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Tony Abbott responds to Julia Gillard’s introduction of the carbon tax bills to Parliament:
Let’s be absolutely blunt about the bills now before the parliament: this is a bad tax based on a lie and it should be rejected by this parliament.
The Prime Minister said yesterday that the question for members of this parliament was are you or are you not on the right side of history? Well, let me say, Mr Speaker, this is arrogant presumption by a Prime Minister who is on the wrong side of truth. That’s the Prime Minister’s problem. She is on the wrong side of truth when it comes to this issue.
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I say to this Prime Minister there should be no new tax collection without an election. That’s what this Prime Minister should do. If this Prime Minister trusts in the democratic process, if this Prime Minister trusts her own judgement, trusts her own argument, that is what she should be doing. She should be taking this to the people.
Mr Speaker, the whole point of this tax is to change the way every single Australian lives and works. That’s another reason why this should be taken to the people. This is not just a minor bit of financial engineering. This is not just – if you believe the Government – something to do with the revenue. This is a transformational change. This is something which is supposed to impact on our country, not just today, not just next year, not just next decade but forever. That’s how important this is, if the Government is to be believed, and this is why it should go to the people first.
This tax is all about making the essentials of modern life more expensive. Modern life, Mr Speaker, is utterly inconceivable without fuel and power, without fuel to move us around the country, without power to make our homes, our businesses and our factories work. So, if this tax comes in, as the Government wants it to come in, we won’t be able to turn on our air conditioner or our heater without being impacted by this tax. We won’t be able to get on a bus or a train, ultimately to drive our cars, without being impacted by this tax. That’s how important, that’s how significant this tax is. This explains the obvious impact that this tax will have on every single Australian’s cost of living. This explains the obvious impact that this tax will have on every single Australian’s job and this explains why it is so necessary for this tax to go to the people before the parliament tries to deal with it. Mr Speaker, if this parliament is to have any democratic credibility on an issue like this there must be an appeal to the people before a decision by the parliament.
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So, all of those bold claims in the Prime Minister’s speech yesterday, all of that big chest-thumping talk of a massive reduction in emissions as a result of this tax, utterly wrong, utterly wrong and disproven on the basis of the Government’s own documents. We aren’t reducing our emissions, we are just engaging in a massive transfer of wealth from this country to carbon traders overseas. That’s what’s happening. That’s what’s happening under this tax. It will be $3.5 billion in 2020 to purchase almost 100 million tonnes of carbon credits from abroad, it will be $57 billion – one and a half per cent of gross domestic product – shovelled off abroad by 2050 to purchase some 400 million tonnes of carbon credits from abroad.
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So Mr Speaker, this carbon tax proposal from the Government would be disastrous for our democracy. How can Australians continue to trust our democracy when the biggest and most complex policy change in recent history is being rammed through this parliament by the most incompetent government in recent history? The biggest and the most complex change, sponsored by the least competent government in recent times, not only does it not have a mandate to do what it is proposing it has a mandate not to do what it is proposing. That’s why this package of bills is so disastrous for our democracy.
Mr Speaker, it’s disastrous for our democracy, it’s disastrous for the trust that should exist between members of parliament and their electorates.
Why are the Members for Throsby and Cunningham sponsoring such damage to BlueScope and to the coal miners of the Illawarra?
Why is the Member for Hunter and the other Hunter Valley members of the Government doing such damage to the heavy industries and to the coal mines of the Hunter?
How can the Climate Change Minister talk to his constituents with a straight face given what he is doing to them?
How can the Member for Capricornia want to close down so many mines in her electorate?
How can the Members for Corio and Corangamite be doing this to the cement industry and to the aluminium industry and to the motor industry of Geelong?
What we have from this Government is politically and economically and environmentally disastrous.
But it’s more than that.
It is going to turn out to be the longest political suicide note in Australian history.
Read it all here.
Australian Climate Madness 
You know, ritual Japanese suicide (seppuku) would be a much less painful way to kill yourself… (stabbing and disembowling yourself) than cap and tax insanity.
i really wonder what he means by “…this is a bad tax based on a lie…” and very strange to hear a politician talk of lies!!! lol
It fills me with hope to see the leader of the opposition standing so strongly against this blight on democracy.
the greens,labour,liberal and nationals all need to go
When will fhe people be heard? I suspect when the banks of the world let us??
I’ve searched the parliament legislation web site and I cannot find what I’m looking for. I am trying to find a law that prohibits legislation being founded on falsehood.
But I can’t find one. This seems a bit… strange.
Surely there is some law still in effect from House of Reps procedural regulations, or the Constitution, or even the Westminster foundational texts that forbid bills which derive their purpose or motivation from a falsehood? Surely!??
Can anyone else find a law that says this? Because if we can then that law plus the fact “CO2 is not a pollutant” would imply that the Clean Energy Bill gets thrown out of parliament.
1) The nearest rule or law I can find is House of Reps Practice Ch14 p494:
Other options….
2) Petition the GG to veto the carbon tax bills pending the outcome of a Royal Commission into deciding whether the scientific method was properly applied in the advice the government relied upon for establishing the need for the tax on CO2. Finding scientists for this panel who will put truth and correctness ahead of personal reputation might be tricky.
3) The Doublecross Manoeuvre : Goad Gillard into organising a petition to support a carbon tax instead of having an election, then after the GetUp mob have manufactured the petition to “fight carbon pollution with a carbon tax”, we can then invoke House Practice Ch17 P619 which says it is an abuse of the right of petition to “inducing parties to sign a petition by false representations;” because CO2 is not a pollutant. Okay, this one’s a long shot.
Any other legal eagles out there got any suggestions?
The problem is that the Commonwealth law seems to allow this nonsensical situation to develop without any way to seek accountability or audit. It’s just assumed there is some connection between reality and the legislation by virtue of decent people being voted into government and appointed experts being beyond reproach. When there are only dolts and cretins on offer at the polling booth who then hire minions from a quasi-religious echo chamber this assumption has to be questioned and a more explicit systemic solution found. Lysenkoism is not the answer.
The politicians aren’t any better than the rest of us. The general public has been misinformed of the certainty and magnitude of both past and future climate change. Democracy will therefore result in a furphy being pursued at great cost. There’s no established mechanism to point out that the majority are wrong (other than our incompetent media), or to force the issue to remain only a subject of scientific inquiry until the climate is properly understood.
I hasten to add that we have to be careful that in trying to fight a specific case that we don’t open the door to future tyranny and so endanger our presently tempered democracy.
If you stopped legislation going through that was based on lies and falsehoods, you’d probably scrap 50% of laws that currently exist.
Most laws are based on political ideology.
These new carbon tax laws will be the labor govt turning itself into its own Solyent Green.
Years from now I will happily explain to youngsters that australian politicans were possessed by lunatics masqurading as sane people.
The annoying this is this – the real king makers are hidden behind the scenes . These are the ones who need to be exposed. The politicians are easily replaceble “useful idiots” and are just the arms and legs – not the brains – of the organisation.
We need to find out who *really* pulls the strings – my guess it will be people who dont like the spotlight and who like the idea of a communist govt that is hell bent on wrecking this country to protect “Gaia”.
Find these people, and we find the source of the problem.
“The problem is that the Commonwealth law seems to allow this nonsensical situation to develop without any way to seek accountability or audit. It’s just assumed there is some connection between reality and the legislation by virtue of decent people being voted into government and appointed experts being beyond reproach”
not entirely true ,,, the fact is the govenor general has a vested conflict of interest in a party relation & is not stepping up to the mark to clean this mess up which ultimately makes her as corrupt & culpable as the rest of them
keep it up Tony or should i say Honorable Member and Leader of the Opposition Mr Tony Abbott make sure you tell them, because can’t be casual so says our government.
The politics are very amusing, but we should not take our eye off the task that lies ahead: to remove the booby traps attached to the carbon tax and repeal it. Labor members of parliament now appear to be rabbits in the headlights who will not act to save themselves from political extinction. And the government mistakes the lack of noisy, destructive leftwing-style street protests for public acceptance. Many people (like me) who are not rusted-on conservative voters will momentarily change sides to get rid of the economic wreckers who have become the temporary ruling class of this country. The followers of fashion who have attached environmentalism and the IPCC doctrine to themselves like this year’s earrings have never known high unemployment or recession and have as little understanding of the economy as they have about the climate.
@Scuttler Ffs, please download a copy of New World Order and then you will understand what Tony Abbott means by a lie.
This carbon tax has nothing to do with the environment, In fact the scientific data shows that the world temperatures are cooling down.
The United nations scientists were bribed to fabricate the climate study figures in order to fool ordinary folks like us.
mind you this is all on record as those scientists have been charged and pleaded guilty. yet no one wants to knw..
Our news and current affairs programs are more than happy to cover price diff between, coles, safeway and Aldi over and over again so we can save a buck or two, yet no one is covering major global issues that have and will change our way of life.
Wow! can I have some of what you’re on?
Living proof some people are just ignorant road kill….
Sorry…to clarify..I didnt mean Billal Aziz
Not a bad effort, Mr Abbot. It would have been even better if you had made a direct statement about the thorough dubiousness of the ‘science’ behind the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis. As it is, your opening comment “a bad tax based on a lie” whistled very nicely to me. Of course, it could also be a reference to Julia Gillard lying before the election that she would never introduce a carbon dioxide tax. I love the double entendre and will assume you have made one in your remark – I will be voting for you on the basis that you will dismantle Gillard’s silly, destructive “Carbon” tax.
Passive resistance and civil disobedience got the brits out of India,If that doesn’t work there are other means.I am a pacifist until I get annoyed and at this time I AM REALLY ANNOYED.CO2 is life
Well I remeber they had a window tax in the UK 100s of years ago…so people had msaller windows. 100s of years later, people can clearly see the stupidity of such a dumb tax.
Years from now, as Gen Y finally wake up the reality of green marxism thats run out of control, the monument to monumental pagan Greens marxist stupidity will be extched into peoples minds with a determination never to let such and epic fail ever occur again.
Absolutely brilliant speech by Tony Abbott … I wonder how much coverage it got in the media generally?
Perhaps it will raise the anger in people – it’s time we had a few protesters out on the streets….
..but what’s this alternate plan of Abbots that the Sydney Morning Herald was slagging off?
Julia Gillard is a fool!
yes lance , i agree %100 . now how do we stop this runaway train ?