Subjects: Julia Gillard’s carbon tax; border protection.
E&OE……………………….…………………………………………………………………
TONY ABBOTT:
It’s good to be here at the Hawker IGA in chilly Canberra. I’m pleased to be with Robert Krnc who is the store owner and also with Senator Scott Ryan who is the Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business. There are thousands of items in this IGA, in the stores that local people are buying every day and every single one of them will go up in price under Julia Gillard’s carbon tax.
The Food and Grocery Council has estimated that the price of groceries will go up by five per cent under a $26 a tonne carbon tax. That means for the average person who spends $200 a week on groceries they’ll need $10 a week more in their wallets just at the checkout. That’s a $10 a week hit on the average person thanks to this toxic tax, this toxic and unnecessary tax from this Government. So I think there’s a very strong message that is going out to the Prime Minister from the shoppers of Australia: ‘listen to us and don’t proceed with this toxic tax.’
Now, the Prime Minister is running around the countryside saying ‘oh, don’t you worry because there’ll be compensation.’ Well, there is no compensation for small business. There is no compensation for people who lose their jobs and any compensation that this Prime Minister gives is going to be eroded over time. The tax will be permanent, the compensation will be temporary and the tax will just go up and up and up. I think the Prime Minister will want to start it low but don’t believe that it will stay low. Any promise that she makes about compensation, any promise that she makes about the tax staying low is as believable as her promise before the last election “there will be no carbon tax under the government I lead” because the two constants about this Prime Minister and this Government are incompetence and untrustworthiness. It is a fundamentally incompetent and a fundamentally untrustworthy Government.
Now, I’m going to ask Scott to say a few words then I might ask Robert if he could just say a few words.
SCOTT RYAN:
Thanks Tony. What we’ve seen today from this great local business is how every shopping trolley of every Australian is going to be hit every day and every week by Labor’s carbon tax. Every product in there is going to go up in price, particularly fresh food and particularly domestically produced food.
TONY ABBOTT:
Robert?
ROBERT KRNC:
Yeah, just at the end of the day everyone is going to suffer if this gets passed and we just don’t need it, I don’t think. We need to live the way we’re going and we need to keep on doing what we’re doing, I think.
TONY ABBOTT:
Well, thanks Robert. Thank you so much and let me just say that this shop has been beautifully renovated at great expense over the last 18 months or so and one of the very sensible changes that Robert has made has been to put in freezers and fridges with doors. That is sensible, intelligent direct action, energy saving, emissions reducing measure that’s been taken but despite this, this is a business which has an electricity bill of almost $150,000 a year, a $26 a tonne carbon tax is going to hit this business with an extra $35,000 or more extra every year.
Ok, any questions?
QUESTION:
The Greens have pulled back somewhat on their hardline stance on the $40 a tonne for carbon. Does this mean that, you know, people are going to be paying less once this gets through?
TONY ABBOTT:
Well, I think it’s clear that the Prime Minister is going to try to start the carbon tax as low as she can but no one should believe that that’s where it’s going to stay. Once this tax is in, if it comes in, it will go up and up and up and whatever reassuring noises the Greens make now be confident of two things. First of all, they are running this Government because Julia Gillard can’t do anything without getting the Greens’ permission and second, they want this tax up and up and up because whatever they might say now they don’t like the coal industry, there are vast aspects of our modern way of life that the Greens regard as wrong. So as far as the Greens are concerned, no carbon tax is going to be high enough to satisfy them.
QUESTION:
Mr Abbott, would you support a ban on political donations from tobacco companies? The Greens are planning to introduce a bill on that I think when the Senate next sits?
TONY ABBOTT:
Look, I think that political parties should be able to receive donations from legal business.
QUESTION:
How about that cigarette packaging? Is the Coalition closer to making a decision on that issue?
TONY ABBOTT:
Look, we’ll make a decision on that issue when we see the Government’s legislation.
QUESTION:
Have you spoken to Alex Somlyay and Ken Wyatt about the suggestions that they may want to cross the floor?
TONY ABBOTT:
Look, I have lots of conversations with lots of people and they stay private conversations as far as I’m concerned.
QUESTION:
It’s been reported that you spoke of a tectonic shift in the electorate yesterday in the party room. Can you elaborate on that or confirm it?
TONY ABBOTT:
Look, I don’t comment on what may or may not be said inside the party room. But I certainly think that right across Australia, including in what were once Labor Party heartlands, people are saying that this Government is not listening. This Government is making our cost of living pressures worse and the most obvious example of the fact that this Government is not listening and this Government has abandoned the people who used to support the Labor Party is the carbon tax. Again, let’s not forget that this carbon tax is wrong on two counts. First, it’s going to drive up everyone’s cost of living and it’s going to destroy jobs big time. It won’t clean up the environment but it will clean out your wallet and wipe out jobs. Second, it is an absolute betrayal of the Prime Minister’s pre-election commitment that “there will be no carbon tax under the government I lead,” which is why I say that if the Prime Minister is fair dinkum, if she wants to make an honest politician of herself, she must – repeat, must – seek a mandate before trying to sneak this tax through the parliament.
QUESTION:
Mr Abbott, Kevin Rudd has been criticised for clocking up enough kilometres travelling around the world to get him to the moon. Do you think it’s fair that our Foreign Minister should be lambasted in this kind of way, for travelling and putting Australian’s position forward overseas?
TONY ABBOTT:
Jobs, emissions and Kevin Rudd. They’re the three things that the Prime Minister wants to see out of the country.
QUESTION:
The Government is saying that their Malaysia asylum seeker swap deal is far superior to anything that you would introduce because under their plan the asylum seekers would go to the back of the queue. Would that be the same if they were sent to Nauru, for example?
TONY ABBOTT:
Look, there is no deal with Malaysia. There’s just no deal and the chances of the Government ever getting a deal with Malaysia have been dramatically reduced by the Prime Minister’s panicked, premature announcement, which means that Malaysia has the whip hand. Now the one thing that is crystal clear on what’s been announced so far is that regardless of whether Malaysia takes any of the 800 asylum seekers that the Government is talking about, we’re going to take 4,000 people from Malaysia. So this is a really bad deal for Australia and that’s if it ever comes off.
QUESTION:
[Inaudible] deal is going to be signed in the next couple of weeks, so surely that’s a step forward? They go to the back of the queue.TONY ABBOTT:
And the Prime Minister said “there will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.” You just can’t take anything this Government says seriously.
QUESTION:
After many months of unity in the Coalition, some small signs of ill-discipline have started to emerge. Turnbull, Hockey, climate science and also plain cigarette packaging. Are you concerned at that at all?
TONY ABBOTT:
I just think that we are doing what we’ve always done which is to get on with the job of exposing the mistakes of a bad Government getting worse and presenting a credible alternative. Now, that’s what I’ve been doing every day since I became the leader and that’s what I intend to continue to do every day that I am the leader.
QUESTION:
But how do you explain the less discipline we’ve been seeing just in the last week or so?
TONY ABBOTT:
Well, I just don’t accept the premise of the question. I think that what I am doing, what my colleagues are doing is exactly the same every day. We expose the faults of a bad Government that’s getting worse and we do our best to present a credible alternative to the Australian people.
QUESTION:
Mr Abbott, was Greg Hunt right when he said last night on the 7:30 Report that large brown coal fired electricity generators, or the Coalition’s plan to pay generators, to cut their pollution will be funded by $50 billion worth of savings identified by the Opposition and there’d be no cost to the taxpayer?
TONY ABBOTT:
No, Greg was absolutely right. We can reduce emissions without any increase in taxes and without any increase in prices and without any reduction in jobs. That’s the fundamental difference between our plan which is a smart way to reduce emissions, and the Government’s plan which is an extremely dumb way to tackle that problem.
Thanks so much.
CANBERRA
25 May 2011