the House, and so they will shortly be available to come across so that there is an opportunity for the Senate to take its time. With that short address, I would encourage those opposite to confine themselves just to the procedural motion.

Senator FIFIELD (Victoria—Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) (09:37): I can satisfy the manager of government business. He is correct: we will be opposing this motion, and we will be opposing it for the same reason that we opposed the other motions to vary hours, the same reason that we opposed the motion for an extra week of Senate sitting, the same reason that we opposed the motion giving effect to the sham committee that Senator Cormann and Senator Birmingham were forced to participate in but where they did a magnificent job. It is for the same reason that we will be opposing this motion—and that is, to support any of those motions to vary hours, to have the Senate sit an extra week or to set up a sham committee would be to be complicit in the Australian Labor Party's breach of faith with the Australian people. That is what the government has asked us to do time and again—to be complicit in and to help facilitate the breaking of a solemn election commitment.

Let's go back to the last election. Each and every time that we debate procedural motions in this chamber in relation to the carbon tax, we have to go back to the last election campaign, when the Prime Minister put her hand on her heart and made that solemn declaration to the Australian people that 'there will be no carbon tax under a government I lead'. We have to come back to that each and every time, because it is as a result of the repudiation of that solemn election commitment that we find ourselves in this chamber today debating this motion.

It was not just any old commitment that the Prime Minister gave. It was a solemn commitment. It was a commitment without qualification. Often when a political leader makes a commitment they will bracket it with qualifications, depending on particular circumstances, depending on an election result, depending on the state of the budget at the time that they gain office. But there were no such qualifications in the case of the Prime Minister's carbon tax commitment, so we cannot allow the government to seek to make this chamber complicit in facilitating the breach of an election commitment.

I have to say, some of the most bizarre things I have heard since I have been in this place were the words from Mr Graham Perrett from the other place. Yesterday he said: 'I can't possibly countenance a change of Prime Minister. I can't possibly countenance that, because that would be a breach of faith with my constituents. I broke faith with them once before because I backed Kevin Rudd. Kevin Rudd was our leader. They voted for me firstly thinking Kevin Rudd would be Prime Minister, but then I breached faith with them by being part of the Australian Labor Party which changed the leader that the people had elected. So I can't breach faith with the public again. That is why, even though Prime Minister Gillard is the worst thing for the Australian Labor Party and even though the Australian public don't want her, I have to stand by her. Not doing so would be a breach of faith.'

That is pretty tortured logic, you must admit, Mr Deputy President. Talk about swallowing a camel and straining out a gnat, to quote the Bible. What is the greatest breach of commitment which we have seen in recent Australian political history? It is that of the Prime Minister, that 'there will be no carbon tax under a government I lead'. Yet Mr Perrett thinks, 'That's okay—that doesn't matter.' It is just a minor policy issue to him. 'No, no—the great matter before the Australian public at the moment is that I can't breach faith with my electorate because they thought Julia Gillard was going to become the Prime Minister.'

I have to explain to Mr Perrett and probably members of the Australian Labor Party more generally how our system of government works. Individuals in electorates do not vote for party leaders; they vote for the candidate in their local seat. That is what they do. The role of the party leader is to articulate the party platform, the party policy, and that is what Ms Gillard did. She did her job. She articulated the party policy, which was that there would be no carbon tax. So I think Mr Perrett really needs to understand how our system works and that it is in fact his leader who has breached faith with the Australian public. I hope those opposite and Mr Perrett find that explanation helpful, because they certainly need it.

I do agree with the Manager of Government Business that this is historic legislation. He stated that and he is right. This is historic legislation, because we have not seen legislation that will have such a detrimental effect on the Australian economy being introduced by an Australian government. The government readily concede that this legislation will increase the cost of living. They readily concede that electricity prices will go up by at least 10 per cent. They readily concede that businesses will take a hit. We might disagree with them about the magnitude of that hit, but even the government concede that this will make life harder for businesses, that business input costs will go up. Even the government concede that over the next several decades there will be the equivalent of a $1 trillion hit on the Australian economy, roughly equivalent to one year's economic output for Australia. Governments are meant to be in the business of making life easier for businesses. Governments are meant to be in the business of improving the standard of living and the quality of life of Australians. So this is indeed historic legislation where our government is consciously and deliberately seeking to harm businesses, seeking to harm households, seeking to damage the Australian economy. Minister Ludwig for once nailed it: this is historic legislation. I do differ with him when he says that we should not be having this procedural debate because the need for a carbon tax is well settled. He said that we have been having this debate for 20 years. I have heard Mr Albanese say that there have been 38 parliamentary inquiries into the carbon tax legislation—wrong, completely wrong. A carbon tax as a concrete proposition before the Australian people has only been there for a matter of months. There was not even a carbon tax as a concrete proposition before the Australian people at the last election. That is the whole point: the Prime Minister fibbed. There was no concrete proposition for a carbon tax before the Australian people at the last election.

Senator Abetz: It was specifically ruled out.

Senator FIFIELD: It was specifically ruled out. So it is absolute rubbish when we hear time and again from Mr Albanese and time and again from Minister Ludwig that this issue is well settled, that we have had 38 parliamentary inquiries into a carbon tax and that a carbon tax is something which has really been debated for 20 years. What absolute rot! That is their defence for the fact that they are seeking to rush into this place legislation that seeks to breach a solemn election commitment.

This government just do not get it. They are determined to force onto the Australian people something which the Australian people do not want. The Australian people made it clear at the ballot box. All bar one or perhaps two members of the House of Representatives were elected on a platform of there not being a carbon tax, so the Australian people made it clear at the ballot box at the last election that they do not want a carbon tax. The Australian people have made it clear in just about every opinion poll. We should not slavishly follow the polls. We should not be led by the polls. We are political leaders. It is our job to articulate a case and to prosecute it with the Australian public regardless of whether it enjoys majority support or not. But it is a very arrogant government that does not take heed at least of the pattern and trend in every single opinion poll in relation to the carbon tax. That is the height of arrogance by any government.

We recognise that the government, having broken their solemn commitment to the Australian public, succeeded only a matter of minutes ago in getting the carbon tax legislation through the House of Representatives. It is indeed a very dark day for Australia when a government that was formed on the back of a lie has completed its first challenge—getting this legislation through the House of Representatives. They are halfway there. They are halfway through the process of breaching their election commitment, so this is a very dark day. No doubt Labor members over in the other place will be celebrating today. They will be cheering. They will probably be walking out and doing doorstops saying what a terrific day this is for the environment and what a terrific day this is for the Australian economy, but we know from the great work done by Senator Cormann in the Senate Select Committee on the Scrutiny of New Taxes that this tax will produce economic pain and no environmental gain. Sadly, that legislation has passed through the House of Representatives. I guess there is one upside of that—that is, the name of each and every member who voted for that legislation, the name of each and every member who broke their solemn commitment to the Australian public, will be recorded for the voters to look at at the next election.

Even though the legislation has passed through that place, we still have a job to do in this chamber. Minister Ludwig says: 'What is the point of a debate? What is the point of discussing the legislation in this place? You on the other side have already decided what you are going to do.' Yes, that is right; we have already decided what we are going to do. We are going to oppose this legislation. But even where it may be a foregone conclusion this chamber still has a job to do to apply scrutiny, to air issues and to put the focus on government hypocrisy. Part of the role of this chamber is to hold the government of the day to account. Where a government has breached a commitment, we should take the appropriate time to focus on that, to highlight it and to ask again and again why the government felt the need to breach its election commitment. We make no apology for that. As an opposition in the Westminster system, we have the job of holding the government to account and we are doing that. More broadly, this chamber also has the role of providing scrutiny. This chamber also has a role as a house of review, regardless of the partisan positions on a particular issue. We are determined to do that, even if those on the other side of the chamber are not.

We know those on the other side of the chamber are not committed to even a modicum of scrutiny in this place because of the way that they treated the committee inquiry process in relation to the clean energy package. It is usual in this place, where we have significant legislation, for that legislation to be considered by the committees of the Senate. That is why they are there; that is why they were established. Historically, this chamber has not taken much notice—quite rightly—of what they do in the other place. If they want to have their own committee inquiries, terrific. If there are joint committee inquiries, great. But that does not dictate or determine what the committees of this Senate do. So it was extremely disappointing when this chamber voted against the proposal of senators on this side that we refer the carbon tax package legislation to each of the Senate committees to inquire into those areas for which they have jurisdiction.

That is pretty much what happened when the goods and services tax was being looked at. When the new tax system legislation was introduced, there were numerous Senate committees that met simultaneously and looked at different aspects of the goods and services tax legislation. That legislation was not nearly as far-reaching as the carbon tax package. So, if it was good enough for the new tax system legislation and if it was good enough for the GST legislation to go through that exhaustive inquiry process over a period of some five months, then how much more appropriate and necessary is it that the committees of the Senate examine the carbon tax legislation in this place. Instead we had what I refer to as the 'sham committee'—the committee which was racked and stacked. It was racked in that it had those carbon tax bills—19 of them—racked up to go into the one committee. It was stacked in terms of its membership; the conclusion was foregone. The committee met for two weeks was it, Senator Cormann?

Senator Cormann: One week.

Senator FIFIELD: One week! Sorry, I was being too generous. One week of inquiry by one committee on a package of 19 bills which will have the most far-reaching effects on the Australian economy. One week, Mr Deputy President. I can see you are incredulous, but it is true.

Those opposite have proposed, and we will now have, an extra sitting week in the Senate to scrutinise this legislation. That is meant to demonstrate how committed they are to scrutiny, but it is a pretty weird approach where you say, 'We are going to give you an extra week but we are going to guillotine debate.' How does that work? You give with one hand and take with the other. We are against that extra week because, again, we would be complicit in the facilitation of the breach of an election commitment. And one week is not enough anyway. This legislation should be looked at for a minimum of four or five months. That is what should happen if we are to perform our duty as legislators—something which those opposite do not have the slightest interest in.

We all know what should actually happened—that is, those opposite should withdraw this motion, they should withdraw the subsequent motion on exempting these bills from the cut-off and they should discharge this legislation from the parliament. They should then have the Prime Minister go to Yarralumla—in fact, that might suit her at the moment as she might avoid something which may or may not take place in a few weeks—and she should say to the Governor-General: 'I have made a bit of a blue, a bit of a blunder. I told a fib to the Australian people. They're not happy about it. It would be unconscionable for me to continue to pursue this legislation through the Australian parliament. Therefore, Governor-General, I'm asking you for an election because I think the Australian people deserve to have their say on the carbon tax.' I think the current situation, where the government is completely incapable of governing—not through any fault, I might say, of the opposition. If anything, we are probably a little too cooperative at times for our own good. So, no fault of the opposition—

Senator Ian Macdonald: Hear! Hear!

Senator FIFIELD: I hear Senator Macdonald, for whose benefit that remark was made. But the Prime Minister should say to the Governor-General: 'We can't do anything properly. We are incompetent. We are a hopeless government.' Whether it is because of pink batts, school halls, the Green Loans scheme, cash for clunkers, border protection or, for that matter, breaching fundamental election commitments like not introducing a carbon tax, she should say, 'Governor-General, for all these reasons please grant me an election.' That is the procedural matter which should be attended to today. It should not be the motion which is before us, which is seeking the indulgence of the chamber and seeking the connivance of the opposition to facilitate the breach of promise to the Australian people. It is not an indulgence we will grant the government. It is not a connivance we will take part in.

This is a very sad day; this is a very dark day for the Australian people with that legislation having passed the House of Representatives. But we, on this side, despite the matter having been lost in the other place, will continue to fight this legislation. We will continue to fight every motion and procedure which seeks to facilitate it. It is not too late for those opposite to say what is really in their hearts and to act on it—that is, they have breached faith with the Australian people. They should not proceed. They should go to their leader and say: 'We need to abandon this. Not only is it electoral suicide for us but it is morally wrong to continue down this path of breaching faith with the Australian public.' That is what they should do if the Australian Labor Party want to regain some decency of the Labor Party of old. We will be opposing this motion. Question put:

That the question be now put.

The Senate divided. [10:02]

(The Deputy President—Senator Parry)

Ayes   34

Noes   29

Majority   5

Senator Feeney did not vote, to compensate for the vacancy caused by the resignation of Senator Coonan.

Question agreed to. Question put:

That the motion (Senator Ludwig's) be agreed to.

The Senate divided. [10:09]

(The Deputy President—Senator Parry)

Ayes   35

Noes   27

Majority   8

Senator Feeney did not vote, to compensate for the vacancy caused by the resignation of Senator Coonan.

Question agreed to.

Senator JOYCE (Queensland—Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) (10:11): I seek leave to make a short statement.

Leave not granted.

Consideration of Legislation

Senator LUDWIG (Queensland—Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Manager of Government Business in the Senate and Minister Assisting the Attorney-General on Queensland Floods Recovery) (10:12): I move:

That the provisions of paragraphs (5) to (8) of standing order 111 not apply to the following bills, allowing them to be considered during this period of sittings:

Clean Energy Bill 2011 and related bills

Steel Transformation Plan Bill 2011.

I table a further statement of reasons justifying the need for these bills to be considered during these sittings. I seek leave to have the statement incorporated into Hansard.

Leave not granted.

Senator LUDWIG: Then I shall read out the reasons for urgency:

The Steel Transformation Plan has been negotiated with industry in the context of the introduction of a carbon price and needs to be in place by commencement of the Carbon Price Mechanism. The clean energy legislation package is expected to be introduced around the third week of the 2011 Spring sittings.

Eligible steel industry entities are expected to be covered by the Carbon Price Mechanism from its commencement on 1 July 2012. Funding under the Steel Transformation Plan needs to be available from the beginning of this period in order to ensure adequacy of transitional support to meet the impacts of a carbon price on the steel industry.

It is also necessary that funding be available for steel industry entities in a timely manner to ensure that entities undertaking innovation, investment and productivity which result in emissions abatement can effectively reduce costs under the Carbon Price Mechanism.

Passage of enabling legislation in the 2011 Spring sittings will provide sufficient time for steel industry entities to prepare systems and procedures for complying with plan and to consider which activities to undertake in order to secure grant funding.

Sufficient time will also be needed to establish systems to administer the Plan and engage effectively and efficiently with steel industry entities covered, and to establish any additional systems required to deliver grant funding.

Given the procedural motion that has already passed, we have the hours in place. We are now proposing to exempt the bills from the cut-off so that we can, when the message comes across from the House to deal with the legislation, have the debate in relation to the substantive matter in the period set aside. Again, I do not intend to go through the substantive issues. It is clear that the opposition have continued to maintain their complete opposition to the procedural motions and to the substantive motions and will continue to argue and filibuster in this place. Given that, there seems to be little point to extending this any further. We do have other legislation that we need to get on with today. There are bills on the Notice Paper that we should deal with, so on that basis I move:

That the question be now put.

Question put.

The Senate divided. [10:19]

(The Deputy President—Senator Parry)

Ayes   34

Noes   30

Majority   4

Senator Feeney did not vote, to compensate for the vacancy caused by the resignation of Senator Coonan.

Question agreed to.

Senator ABETZ (Tasmania—Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) (10:22): I seek leave to move a motion of censure in the following terms, 'That this Senate censure the Labor-Green alliance's unprincipled use of their numbers to stifle debate that involves the national interest.'

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator Abetz, I have been advised that I cannot entertain a motion of that nature considering the result of the previous motion. The next question needs to be put first. The question now is that government business notice of motion No. 2 be agreed to.

Question put:

That the motion (Senator Ludwig's) be agreed to.

The Senate divided. [10:27]

(The Deputy President—Senator Parry)

Ayes   34

Noes   30

Majority   4

Senator Feeney did not vote, to compensate for the vacancy caused by the resignation of Senator Coonan.

Question agreed to.

MOTIONS

Gillard Government

Censure

Senator ABETZ (Tasmania—Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) (10:28): I seek leave to move a motion of censure in the following terms, 'That this Senate censure the Labor-Green alliance's unprincipled use of their numbers to stifle debate that involves the national interest.'

Leave not granted.

Senator ABETZ (Tasmania—Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) (10:29): I move:

   That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate moving a motion to provide for the consideration of a matter, namely a motion to give precedence to a motion of censure.

Five out of six senators from each state of the Commonwealth of Australia were elected at the last election on a promise of no carbon tax. Two out of two senators for each of the territories were elected on a promise of no carbon tax. One hundred and forty-eight members out of the 150 House of Representatives members were elected on a promise of no carbon tax.

So today the Australian people are quite rightly asking: why is it that the carbon tax legislation has been carried through the House of Representatives? There is nobody in Australia who believes that Ms Gillard would be the Prime Minister of this great nation if she had said there would be a carbon tax under a government she led. With six days to go before the last election, with the polls indicating a very, very close result, Ms Gillard and the Labor Party collectively stared down the camera lens and said to the Australian people, broadcast into their living rooms through the mechanism of a television, that there would be no carbon tax.

They have betrayed the Australian people. They have deceived the Australian people. When we said at the last election that you could not trust Labor on this, they got out their hapless Deputy Leader, Mr Swan, who said we were being hysterical. Today we know we were historical, because history has recorded that Labor has done exactly that which we predicted. What is the saying: Oh, what tangled webs we weave when we set out to deceive? That is what Labor have got themselves into. Having deceived the Australian electorate, they are now entangling themselves more and more in the corruption of the democratic process in this country. That is why they cannot accept any debate on this matter. That is why they want to stifle and gag debate.

We also have the Australian Greens, those great champions of freedom of speech—except when it attacks the Greens. Then we will have an inquiry into the media and they will have an inquiry into whatever else. Senator Brown could not even defend the Greens' position. That is why—possibly in a disorderly manner, Mr Deputy President—I said to the Leader of the Australian Greens that the tie he is wearing today is very apt, except that it should have been on his back, because that yellow stripe of cowardice is what the Greens have displayed today by not being willing to justify on the public record why they have moved the gag on a matter that is so important.

Let us not forget the carbon issue was sold to the Australian people originally as the 'greatest moral challenge of our time'. It now seems the 'greatest moral challenge of our time' somehow allows the greatest deceit of our time; the greatest, unprincipled and unprecedented gagging of debate in this Senate somehow is allowed. The simple fact is the Labor Party can twist and turn as much as it likes, but members know that the only reason that they are in government, albeit by their fingernails, is that they promised there would be no carbon tax—something that they are now trying to ram through this place in such an unprincipled manner that they would gag debate. They have done so twice already today.

If the carbon tax is such a great policy and initiative, why did not Labor say that during the last election? What was their difficulty in saying to the people of Australia: 'This is a great idea and we will implement it. We will do it.' They said the exact opposite. Confronted with their deception of the Australian electorate, they are compounding their unprincipled behaviour by seeking to gag every single debate in relation to this matter. We will not stand for it. We will, as a coalition, stand up for the Australian people. We will give expression to their voice as they want it heard, unlike what Labor and the Greens did in cutting out all those submissions to the Joint Select Committee on Australia's Clean Energy Future Legislation. (Time expired)

Senator CHRIS EVANS (Western Australia—Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Jobs and Workplace Relations and Leader of the Government in the Senate) (10:35): Generally, you can judge a contribution by the level of sound and fury and the absence of facts. Senator Abetz really does take the cake. He seeks to censure the government on the basis of us seeking to facilitate debate on the clean energy bills. The Liberal-Nationals opposition have made it clear that they will oppose everything. They will seek to delay, filibuster and do anything they can procedurally to prevent the debate. Why? Because they have nothing to contribute to the debate. They have nothing to say. They have no amendments, no constructive contribution to the debate. All they can do is hide behind delay, delay, delay and procedural arguments. They have nothing to say about the policy.

For Senator Abetz and the Liberal Party to come in here and try to lecture us about abuse of the Senate and about the procedural matters of the Senate is an absolute disgrace. What a hide for you to come into this chamber, Senator Abetz, and try to lecture us. We remember Work Choices and the way you rammed through legislation week after week, month after month, abusing your majority in this place.

Senator Ian Macdonald: I rise on a point of order, Mr Acting Deputy President. Senator Evans has been here long enough to realise that he should not be addressing senators individually across the chamber and that his remarks should be through the chair. I ask you to bring him to order.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Ludlam ): I ask the minister to pay the usual courtesies.

Senator CHRIS EVANS: Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President. I again highlight the fact that all the Liberal Party has to contribute to this debate is process, points of order and delay. Do you know what we are debating? We have already debated this morning to extend the hours, which the Liberal Party opposed, in order to ensure that we can bring into this parliament the clean energy bills—the bills that were passed in the House of Representatives half an hour ago. We have given the Liberal opposition months of warning about these bills. The time frame was made public months ago and the opposition have known exactly the plan for bringing them before the parliament. We have scheduled an extra week of the parliament to facilitate debate on the bills. The procedure and the time frame have all been laid out. The Liberal Party's position is that they oppose everything. They do not have anything to contribute but they are going to try to prevent the parliament debating these bills. They are continuing their policy of trying to prevent this parliament dealing with legislation. The parliament saw an outrageous filibuster on the student services legislation as senator after senator came in not to debate amendments, not to debate the subject matter, but to delay the Senate dealing with it. We have had more MPIs moved by this opposition than any other opposition in the history of the parliament. We have had less legislative time than any other government because the Liberal opposition have taken every opportunity to delay the legislative program.

Today we have a debate about process, as the opposition demonstrate once again that all they have is the ability to oppose. All they have is negativity and opposition but they have nothing to say about policy, nothing to say about the great debates that this country is engaged in. The Labor government make it clear that we are facilitating debate on these bills. We are allowing the Senate the time needed to enable all senators to debate these bills. The reason we have to move these procedural motions is to ensure that that debate occurs. We will move more motions to facilitate debate. We made an offer to the opposition to have a cooperative approach on this, and that was knocked back. I made the offer to Senator Abetz to allow every senator to make a proper contribution to the debate. But they have not agreed to that, and they have rejected that approach. They have been told by their leader, Mr Abbott, to oppose, oppose, oppose; disrupt, disrupt, disrupt. They have been told to contribute nothing but opposition to the debate. The government will continue to pursue the procedures that allow us to facilitate proper debate in the Senate, and the Liberal opposition have to decide whether they have anything constructive to contribute to the debate. (Time expired)

Senator JOYCE (Queensland—Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) (10:40): It is a disgusting day when the Greens, who were the paragons of virtue and were allowing open and transparent debate to enable all sections of the chamber to take part in the carbon tax debate, become part of a guillotine process so that one political party in Australia and the Independents cannot be part of the debate—no-one can be part of the debate because the Greens have changed. It is a new paradigm. The paragons of virtue have now descended the greasy pole to be just like everybody else. I bet there are a few Democrat voters out there who wonder where they have ended up in supporting the Greens. There used to be a sense of honour in here, but they have taken it and trashed it.

Just like the deceit with the carbon tax, they are saying one thing while being something else. The Greens today have shown that they say one thing out there but are entirely something else. When leave was sought for the making of a brief statement, even that was denied. That is where this whole debate has got to. They are running and hiding because this whole tax is such a debacle, such a fiasco. It is disturbing that, because the Greens have chosen to adopt this attitude, we are denying not just political parties but the people of Australia the chance to be involved in and hear the debate in all its complexity, with all its nuances. The Greens exude this almost nauseating faux nobility, but when you put them to the test it is the same party that denied Annette Harding the chance to have an inquiry into her rape and it is the same party that is now denying opportunity for debate. That is the Greens; that is who we have; that is what they have become.

The Australian people are very uneasy about this carbon tax. We had a demonstration in support of the tax out the front of Parliament House, but there were more placards than people—no-one turns up; the support is all contrived. In a couple of weeks time I am going to sell a mob of cattle and I am going to tell the truck driver to take them to Dubbo. I expect the cattle to end up in Dubbo. I will certainly be disappointed if he decides instead to take them to Weabonga and just let them go in the hills. It is exactly the same thing—when you have a contract with the Australian people, their expectation is that you will take them to a certain position, and the position this government said it would take them to was that there would be no carbon tax under the government this Prime Minister led. Instead, the government took the people to the hills and just let them go. Then Graham Perrett goes out and says they will not change the truck driver. It does not matter about the truck driver; it is the destination that matters—in this case the destination that those opposite are taking this nation.

This is why it is so vital that we turn this around. In these times of uncertainty, with what we are seeing in Europe and what we are seeing America, what the government is doing to this nation is culpable. Those opposite know that and that is why they are guillotining; that is why they are shutting down debate; that is why they are not allowing the Australian people to have their proper say. It is ludicrous to say that we have had a chance to look at this legislation. We have not. The government has wrapped it and stacked it and brought it in here in a bundle. If we asked those opposite to quote sections of it or to go to the pertinent parts of it, they would not know it themselves—they would not have a clue. It is going to come in here because they want out—they have other things to deal with. They have to work out whether Mr Rudd is coming back and whether he is going to take out the Prime Minister. This is the whole soap opera that our nation has become under these people. It is a disgusting, hopeless approach to government. Every facet of this government is now a total and utter debacle.

What about regional Australia? The government inquiry went to Melbourne and to Sydney and to Canberra, but who did they talk to? They talked to their mates. The big banks are going to be happy—soon they are going to get this massive commission stream which the Greens will bring into place. The Greens are supporters of big banks and big banks' commissions. I am surprised to see Senator Rhiannon is going to be supporting the big banks in getting billions of dollars of commissions out of struggling working families, out of people who currently cannot afford their power and out of people who currently cannot afford the daily necessities of life.

This is where the nation is going. Is it going to change the climate? No. We have asked Minister Wong this question 600 times and never once have we got an answer. How much will this change the temperature of the globe? The answer is absolutely not at all. It is merely a gesture and in the cruellest form will be delivered to people who cannot afford it. They are going to be lumbered with it for life, and the absolute insult is they listen to you now and they are hearing you shut down the debate because you are scared. You are running, but you are not going to hide—we are going to flush you out.

Senator SIEWERT (Western Australia—Australian Greens Whip) (10:45): Here we have the opposition complaining about the use of the guillotine and the gag. We have done some research and established that the Howard government used the guillotine 116 times—let me repeat that: 116 times—for such legislation as the Telstra privatisation legislation; the migration excision legislation; the wheat marketing legislation; Work Choices, which I will come back to in a minute; Welfare to Work and the Northern Territory emergency response. In other words, the opposition have used this guillotine many times. I know they will complain about amendments being brought in, but who remembers, under Work Choices, 100 pages of amendments being delivered 20 minutes before we started the debate in committee? The opposition knows how this place works. They have been there and they have done it before, so to start carrying on about its use when 116 times—

Opposition senators interjecting—

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Ludlam ): Order! Senator Joyce and Senator Abetz were heard in silence. I ask that you extend the same courtesy to Senator Siewert.

Senator SIEWERT: They say there has not been enough time to debate. We were talking about it yesterday and we know there have been 35 inquiries, the most recent of which was reported just yesterday, where the opposition took the opportunity to talk yet again about the carbon tax. We have had an MPI basically every sitting day this year in which we have been talking about the carbon tax. Just yesterday we had another hour, and guess what? The debate and the comments are all the same; there is nothing new. They do not bring up something new; they are just saying the same thing over and over again. They had another hour yesterday and we are going to have another hour again today to talk about the economic and employment opportunities that would be foregone as a result of the Gillard government's carbon tax—it is essentially the same. The rule in here, for people who do not know, is that you have to have a different motion every day, so they change a few of the words and say the same thing. I could have written the script yesterday for what is going to be said today, because they do not come up with anything new. They are just using it as an excuse because they do not like the policy. They are using it as an excuse to say the same thing over and over again.

We have spent nearly 1½ hours this morning with the opposition trying to block extension of hours. All the legislation that I just talked about had extension of hours. The opposition has blocked extension of hours on more than one occasion. This morning they were trying to do the same thing again. We sat for hours in this place until very late in the evening talking about the pieces of legislation that I have just articulated when the opposition were in government, so they know very well that they are using this to block an important debate on carbon legislation that has far-reaching implications. Yes, we know it has far-reaching implications because we need to accept that we need to change the way we do business in this country if we are going to address this absolutely imperative issue. As I said, they do not come up with anything new; they just say the same thing over and over again.

Senator Ian Macdonald: And you do not like it because it is true.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Order!

Senator SIEWERT: As I said, they just keep saying the same things over again. Like Janelle Saffin said the other place last night: it is like Groundhog Day. I thought it was a very good example to use. The point she made is that in Groundhog Day Bill Murray actually learned each time it came around. The opposition do not seem to learn. They are still buried in the dinosaur past. They are not looking at what the opportunities are or the way we need to move forward in this country. I suppose that is what they want to do. They just want to keep entrenching business as usual and not put in place measures as to how we can develop in the future. People can see what those opposite are up to.

Senator Cormann interjecting—

Senator SIEWERT: Senator Cormann, if you want to have a say then put yourself next on the list.

Senator Cormann: I am on the list. What a good idea.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Order!

Senator SIEWERT: Fortunately there are only two more speaking spots left on this. As I said, the opposition have used this guillotine 116 times for legislation that also had far-reaching impacts.

Senator Brandis: How many times did you vote for it?

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Order!

Senator SIEWERT: How many times do I have to keep repeating this? We have had a lot of debate on this and we are going to have two more weeks of debate—we have put aside an extra week to ensure that we are talking about this some more. They will have plenty of time to explore this legislation, as they have had in other inquiries. They did not participate adequately in a number of the opportunities that were provided to them to thoroughly explore this because they were so entrenched in opposing it rather than looking at exploring how this will make a difference.

Senator XENOPHON (South Australia) (10:50): I will only need a minute of the Senate's time to set up my position in relation to this motion. For the 11 or so people who may be listening on NewsRadio in relation to this, what is at stake here is whether there ought to be a suspension of standing orders to debate the coalition's censure motion. That is the issue; it is a procedural motion. I think there ought to be a suspension of standing orders. Whether you agree or disagree with the intent of the censure motion it is an important issue and there ought to be debate on it. It is a fundamental issue. It does not mean that I necessarily support the censure motion in its current form, but I do have serious reservations about the way that this debate has been handled and the fact that there will not be a Senate committee to look at this, as is normally the case with such fundamental pieces of legislation.

It does not matter who guillotined what, who guillotined whom over previous legislation or who did what to whom. The issue is: is it fair? Is it reasonable that there be a debate on a censure motion? In order to do that you need a suspension of standing orders. It is a fundamentally important issue, whether you agree or disagree with the censure motion. I believe this Senate ought to agree to a suspension of standing orders to deal with such a contentious and important issue.

Senator CORMANN (Western Australia) (10:52): The Gillard Labor government is treating the Australian people with absolute contempt. There can be no more emphatic promise made by a Prime Minister in the shadow of an election—five days away from an election—than the promise made by the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, when she said, 'There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.' And, of course, this morning in the House of Representatives Labor members were kissing and dancing, celebrating in the aisles, celebrating their betrayal of the Australian people.

This whole debate about the carbon tax, as the Prime Minister wanted to remind us today, has been going on for some time. There has been debated over the last three or four years. The Australian people were entitled to believe that the Prime Minister had come around to their view. The Australian people were entitled to believe, in the lead-up to the last election, that the Prime Minister, having debated the arguments for and the arguments against a carbon tax, had come to the view that a carbon tax was not in the national interest. Given the debate over the three years of the last parliament and given the emphatic promise made by the Prime Minister and repeated by the Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer in the lead-up to the last election, the Australian people, as they were casting their ballot papers, were entitled to believe that the Prime Minister, having listened to all of the arguments, had agreed with their judgment that the carbon tax was a bad tax which would do nothing to reduce emissions, would push up the cost of everything, would reduce our international competitiveness, would cost jobs, would result in lower real wages while prices went up and would shift emissions overseas. But we now know that, in order to hold onto government, in order to hold onto power, the Prime Minister had to give in to the demands of the Australian Greens, who were the only political party going into the last election campaigning on the promise of a carbon tax. And here we are.

The lie continues today. This is what the Prime Minister said on radio in South Australia at seven o'clock this morning: 'The carbon tax is going to ensure we cut carbon pollution by 160 million tonnes in 2020.' I refer to the Treasury's own modelling. Do not take my word for it. I refer you to table 5.1, 'Headline national indicators', in the government's own Treasury modelling, on page 88. What does it say? It says that CO2 emissions in 2010 were 578 million tonnes. What does it say about the expectations under the carbon tax, described here as the 'core policy scenario'? In 2020, CO2 emissions would be 621 million tonnes. By my calculation, that is an increase of 43 million tonnes in CO2 emissions in Australia after the carbon tax has been imposed by this government. The cutesy, spinning sort of argument that the government puts is that emissions are going to be lower than they otherwise would have been. Emissions continue to grow under the carbon tax but they will grow by less.

Let us go to the next part of the interview that the Prime Minister gave in South Australia today. She then said: 'Under the carbon tax, we will continue to see incomes grow. Average incomes will go up by $9,000 to 2020.' Let us go back to the Treasury modelling to see what the Treasury modelling says about that. I invite people to go to chart 5.12, 'Real wages'. Real wages under the carbon tax are going to go down by just under six per cent. Real wages will be about six per cent lower under the carbon tax by 2050. And there is no end in sight. If you look at that chart, the line keeps going down and down and down. It goes off the graph. But here we have a Prime Minister who says that real wages are going up.

Let us work on the assumption that average incomes will go up. Full-time average incomes today are $70,000 a year. That means that the carbon tax will impose a $4,000 pay cut, effectively, in today's dollars. This is the ongoing deceit of this government. It is going on right now as we speak. Right now, the government still cannot tell the truth about their carbon tax. This is why they are running away from the debate. This is why they want to shut down the Senate debate on this—because they are embarrassed by how bad this legislation is, legislation which will do nothing for the environment. (Time expired)

Senator LUDWIG (Queensland—Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Manager of Government Business in the Senate and Minister Assisting the Attorney-General on Queensland Floods Recovery) (10:57): The government has this morning spent an hour and a half dealing with procedural motions only. There are substantive bills on the Notice Paper that I would encourage senators to turn their minds to so that we can deal with the legislative agenda in the Senate rather than continue to have this confected opposition debate on the carbon price legislation. All the government is asking the opposition to agree with today is that the bills be introduced into the Senate so that they can be dealt with as a message today and we can then have them available for debate in the next two weeks. The opposition now have taken the view that they are going to flop to the floor like the Liberal dead body and say: 'We're not going to do anything. We're going to just throw out the anchor and try to drag everything down. We will not engage in the debate; we will simply say no.' That is characteristic of Mr Abbott in this whole debate. All Mr Abbott wants to do is say no, no, no—no policy debate, simply a no. He is completely oppositional, without any policy—simply say no. The opposition here today are doing that. They are picking up Mr Abbott's 'Just say no' policy—

Senator Abetz: 'Mr Abbott' to you.

Senator LUDWIG: I said 'Mr Abbott', in fact, for those of the opposition who are listening. They are not listening to the debate. They only want to say no on this issue.

I will deal with some of the substantive matters that the opposition have raised. In a debate such as this, it is incumbent on those opposite to actually construct an argument and to come to the debate with clean hands. Let us look at the record of the opposition when they were in government:

Telstra bills: guillotined applied and the gag used three times and Family First Senator Steve Fielding was denied the opportunity to speak;

11 October 2005: debate over variation of routine of business and sitting hours gagged twice;

3 November 2005: debate gagged on hours and routine of business;

8 November: gag used over Labor's proposed amendments to the reference of the Work Choices inquiry;

1 December: Work Choices legislation guillotined and debate gagged;

5 December: Anti-terror bill and two welfare bills guillotined and gagged.

There was also one circumstance where:

… Australian Democrats Senator Andrew Bartlett had to debate Telstra legislation he had not seen and comment on the minister's second reading speech that had not been read to the parliament and had been tabled only 30 seconds before.

Those quotes are on page 80 of the essay 'The Senate a paper tiger', in the book Howard's Fourth Government: Australian Commonwealth Administration 2004-2007. In addition to that:

… Work Choices legislation was given to non-government senators only half an hour before the debate began, and consideration of the 1252-page bill was compressed into a five-day committee inquiry and five days of Senate debate … amendments were introduced by the government just 35 minutes before the government guillotined debate.

That is what the opposition has stood for. This government created a Multi-Party Climate Change Committee that met for nine months on this issue before completing its work in July The opposition were invited to participate on the committee but chose not to because they simply want to say no. They have no policy; they simply want to continue to be obstructionist and say no, rather than engage in debate. (Time expired)

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Ludlam ): Order! The time allotted for this debate has expired. The question is that the standing orders be suspended.

The Senate divided. [11:05]

(The President—Senator JJ Hogg)

Ayes   31

Noes   35

Majority   4

Senator Collins did not vote, to compensate for the vacancy caused by the resignation of Senator Coonan.

Question negatived.

BUSINESS

Consideration of Legislation

Senator LUDWIG (Queensland—Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Manager of Government Business in the Senate and Minister Assisting the Attorney-General on Queensland Floods Recovery) (11:09): I move:

That the provisions of paragraphs (5) to (8) of standing order 111 not apply to the following bills, allowing them to be considered during this period of sittings:

Business Names Registration Bill 2011

Business Names Registration (Transitional and Consequential Provisions) Bill 2011

Business Names Registration (Fees) Bill 2011

National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Amendment Bill 2011.

Senator ABETZ (Tasmania—Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) (11:09): Here we have a government yet again seeking to rearrange the procedures in this place. This is a dysfunctional government, a government that is now seeking to exempt legislation from the normal cut-off. It is doing that because it has not been able to get its house in order. No doubt Labor will once again move the gag in relation to this because they do not want to have explained to the Australian people how dysfunctional they are. This is a government that is self-focused. It is internally focused. All it talks about is whether our Prime Minister should or should not be ringing the boy in Bali. Why on earth would the Prime Minister be doing that? There is only one reason: to try to gazump the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Rudd, who has been making some headway, I understand, in relation to the Labor Party leadership stakes.

The government is seeking to stop debate on all sorts of issues today. Why? Because it wants deceit, not debate. Let's make no bones about this. The Labor Party went to the last election promising no carbon tax, and today through the lower house they have forced it. Every single one of those Labor members, including the Prime Minister, was elected on a promise of no carbon tax. When I say that they are Labor members, they are only Labor members in name, because they have deceived and betrayed the Australian people and those that they used to champion. Before the election they promised those people that there would be no carbon tax.

I note there is a Labor representative in this place, from the Democratic Labor Party, who opposes the carbon tax, who supports manufacturing jobs and who is conscious of the cost-of-living pressures that people face. He has voted and undoubtedly will vote accordingly. But here we have a request seeking to exempt four bills from the cut-off. The minister just got up and moved it and thinks he can do so without explaining to this place why it is necessary, why they could not have brought in the legislation earlier so they did not need the cut-off. He is treating this place with the sort of contempt that we have now got used to under this Labor-Green alliance, a Labor-Green alliance that is betraying the trust of the Australian people.

Let's never forget that the privilege we have to serve in this place, especially in a democracy such as ours, is based on a lot of convention, a lot of tradition and, most importantly, a lot of trust. When that trust goes, you start shaking the very foundations of the democratic process. That is why it is so important that the Australian people have confidence in the people they elect to keep their election promises. That is why the Australian people are so disgusted with the current government. Indeed, they have a right to be disgusted with what occurred in this place earlier today.

Let's not forget that five out of the six senators elected from each state at the last election were elected on a promise of no carbon tax, two out of the two senators elected from each of the territories were elected on a promise of no carbon tax, and 148 of the 150 members of the House of Representatives were also elected on a promise of no carbon tax. So the Australian people have a right to ask: 'What on earth has happened to the mandate that we gave to the people we elected? They promised us no carbon tax. How is it that, with 148 out of 150 members of the House of Representatives being elected on this promise, it passed the House of Representatives?'

How come? Because they have betrayed the people that elected them.

Ms Gillard made that promise of no carbon tax for one very simple reason: she knew that if she had said the opposite, that there would be a carbon tax, she would not have been re-elected as Prime Minister. She knows that. We all know that. She holds the prime ministership in a very tenuous set of circumstances and she has betrayed the Australian people—there is no doubt about that—as has every single Labor member, as has every single Australian Labor Party senator in this place who is now conniving to ensure that this deceit that has been perpetrated on the Australian people might actually come into law.

This motion seeks to exempt four bills from the cut-off. They deal with matters as diverse as business names registration and the national vocational education and training regulator—all good issues and ones that in general we as a coalition would support. We will be supporting the passage of this exemption from the cut-off. Why? Because we are willing to assist this government when they are unable to run their own agenda. But when they commit a deceit on the Australian people, as they have done with the carbon tax, we will not be a party to it. We will oppose and seek to oppose on every possible occasion the implementation of this carbon tax, which the Australian people were solemnly promised they would not have.

I do not know how the Labor Party members and senators look themselves in the mirror of a morning and say, 'Yes, I am really and truly representing the wishes of my electorate.' Indeed, I ask the same question about the two country Independents. I would have thought, if there was one thing that the Independents ought to be doing, it would be representing the wishes of their electorate without fear or favour. They go to the electorate saying, 'We can do this because we are not tied down by a party.' Also, an Independent surely should keep the government honest and keep it to its promises. The members for Lyne and New England have spectacularly failed on both counts in their role as Independents. They have betrayed the trust of the people that elected them. I fear that they know that and that is why they are going to keep this hapless, hopeless government on life support for as long as possible.

In doing so they may well get another year or so of parliamentary entitlements, but they will be doing untold continuing damage to the Australian nation and our economic fabric, especially if the carbon tax were to come into play, a carbon tax which will be destructive and corrosive in relation to the cost of living, where all Australians are battling. It will be destructive and corrosive in relation to jobs and job security. We know it will do nothing for the environment because day after day we ask this hapless, hopeless government at question time, 'What difference will it make to the environment?' No answer. We ask about the impact on jobs and they pretend there will be jobs growth. They pretend there will be economic growth because of it and that it is all good. The only problem I have is that, if it is all so good, why did they say 'no carbon tax' before the last election? What has happened in the last 12 months?

As I am on my feet I fear that the hapless Clerk, who undoubtedly does a wonderful job but has been given the task of presenting these bills to the Senate, has arrived at the Senate door—a very sad day, a very sad moment. I am sorry to pick on the Clerk. I do not do so in a personal manner. All the clerks in both houses do a fantastic job and act according to the will expressed in votes by either house. But this Clerk has the task of presenting these bills that are a deceit on the Australian people. They are bills that should never have seen the light of day because we were promised no carbon tax. They should never have got through the House of Representatives because the members who were elected down there, 148 of them, all promised no carbon tax. They rolled over, I fear at the behest of Senator Bob Brown and the Greens. It is a tragic day for Australia that this has happened and now these bills have been, as I speak, transmitted up here, which is also a very sad occasion. We will have a debate on those bills, but they are a betrayal of the Australian people and the trust that they placed in their elected representatives.

As I said earlier, the government have trouble with their timetable. The government are struggling in relation to the cut-off for certain legislation. Why? Because they cannot get their house in order; they cannot run the show as a mature and proper government should be able to run the show. We will assist them in allowing the cut-off to be exempted in relation to legislation which we in general terms support. Nevertheless, we say to the government: if you want an exemption on a matter, do the courteous and decent thing. Explain to the chamber why it is necessary and important. Do not just rely on the Labor-Greens alliance to shunt everything through this Senate without even explaining anything. Do not rely on them to continually guillotine legislation. You might be able to win the votes in this place, but one thing you are not doing is winning the hearts and minds of our fellow Australians in relation to this important matter of the carbon tax. I will conclude my remarks by saying we will always cooperate to make sure that this place works as efficiently as possible, but we will never be party to the sort of deceit that Labor and the Greens are seeking to perpetrate with the carbon tax.

Senator IAN MACDONALD (Queensland) (11:22): I wish to contribute to the series of debates this morning and to this one in particular on exempting the Business Names Registration Bill 2011 and related bills from the cut-off. As our leader in the Senate, Senator Abetz, has said, we will be supporting that. It is a bill that is relatively straightforward and can run the passage of debate in this place without the normal cut-off procedures. It is so different to the cut-off for the other bills that have been debated this morning.

I call upon members of the Greens political party to explain why all of Senator Bob Brown's very pious and very principled speeches over the whole of his parliamentary career against guillotining debate and gagging individual senators has suddenly changed. Why is it that Senator Brown—who, for as long as he has been in this chamber, has got up and wasted the time of the Senate by calling votes on motions that he knows have no chance of passing—has spent hours in this Senate railing against the guillotine? Why has he spent literally hours in this Senate arguing against the gagging of individual senators wishing to speak on any bill? But on a bill as important as the carbon tax legislation—which will change the way of life for all Australians; which will add to their cost of living; and which makes things, particularly for those of us who live in rural and regional and remote Australia, even more expensive—why has he now abandoned his former principled opposition to guillotines and gags and gone along with his mates in the Labor Party?

I think that Senator Brown's supporters—those many people who I think are misguided, but there you are, they are there—have always thought Senator Brown was worth a vote because he believed in parliamentary democracy. He believed that every person had the right to have their say. He believed that this chamber and this parliament was a place where the views of Australians could be put without restriction. But what has happened today? So far this morning, Senator Brown has led his little band of senators in guillotining debate on no less than three occasions in a couple of hours. Some of Senator Brown's supporters may well say: 'That's not why we voted for you. We voted for you because you've always portrayed yourself as the upholder of parliamentary democracy.' Those of us who sit in the chamber know that is completely wrong. But Senator Brown has been able to hoodwink many people who have voted for him over many years into believing that he does believe in parliamentary democracy and that he does believe that matters should be fully debated.

Before the last election the Prime Minister put her hand and on her heart and said solemnly to the Australian people on two occasions at least, 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.' How can you trust anything that this Prime Minister might ever say today, tomorrow or at any time in the future, when she has clearly, as result of the vote today in the other place, abandoned that solemn promise?

Some would say the Prime Minister is a liar. I would not say that because I know it is unparliamentary. But what I would say is that this is a policy and this is a principle based on a lie. If the Prime Minister thinks that it is genuine, she should do the honourable thing—although we understand she is incapable of honourable things as a result of this debate—and go back to the people of Australia and say: 'I did promise you this. I have now changed my mind because I wanted to stay Prime Minister and the only way I could do that was if I got the Greens on side, and they wanted me to do this. So I've changed my mind. But as a democrat, I will put back to the Australian people my change of mind. I promised you 12 months ago there would be no carbon tax but now I want a carbon tax, so I am going to ask the Australian if they support that.'

You would not have to be Einstein to understand that the Australian people do not want a carbon tax. You do not always believe opinion polls but they cannot be that wrong. More than 50 per cent of the Australian people clearly oppose the carbon tax. In fact, at the last federal election there were 150 candidates in the House of Representatives. They all stood for election. They confronted their electors and said: 'We want you to vote for us. These are the policies we stand upon.' What was the policy that 148 members of the lower house supported? It was that there would be no carbon tax, and please vote for them. So all the people in those 148 electorates around Australia said, 'I can vote for Mr Perrett because he is not going to support a carbon tax; I can vote for Kirsten Livermore in the electorate of Capricornia in Central Queensland because she is going to vote against a carbon tax.' Kirsten Livermore, the member for Capricornia, actually said before the election, as did her leader, 'There will be no carbon tax.' The electorate of Capricornia in Central Queensland incorporates Rockhampton and mining towns such as Moranbah, Dysart and Middlemount—towns that produce Australia's wealth, that supply employment to the people of Central Queensland. The industry in those towns gives people who live in the area good wages, allowing them to build new homes down at Emu Park on the Yeppoon-Capricorn Coast. All those people said: 'We can vote for Kirsten Livermore because she is going to oppose the carbon tax. We do not want the carbon tax because we know what it will do to our jobs, we know what it will do to our pay packets and we know what it will do to the mortgage that we have to pay on the new home that we have just built down at Emu Park.' So they voted for Kirsten Livermore, confident in the fact that there would be no carbon tax in this term of parliament. What has happened today? Kirsten Livermore and the very principled Mr Perrett have breached that promise to their electorate and voted for a carbon tax that they promised we would not have.

How can you believe anything Prime Minister Gillard would ever say? How can you believe anything anyone in the Labor Party would ever say? I challenge Senator Furner, Senator Ludwig, Senator McLucas and Senator Moore—the senators from Queensland elected at the previous election—to explain to the people of Queensland why they promised just a year ago that, if elected, they would not introduce a carbon tax. I ask them to come into this chamber and tell the Senate why they went to the last election and promised there would be no carbon tax, and today they are part of a party that has voted for it in the House—and I am sure that in a few weeks they will be part of a party that will vote for the carbon tax in the Senate. They themselves will vote for it.

I would like Senator McLucas, who sometimes comes from the north, where I come from, to get up and explain to the people of Cairns, Townsville, Mackay, Rockhampton, Moranbah, Dysart and Mount Isa why she went to the last election promising that she would not impose a carbon tax on them. I want her to come into this chamber and explain now why she has gypped those people, why she has completely broken her promise and done something quite contrary to what she promised she would do. It is important that Senator McLucas does that, because she knows that this carbon tax will add even more to the cost of living of people in those towns that I have just mentioned because we are all going to pay more for fuel. When you pay more for fuel you pay more for transport. You do not have to be Einstein to work out that the further you live from the capital cities and the further you live from the major ports, the higher the transport costs. Costs in the electorate that Senator McLucas claims to represent in the north are going to increase quite substantially.

A lot of people still think air conditioning is a luxury. In the north where I come from—along with Senator McLucas, Mr Snowdon and Senator Crossin—air conditioning is no longer a luxury. It is an essential part of life. But the cost of air conditioning will become prohibitive. Many pensioners will have to turn off their air conditioners and try and live through the heat of a northern summer without that support because they will simply not be able to afford the electricity bills that will increase substantially as a result of this carbon tax being imposed by a Labor Party that promised it would never be imposed. This is a very serious matter. People will die without air conditioning. I can guarantee you that there will be pensioners and people on limited incomes in the north who will not be able to afford to turn on their air conditioners once this carbon tax comes into place. I want Senator McLucas and Senator Crossin to come into this chamber and explain to me why they are putting these people at that risk.

Of all the senators that the Labor-Greens government comprises at the moment, Senator Waters, who I see has just come into the chamber, is the only one that can hold her head up high. I concede that Senator Waters did at least have the honesty and courage to go to the last election and say, 'Elect me and I will vote for a carbon tax,' because that has been the Greens policy, wrong though it is. At least she was honest about it. But the other people that the Labor-Green government comprises at the moment are completely dishonest because they have abrogated their duties and their honour to their electorates.

As senators will know, there are not many Labor members from Queensland in the lower house. There are not that many Labor senators from Queensland either. The people of Queensland have long since worked out that Labor cannot manage money. They cannot be trusted. What further evidence do they ever need than what has happened in the lower house today? To those few Queensland Labor members who are left, I say to them: guys, your days are numbered. You had the opportunity today to stand by your promise. You had the opportunity today to stand by the people of Queensland, the people who elected you to this parliament.

The people of Queensland—and I can talk about Queensland; I am a senator for Queensland—clearly do not want a carbon tax. Mr Swan, the Deputy Leader of the Labor Party, promised everyone before the last election that there would be no carbon tax. In fact, when Tony Abbott, the Leader of the Liberal Party, said, 'Elect Labor and you will get a carbon tax,' Mr Swan said of Mr Abbott: 'He is being hysterical. There will be no carbon tax. Our leader has said it. I as deputy leader say it. There will be no carbon tax under a future Labor government.' This is Mr Wayne Swan. He has already lost his seat of Lilley once because of his arrogance—the way he treated his electorate with disdain, the way he completely ignored their wishes and spent his time floating around Australia doing whatever Labor members of parliament do. He did not look after his electorate of Lilley, and they voted him out. I can assure Mr Swan that at an election this year, next year or the year after: brother, you will not be there. It happened once before that his arrogance was understood by his electorate, and they got rid of him. This time they will not forget. I can guarantee that.

And that goes for the other Queensland Labor members of parliament. I cannot remember them all, although it is not hard since there are so few in Queensland: Mr Emerson and Ms Livermore—and Mr Perrett, whom we cannot forget. I think that is about it. None of the others reach the radar screen. None of them will be there. In fact, opinion polls conducted by the Courier Mail showed that an election held anywhere in the near future would result in only one member of the Labor Party being elected in Queensland. That would be Mr Rudd, the past and future leader. A lot of the Labor Party backbenchers are now looking at their own futures, looking at their own pension entitlements, looking at the avalanche of voter anger coming their way. They are thinking that Mr Rudd, although they got rid of him a year or so ago, is not looking so bad after all.

So I predict that Mr Rudd will be back as Labor leader. But do not take any notice of my prediction. Some of the Labor members also predict that Mr Rudd will be back as leader. And those who protest the most loudly against that are most likely the ones who will be supporting him. That is fortunate, because at least there would be a Queensland Labor member in parliament. On recent opinions polls, Mr Rudd is the only Queensland Labor member who would be left in parliament. And something like that has happened before.

Senator Abetz: And that is the only one Julia Gillard does not want.

Senator IAN MACDONALD: Indeed. I suspect, Senator Abetz—and, again, I am not as familiar with Victorian political issues as much as others are—that on this particular issue Ms Gillard, being shown to be a liar, will struggle to hold her own seat.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Furner ): Order! Senator Macdonald, you will withdraw that comment about the Prime Minister. That is disorderly, and you know that.

Senator IAN MACDONALD: Okay. I withdraw the comment that Ms Gillard was seen as a liar and say that Ms Gillard will be seen by her constituents as completely unreliable, dishonest and untrustworthy. Senator Collins may take a point of order on that, but they are all accurate descriptions of a leader who went to the last election and promised solemnly that under no circumstances would there be a carbon tax under the government she led.

Senator Jacinta Collins: Why are you talking to me? Get over yourself.

Senator IAN MACDONALD: Here we are today seeing the disgrace of all of those Labor members who were voted for by their constituents on the policy of no carbon tax now voting for a carbon tax. They will get their retribution, and they know it. Mr Perrett, with his marvellous, selfless indication that if Labor changed their leader then he would resign from the parliament, can read the figures as well as I can. He is on a one per cent margin, and nothing will save Mr Perrett from his dishonesty in promising his electorate that he would not vote for a carbon tax.

I conclude my contribution by again referring to the people of Central Queensland, whom I try to assist because their local member, Ms Livermore, is rarely around. She has proved today that she has no interest in their welfare. A year ago Ms Livermore promised the people of Rockhampton, Moranbah, Dysart and Middlemount that she would not vote for a carbon tax—a tax that will impact very, very heavily on the jobs, mortgages and future lifestyles of her constituents. She told those constituents that there would be no carbon tax, yet today she has breached that promise, that obligation—that duty, almost—to the people who elected her, and she has voted for a carbon tax. I can only wait for the next election, whenever it is held—next week, next month, next year or in two years time. The people of Capricornia will take their revenge.

Senator NASH (New South Wales—Deputy Leader of The Nationals in the Senate) (11:42): As has been indicated by the leader, the coalition will support this issue of exemption for these bills. But I make the point that there is a reason for the government to ask for an exemption for bills. It is usually a timely sort of issue but, yet again, the facilitation by the coalition in this particular instance highlights the mismanagement, as the leader said earlier, by this 'hopeless, hapless government'. If they actually had an ability to properly run their affairs in the chamber and to properly run the government then they would not need to be bringing these bills to the chamber to make this request. Is that not reflected in their absolute inability not only to manage their chamber affairs properly but to manage their policies properly and to manage the economy properly? They have an absolute inability to manage anything properly.

In this instance we will be supporting the exemption for these particular bills. But I do question the processes the government has brought to this chamber this morning. Earlier this morning we saw debate on an earlier motion on a controversial exemption for the Clean Energy Bill. And what did we see? We saw Senator Fifield's excellent contribution, reflecting very strongly the position of the coalition with regard to this. And what did Senator Ludwig do? What did the Manager of Government Business do? He gagged debate after only one contribution—excellent though it might have been—from this side of the chamber, with no opportunity, I might add, for the Leader of the Nationals to have a contribution or for the Independents to have a contribution. Bang! He shut it down—'Controversial; don't listen to any debate.' What do we have here? Another similar motion for exemption. Debate is ensuing. There is no commentary from the other side of the chamber; in fact, everybody on the other side of the chamber has disappeared. This is exactly the same process as applied to the earlier bill. But no—everybody has disappeared now. They are quite happy for debate to run on this. It makes absolutely no sense and shows yet again this government's complete inability to properly manage chamber affairs and affairs of the government.

I return to my earlier point: with the requests for exemption, there is usually a reason. There are obviously some good reasons for these particular bills we are discussing at the moment. With the previous bills, though—colleagues, you might well be as perplexed as I am—what is the urgency? We had Senator Evans in here earlier waxing something—I would not say 'lyrical', because it was not quite lyrical; he was waxing, anyway, in quite a loud voice—and saying that the timetable has been set out for these bills coming in, that the coalition should have known about that and that it was appalling that we wanted to contribute to the debate at that point. But at no point did Minister Evans give us any reason for the urgency for the cut-off—not one.

It is interesting to note that the clean energy legislation is not due to kick off until 1 July 2012. So why are we here on 12 October 2011 being told by the government that this is a matter of urgency? It simply makes absolutely no sense—unless, of course, we look a little further. I shall refer to the excellent interim report from the Select Committee on Scrutiny of New Taxes, and I again commend Senator Cormann for the work he has done on this. I will just read this for the chamber, because I think it may well relate to the request for exemption for the earlier clean energy bills:

The international negotiation process to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions is organised around the sessions of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework on the Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The Conference of the Parties meets every year to review progress and take decisions on the Convention’s implementation. Additional negotiation sessions are scheduled between each Conference of the Parties to develop the draft text that will go forward to the Conference for decision.

By no coincidence, the next meeting is in Durban, South Africa, in December. I wonder if perhaps that is not the driving factor for the request by the government today for the exemption, because nothing else makes any sense. If this legislation is not coming in till 1 July next year, what is the imperative? What is the biting imperative that we should be doing the bills in the next few weeks? That is the only reason I can see—which, of course, the government has not raised and never would and is trying to keep very quiet. Of course, there are the Greens, as you said earlier, Senator Macdonald; I will refer to your conclusion. Perhaps the Greens may have driven the government to change its mind on this. Isn't it a sad day when we have the Greens, who have 10 members of parliament out of 226, telling the government what to do? That is not democracy in any way, shape or form.

So what we have is a request for exemption for the clean energy bills so that the government and others can go to South Africa and strut their stuff on a stage—'We've got our clean energy bills through the parliament in Australia.' Do you know what this is, colleagues, from the Prime Minister? This is nothing but vanity legislation. This is vanity legislation because she wants the ability to strut her stuff on the world stage, saying, 'Look what I've achieved.' The only thing is that she has achieved absolutely nothing except creating a huge burden for the Australian people—a huge financial tax and an impost that the Australian people are going to have to carry but that is not going to change the climate one little bit. So that is the reason for all this rush. That is the reason that we have to get these bills through so terribly, terribly quickly, and that is so wrong.

Colleagues, you might remember that recently Senator Penny Wong was asked why we were actually moving to a carbon tax and why we had to have a carbon tax. Let me just remind you that the minister's reply was: 'Because the Australian people are not shirkers.' That is apparently the bones for this important legislation. That is apparently why we have to have a carbon tax: because the Australian people are not shirkers. We in this country apparently have to lead the rest of the world even though it is not going to make the slightest bit of difference to the climate—even though the carbon tax is not going to do anything to change the climate.

We have on occasion had bad legislation come through this chamber—there is no doubt about that—but usually, if it is bad legislation, at least there is an intended reason and an intended outcome from that legislation. The intended outcome from the carbon tax legislation, to change the climate, simply will not be effected by this piece of legislation, and that is what is so wrong, and that is what the Australian people understand. They understand that they are going to get hit with a massive new tax that is not going to change the climate one little bit, and that is why they are so against it. Australia emits 1.4 per cent of the world's emissions and, in spite of any protestations from the other side, you only have to look at the work from the Productivity Commission to know that no other country is doing what we are about to do with this carbon tax. That is not me; that is coming from the Productivity Commission. That is not Senator Fiona Nash; that is the Productivity Commission.

So why are we doing it? It is hard to understand why we are doing this. I can only go back to Senator Macdonald's very perspicacious comments, I believe, that the Greens have pushed the government into doing this, because something must have happened. Before the last election the Prime Minister said, 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.' Other colleagues have said this and we will continue to say this: you cannot get any clearer than what the Prime Minister said. You cannot get any more straightforward than a statement like that. But what do we have now? We have a government that is foisting a carbon tax on the Australian people that they do not want. If the government were honest with itself, it would know that the Australian people do not want a carbon tax. Last time I looked this was a democracy. Last time I looked, you could have your say in this country and you could have your views and your voice heard. On this particular issue, this Prime Minister has taken away from the ability of the Australian people to have a say.

At the last election, the Australian people believed the Prime Minister when she said, 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.' They believed her. Why wouldn't they? In this country, we are brought up to respect office and expect honesty from those holding high office. But what did we get? We got a lie. No matter which way you look at it, no matter which way you turn it, for the Prime Minister to have said, 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead,' and then to give the Australian people a carbon tax under the government she leads—it is a lie. The Australian people are quite rightly looking at this government and saying, 'What did we vote for?' When we look at what this government have done, we are well on our way to an absolute dark day.

What did we see this morning from the Greens and from Bob Brown? It was extraordinary. I have listened for a number of years to Senator Bob Brown and others in the Greens chastising the chamber for the use of the guillotine and how dreadful it was—I keep going back to Senator Macdonald's excellent contribution. It is interesting to note that several years ago in relation to Work Choices Bob Brown said:

We are well on our way to a dictatorship of the executive. In fact, we are at a dictatorship of the executive. We are not on the way, we are there. The parliament is being treated with utter contempt by the Rt Hon. the Prime Minister John Howard as he deals with the decision-making process in his rooms. He just says to his ministers and minions: 'Get on with it. Change the sittings of the Senate. Reduce them to the minimum'—and we are reduced to the minimum—'but extend the length of the sitting'—so we sat last night rather than having another week's sitting—'and then guillotine any debate that gets long so that we can get out of here and not have the government under scrutiny.'

Is this the same Bob Brown? Maybe they replaced him with another Bob Brown, because the Bob Brown we know we did not hear this morning—and that is the point, colleagues. It is the Bob Brown—

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Furner ): Order!

Senator NASH: Senator Bob Brown—I accept your admonishment, Acting Deputy President. We did not hear from him this morning. Why was he not saying exactly those sorts of words again? His hypocrisy is of the highest order.

Senator Ronaldson: Gutless.

Senator NASH: Yes, it is absolutely gutless. This morning Senator Siewert ran through all the instances where a guillotine has occurred before. How about this? If Senator Siewert is so concerned about the instances of the guillotine before, why didn't she direct her anger at the Labor government side of this chamber and not the coalition? Why have a go at us about it? Why not have a go at the other side of the chamber and the Labor government? They are the ones who pulled out the guillotine. We can see it from their track record—their opposition to the guillotine is there in thousands and thousands of words in Hansard—so why didn't Senator Siewert and Senator Brown oppose the Labor government this morning when they called on the guillotine? I do not think you have to be a rocket scientist to figure this out. I do not think you even have to be a kindergartener to figure this out. The Greens are now part of the Labor-Green government. Isn't that a shame.

As much as the Greens have been misguided, in my view, over the years—and I agree with precious little of their policies and with what they say—at least they had a little bit of principle back then. At least they said what they believed in. But now they have lost every bit of integrity and principle regarding this issue, because today they directed their remarks to the wrong side of the chamber. For Senator Bob Brown to sit in the chamber this morning, smirk and say nothing, when in the past it was his raison d'etre to ensure that this chamber operated appropriately, that there was free speech, that nobody was gagged, that everyone could talk—

Senator Joyce interjecting—

Senator NASH: Yes, with his hands out to the cameras, pleading for free speech in the chamber. What did we get this morning? We got support of the guillotine.

Senator Joyce: And a smirk.

Senator NASH: Yes, and a smirk. The Australian people will understand exactly the hypocrisy of the Greens on this issue. This government told us there was not going to be a carbon tax. When we say 'No' to government, when we point out all the things that are wrong with the carbon tax, when we point out the incredibly bad effect this will have on the Australian people—the cost to the hip-pocket; the cost of electricity, transport and fuel going through the roof; and all those things, most of which will hit regional Australian harder than anywhere else—those on the other side of the chamber love saying that we are scaremongering. That is their distraction to stop us having the Australian people know the truth.

Prior to the last election the Prime Minister told the Australian people, 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead.' I also want to refer to what the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, said when he was asked, 'Can you tell us exactly when Labor will apply a price to carbon?' For the chamber, it was 15 August 2010 when he said:

Well, certainly what we rejected is this hysterical allegation that somehow we are moving towards a carbon tax from the Liberals in their advertising. We certainly reject that. What we've said is that we will go back and seek to reconstruct a community consensus about how we deal with climate change.

Unbelievable! There is another lie, because it was not a hysterical allegation. The coalition was right on the money before the last election, saying that this government would bring in a carbon tax. The Treasurer rejected it—here, in black and white. Have we seen any community consensus? None. We have seen one inquiry—six days for submissions and 1,100 pages that no-one could get through. What sort of community consensus is that? It is absolutely appalling. At this point people do not know whether to be furiously angry or incredibly sad that this government is bringing such an appalling piece of legislation before this chamber. It has already gone through the other place and it is a very, very sad day indeed.

We look at Mr Perrett sticking up for his principles because he could not possibly stay there if the Labor Party changed its leader. He could have stuck up for his principles and said: 'Before the last election we said to you that there wasn't going to be a carbon tax. Now there is going to be a carbon tax so I am going to cross the floor and stick up for my principles and vote against a carbon tax.' Then he would have been a true representative, as so many of the other Labor members and senators would have been true representatives. In their hearts, so many of them know that this carbon tax should not be coming forward. They know that and yet they are so bound by the Labor machine that they cannot truly reflect what their electorates want. They cannot truly do what their electorates are asking them to do. I can tell you and anybody listening that you do not have to be a rocket scientist. A kindergarten child could walk down the street, talk to businesses, people in the shops, teachers, policemen, workers in the abattoirs, people in regional communities and people in the cities, and overwhelmingly understand that Australians do not want a carbon tax.

Before the ETS, the Australian people went berserk. They did not want an ETS. They are going to get one in three short years. This was done under cloak and dagger because the Prime Minister promised the Australian people that they would not have a carbon tax. They are now getting one. We will keep fighting it and I promise the Australian people we will get rid of it. (Time expired)

Senator RONALDSON (Victoria) (12:02): I will say a few words in relation to this debate to exempt certain bills from the provisions of the cut-off order. I thank my colleagues on this side of the chamber for their contributions but I ask: where is Senator Bob Brown, the great saviour of Australian democracy? Scurrying out of here with that insipid smirk that we saw on his face this morning—a deceitful smirk from a politician who does not deserve the title of senator.

I want to talk about something else today and I invite colleagues and those people who are listening to watch the footage of the carbon tax going through the other place this morning. They will see a bevy of kisses for the Prime Minister and others involved in this deceit. I say to the Australian Labor Party that you had a kiss in the other place this morning but it was the kiss of death for this government. How the Australian Labor Party members in the other place could not constrain themselves is beyond me because that footage will be replayed and replayed and replayed. That was a kiss of success based on a lie. It was a kiss of success based on deceit and a complete, utter fabrication given to the Australian people before the last election.

It has been said today, and I will say it again for the benefit of those in the gallery: six days out from the election, the Prime Minister promised the Australian people that there would not be a carbon tax under a government led by her. The Manager of Opposition Business has referred to that debate. The Leader of the Opposition in the Senate has referred to that. Senators Macdonald, Nash and others have referred to that today. Mr Acting Deputy President, I ask you to go back and check your emails because I think you will find what I have just found in the last hour—that the level of anger from the Australian community will play out at the ballot box.

To those 72 members who were elected on a lie, we will haunt you every single day until the next election. The Australian Greens, who, apart from a very small insipid contribution from one of their members, have not participated in these debates today, may well think they are licking their chops in success. I can tell you now that the Australian Greens will also feel the wrath of the Australian people at the next election. This feigned disassociation from this debate today will not save the Australian Greens from the wrath of the Australian people.

I put on the record again a couple of comments from senior Labor Party ministers to put some context to this debate today, and in the other place, and to the debate which will occur in this chamber while we debate the carbon tax bills. I will read three quotes and I ask those on the other side to reflect on those quotes. It is not just the Prime Minister's quote that there will be no carbon tax under a government she leads. In an interview with Marius Benson on ABC NewsRadio on 16 April 2010, we heard:

A carbon tax is a less efficient way in the Australian Government's view of dealing with this issue.

The same person said, in a speech to the Committee for Economic Development for Australia's State of the Nation conference on 23 June 2010:

A carbon tax is not the silver bullet some people might think.

Again, the same person, on Sky News on 30 April 2009:

We know that you can't have any environmental certainty with a carbon tax.

Who was that? That was Senator Penny Wong, a senior government minister—

Senator Ian Macdonald: A failed climate change minister.

Senator RONALDSON: A failed climate change minister. Out of the mouths of babes come these comments on the carbon tax. We know that the Prime Minister promised before the last election there would be no carbon tax. We know that 72 lower house members were elected on the back of a lie, including the Labor Party members in Corangamite, Corio, Bendigo and Ballarat—they were all re-elected on a lie. So how is it that we have got to the position where we are debating a carbon tax some 12 months later? We know what the reason is, and the reason is that a desperate Prime Minister, elected on the back of a lie, did a dirty, grubby deal with the Australian Greens.

I say to my colleagues opposite—I am not going to name names but you know who you are—that you know it is a grubby deal and you know you do not support one single thing that the Australian Greens stand for. Are you, over the next month, eventually going to side with a party that you do not support and a party with whom the Prime Minister did this grubby deal? Are you going to join your colleagues in the other place by being part of this web of deceit? I suspect that you are not going to have the guts to do what you know you should be doing, and I think you will carve your names in this dirty piece of history and will support this carbon tax. You will vote against what you know is the right thing to do and vote for this grubby, grubby deal between the current Prime Minister and the Leader of the Australian Greens, Senator Brown.

I hope that those on the other side will view this morning's footage from the House of Representatives. It was quite sickening. When you celebrate a lie with a celebratory kiss, what does it say about what drives the current government? I think it says that we have a Prime Minister whom every single person in this chamber and the other place knows is under incredible pressure to hold a job, and we know that the former Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, is on a mission to destroy the person who he believes destroyed him. So the Australian people are going to get lumbered with a carbon tax, ahead of the rest of the world—a carbon tax that the Prime Minister promised she would not introduce, that Minister Wong said would not work—to save the Prime Minister's job. Is that what politics has got to in this country—that we have a Prime Minister who will desperately sell out herself and her party to keep her job? Is that the stage we have got to? I notice Senator Cormann is in the chamber today. I encourage people to read the report he tabled last Friday and see what damage a carbon tax will do to this country. I encourage people to make a judgement about a government that would do that to its own people, and I encourage them to look at the sort of price impacts we are going to see as a result of this toxic carbon tax.

I am a resident of regional Australia, and every person representing regional and rural areas in this place knows full well that the impact of prices on electricity and other energy bills falls heavier outside the metropolitan areas of Australia—in my own state, there is a difference of some 30 per cent. So here we have a country that is on the precipice, along with the rest of the world, of a double-dip recession. Not one person on either side of this chamber wants us to return to recession. But it is a real risk—and that is not Chicken Little stuff; it is coming from the head of the IMF and from other organisations. We are on the cusp. So what does this government do to protect the country from that? It puts in a carbon tax that is going to export not only emissions but also Australians' dollars.

If ever we needed a government in this country that was prepared to stand up for its people, it is now. Now is the time for this Prime Minister to stand up for the people who elected her. Now is the time for the Prime Minister to stand up for those people who did not vote for her. Now is the time for some national leadership in extraordinarily difficult international times. What are we left with? We are left with the remnants of a grubby, get me re-elected deal. That is what it has come down to. When we need leadership, we get a lack of leadership. When we need a Prime Minister to stand up for us, we get a Prime Minister who is only interested in one job, and that is her own. The Prime Minister does not care about the jobs of working men and women in this country. The 72 Labor Party members in the other place who voted for this toxic tax do not care about those people. Those opposite have the opportunity in this chamber over the next month to say to the Australian people, 'We think your job is more important than the Prime Minister's job.' Let us see whether those on the other side have the intestinal fortitude to do that. I think I have a rough idea of what the answer is.

Senator Williams: They are going to wimp out.

Senator RONALDSON: I think they are going to wimp out, as Senator Williams said. They will wimp out when the time comes. It must have absolutely galled the senator to sit there and watch Senator Brown with that smirk on his face this morning. What motivates those people on the other side? What drives them in a situation like this? Have they not got the guts to stand up for this country and for the working men and women who deserve no less than a government who is not prepared to wash them away in the interests of one person's job?

I have some options for them, and I think these are probably options that they have thought about. Why not do the right thing and let the next election be an effective plebiscite on this toxic tax? Why not call an election? They can do what they like with their leader—we are not remotely interested in what is driving the Australian Labor Party. The Australian people are not remotely interested in the petty little leadership disputes of those opposite. They are not interested; they do not care. What they do care about is being lied to. What they do care about is a toxic tax that will potentially destroy their jobs. That is what they want to know about.

If the government thinks this tax is so good, why not call an election now? Why not make it a plebiscite on the carbon tax? Then we will have the decision and we can put their petty little leadership disputes behind us and get on with running this country properly. Why not take up the challenge and go to the polls? Why not do it? I think I know the answer. I suspect there are plenty on the other side in the other place who will not be here in that case. I suspect if the government keep on pursuing what they are doing then in the separate half-Senate election a few senators will be going as well. The government should go to the polls and let the Australian people make a decision about this. They can justify it because they were elected on the back of a lie. It is easy to go back and get some clarification from the Australian people about whether this government would have been elected had the people been given the opportunity to cast their vote on a carbon tax.

If they are not prepared to do that I will give them another suggestion. Why not see out the term, get on with the job of running this country, sort out their leadership dispute and tell the Australian people that they will delay implementation of this toxic tax until after the election, making it a plebiscite in two years time. They should do one or the other but they should not impose on the Australian community a tax that they know is well ahead of the rest of the world. They should not impose on this community a toxic carbon tax that is going to risk our economic recovery and potentially put us to the back of the pack again. They should just do the right thing and stop concentrating on themselves. They need to stop this self-indulgent claptrap in relation to who wants the Prime Minister's job. Forget about that. It has been destabilising this government for the last six months. It has put the government in complete and utter policy paralysis. It is driving them to introduce a potentially job-destroying, economy-destroying, toxic carbon tax. They should just do the right thing and go to the polls. They need to let us have a decision on the community's views about this carbon tax.

I do not think there is one person on this side of the chamber who would not say that we would respect the outcome of the community's views in relation to this matter, but we have no respect for a government who imposed a tax of on the back of a lie and who did not give the Australian community the opportunity to vote on this particular matter. They must do the right thing and go to the polls, and then we will see whether this tax is or is not supported by the community. If it is, we will get on with it. If it is not—which is my strong suspicion and, I suspect, the strong suspicion of those 72 members and those on the other side of the chamber—then let us drop it. Let us do the right thing and just get back to running this country again, please.

Senator CORMANN (Western Australia) (12:20): This Gillard Labor government is a government which has lost the confidence of the Australian people. In her government's dying days, as the Prime Minister holds onto power by the tips of her fingernails, she is trying to ram as much bad legislation through this parliament as she possibly can. This Prime Minister wants to inflict as much damage on the Australian economy as she possibly can by putting through bad policy and bad legislation, and by taking advantage of the fact that her government, with the support of the Greens, has the numbers in this chamber.

Even though the government has complete control of this chamber, courtesy of the support of its alliance with the Greens, it still cannot manage the affairs of the chamber. There has been mismanagement after mismanagement. We well know that everything they touch in a policy sense they stuff up. But they cannot even manage the affairs of this chamber.

I will just remind the chamber what we are currently debating. We are debating a motion from Senator Ludwig asking for the exemption of the Business Names Registration Bill 2011 and a number of related bills and the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Amendment Bill 2011 from the provisions of standing order 111(5) to (8) concerning the consideration of legislation. This is a rather uncontroversial matter. It is a matter which the opposition supports. Yet the government is quite relaxed about having an open-ended debate in the chamber about something that, in comparison to the carbon tax, is not actually that important.

Yesterday the government, supported by their trusted allies, the Greens, gagged the debate on the student tax. Today there was a motion in relation to the carbon tax, something that is going to have significant implications for the Australian economy, for families, for household budgets and for the federal budget and something that is going to have implications for many years beyond the bad government that currently is inflicting so much damage on the Australian nation. The government is quite happy to have a detailed debate about whether or not the Business Names Registration Bill 2011 and other bills should be exempt from a particular standing order of the Senate, but on issues in relation to the carbon tax—a tax which will push up the cost of everything, make Australia less competitive internationally, cost jobs, reduce real wages, shift emissions overseas instead of reducing them and make no difference to the environment or the climate at all—we are not allowed to have a debate, according to this dictatorial, arrogant, out-of-touch Gillard-Brown Labor-Green government.

Members on the government side of the chamber will stand condemned in history for the absolute contempt with which they have handled this issue. It has been well documented that this carbon tax is based on lie after lie after lie. We had the well-documented lie before the last election. The Prime Minister, facing defeat, knew that she needed to pull a rabbit out of the hat in order to hang onto government. The Prime Minister knew that, unless she gave an emphatic commitment that there would be no carbon tax under a government she led, she would not be returned to government. As it happens, she was only just able to scrape in, by the fingernails of the member for Lyne and the member for New England.

Senator Williams interjecting—

Senator CORMANN: I note here in passing that Senator Williams has conducted a very comprehensive survey in the electorates of New England and Lyne. About 5,000 surveys were returned, I believe, which is a record.

Senator Williams: 10,000.

Senator CORMANN: Across both electorates, 10,000 surveys in relation to the carbon tax were returned. The question that was asked was whether people were in favour of or against the carbon tax. Nearly 90 per cent of people in those electorates who returned the survey were opposed to the carbon tax. I get distracted because I get upset—and I understand why my friends in the National Party get upset—when I see two members representing rural areas treating their electorates and the wishes of their electorates with such complete disregard, knowing that the carbon tax will have a particularly bad impact on regional Australia.

So here we are. We have a government which before the last election promised that there would be no carbon tax. Then, of course, in order to hold onto government the Prime Minister had to give in to the pressure and the cajoling of the Greens. She signed on the dotted line an alliance deal which sold out working families across Australia, which sold out people who will face increased costs of living while there will be fewer jobs and lower real wages.

When the obvious outcry across Australia came around, when people across Australia said, 'Hang on; that's not what we were promised,' what did the Prime Minister say? The Prime Minister, standing in her courtyard with 'Deputy Prime Minister' Senator Bob Brown standing by her side, said: 'Don't you worry. You might not like it now, but once we have put out the detail people will like it. People will like it once we've put out the information on compensation, on transitional assistance, on the money-go-round. People will like it.' You know what? The detail is out and people still do not like it. In fact, people like it less, because people understand that they are being asked to make a sacrifice which will make absolutely no difference to the environment.

People across Australia are not fools. They understand that if you impose a cost on businesses in Australia by imposing a carbon price—a cost which is not faced by businesses in other parts of the world—if you make higher emitting businesses in other parts of the world more competitive than lower emitting businesses in Australia, if you just help higher emitting businesses in other parts of the world take market share away from even the most environmentally efficient equivalent businesses in Australia, then all you are doing is shifting emissions to other parts of the world, where the emissions for the same amount of economic output will actually be higher. So global emissions are actually going to go up.

We know that the government's own modelling expects that emissions in Australia will continue to go up. We know that the government's own modelling expects that emissions in China will go up from about 10.3 million tonnes now to 17.9 million tonnes in 2020. Let me pause a moment here and reflect on that 17.9 million figure, because I thought: gee, that's rather high; that's a pretty significant increase—a 7.6 million-tonne CO2 emissions increase out of China. That sounds more than what we were told only three years ago. And my suspicions were right, because when I checked the Treasury modelling in 2008, do you know what Treasury told us about Chinese emissions in 2008? They told us that CO2 emissions out of china in 2020 would be 16.1 million tonnes. So 16.1 million tonnes of CO2 emissions out of China in 2020 was what Treasury told us three years ago. Now they tell us it is going to be 17.9 million tonnes in 2020. That is an increase in the expected emissions out of China in 2020 of 1.8 million tonnes. The margin of error between the Treasury modelling in 2008 and the Treasury modelling in 2011 is more than three times the emissions across the whole of Australia in a whole year! And we think that to push up the cost of living and to reduce Australia's international competitiveness and put jobs at risk is actually going to do something to reduce global emissions. It won't.

And of course the government knows this: the government knows that its policy does not hang together. The government knows that people across Australia understand that this is bad policy, the premise of which is of course based on a broken promise made five days before the last election. This is why the government wants to minimise the level of scrutiny of this legislation in this parliament.

And of course we had the sham, absolutely sham, joint select committee inquiry, which was chaired by a member of the government, deputy-chaired by another member of the government—in Greens Senator Christine Milne—and which gave one week for submissions, one week for hearings and one week to finalise the report! Senator Milne yesterday in this chamber was having a go at the Senate carbon tax inquiry, saying it was a coalition committee. Well, no, it was not a coalition committee, actually; it was and is a committee of the Senate. It is the Senate Select Committee on the Scrutiny of New Taxes, which has on it three Liberal senators, one National Party senator, two Labor senators—and, of course, one of those Labor senators, consistent with convention, being the deputy chair of the committee. So there is an opposition chair, a government deputy chair and there have been previous Labor deputy chairs—the then Senator Hutchins; and for a week Senator Matt Thistlethwaite, until the factional powerbrokers told him that he had to resign to let Senator Cameron come in as deputy chair. But, be that as it may, consistent with convention there was an opposition chair and a government deputy chair, which of course is not what was done in the joint select committee sponsored by the government. Against any past convention, government committee members were both the chair and the deputy chair of that committee, with the member for Chisholm as the chair and Senator Milne as the deputy chair.

And of course our committee went through a very comprehensive process over a 12-month period, listening to evidence from a wide range of witnesses, travelling the length and breadth of Australia—instead of staying here, totally limited to the eastern-state-centric triangle of Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney. But if you only have a week to hold hearings, you cannot make it all the way to Western Australia to listen to the views, the issue, the challenges and the aspirations of the people of Western Australia. It is way too hard to talk to people in Western Australia about the implication of the carbon tax on them—way too far to go.

But there happen to be some pretty specific issues for the great state of Western Australia when it comes to the carbon tax—because, as senators would well understand, the carbon tax creates some significant issues for the electricity generation industry. Out of the 500 so-called biggest polluters, as the Prime Minister describes them—where the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency has a more neutral description; it actually refers to them as the '500 biggest emitters', but in the Orwellian spin language that we have become accustomed to from this government, the government calls them the 500 biggest polluters—most of the top 20 are major energy generators. So there are significant issues for the electricity generation industry that flow from the carbon tax. But the issues in Western Australia are very different from the issues faced in the eastern states, and that is because the eastern states are part of what is erroneously described as the National Electricity Market. The National Electricity Market, which is a spot market, which has particular dynamics, is not really a national electricity market at all. It is an eastern states, including South Australia, market. Western Australia is not part of what is wrongly described as the National Electricity Market. Western Australia is an energy island. Western Australia has to be energy self-sufficient.

There are two major energy providers in Western Australia: Verve Energy, a state owned energy operator; and Griffin Energy. Verve Energy will pay about $250 million a year in carbon tax, because they put out 8½ million tonnes of CO2 emissions, times 23 and moving forward. It will average out over the next however many years, to about $250 million a year, with all of the bits and pieces. The more polluting energy generators in Victoria, like the brown coal generators, get transitional assistance. The Western Australian energy generators do not. Why? Because they are too clean! But these are the sorts of issues that we need to debate, and this government is not prepared to debate them. So Western Australian electricity generators, because they are less polluting than energy generators in other parts of Australia, will get zero dollars transitional assistance. And I cannot believe that Senator Glenn Sterle and Senator Mark Bishop and Senator Chris Evans and Senator Louise Pratt have done nothing to stand up for Western Australia when it come to the implications of the carbon tax for Western Australia. There they are, doing the bidding of this most eastern-state-centric, most arrogant, most Canberra-centric government we have had in the history of Federation, a government which gives Western Australia the raw end of the stick whenever it gets the opportunity, a government which sponsored an inquiry into the carbon tax which was not even prepared to go and listen to any of the people, any of the stakeholders, any of the businesses, any of the organisations that are going to be severely impacted by the carbon tax. This is no doubt why the government wants to gag debate on the carbon tax but is quite happy to have a lengthy debate on the proposal that we have an exemption for the Business Names Registration Bill 2011 and various other bills from the provisions of standing order 111(5) to (8), because people like Senator Sterle and Senator Bishop and Senator Evans and Senator Pratt are embarrassed about the fact that they have let down the people of Western Australia by supporting this carbon tax, which will hurt West Australian families, which will hurt West Australian energy providers, without actually doing anything to help reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. Senator Sterle, who is here in the chamber, knows that the longer we talk about this the more upset people in Western Australia will become about his lack of advocacy and his lack of representation here in this chamber for the great state of Western Australia.

The carbon tax which the Labor Party and the Greens political party want to impose on the Australian people will impose a lot of economic pain for no environmental gain. A Senate inquiry commissioned by the Senate to look into the carbon tax has found that it will cost the Australian economy more than $1 trillion between now and 2050. No wonder that the government does not want to talk about this. The government is clearly embarrassed about this. The government does not want the people of Australia to be exposed to the sort of evidence discovered by the Senate carbon tax inquiry. A loss of $1 trillion out of the economy over the next 40 years—in today's dollars, I hasten to add—effectively means that Australians will have to work for a whole year for nothing. That $1 trillion is just about Australia's GDP for a whole year, so between now and 2050 Australians, as a result of the carbon tax, effectively will have to work for nothing for a whole year to pay for the impact of the carbon tax.

Minister Combet came out and pulled the usual spin trick. He said, 'The economy is going to continue to grow, the GDP will more than double, it will increase by $2.3 trillion.' The fact that something increases does not mean that you are not losing money. No wonder these guys cannot manage our public finances. Let me give you a lesson in maths, a lesson in economics. If something grows more slowly, if there is lower growth, it costs you money. If you put money away in your superannuation account and you have it there for 40 years and it grows by 2.8 per cent less than it otherwise would have, it costs you real money. If you have money in your superannuation account for 40 years and the return is 2.8 per cent less, you are going to end up with less money in retirement than you otherwise would have. And the Treasury modelling indicates that by 2050 the GDP will be 2.8 per cent lower than it otherwise would be, costing $100 billion in today's dollars in 2050 alone. Cumulatively between now and 2050 it will— (Time expired)

Question agreed to.

Consideration of Legislation

Senator McLUCAS: I move:

That, on Thursday, 13 October 2011, the routine of business from 1 pm till not later than 2 pm shall be government business orders of the day relating to the following bills:

Tax Laws Amendment (2011 Measures No. 6) Bill 2011

Banking Amendment (Covered Bonds) Bill 2011

Customs Amendment (Anti-dumping Measures) Bill 2011

Customs Amendment (Anti-dumping Improvements) Bill 2011

Business Names Registration Bill 2011

Business Names Registration (Transitional and Consequential Provisions) Bill 2011

Business Names Registration (Fees) Bill 2011

National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Amendment Bill 2011

Indigenous Affairs Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2011

Defence Legislation Amendment Bill 2011

Protection of the Sea (Prevention of Pollution from Ships) Amendment (Oils in the Antarctic Area) Bill 2011

National Residue Survey (Excise) Levy Amendment (Deer) Bill 2011.

Question agreed to.

Senator McLUCAS: I move:

That, in accordance with subsection 10B(2) of the Health Insurance Act 1973, the Senate approves the Health Insurance (Extended Medicare Safety Net) Amendment Determination 2011 (No. 3) made under subsection 10B(1) of the Act on 26 September 2011.

Question agreed to.