Only Labor could create a great big new tax that rips billions of dollars out of the economy but then churns and burns it on industry bail-outs and sugar hits for frustrated voters.

 

Notice how the Prime Minister never talks any more about how the carbon tax is necessary to save us from greenhouse gas emissions? She only ever talks about the handouts that it will fund. On the government's own figures, our emissions go up, not down, despite a $37-a-tonne carbon tax in 2020.

 

That's right. Despite the carbon tax, Australia's domestic emissions will be 8 per cent higher in 2020 than now, not 5 per cent lower. We only achieve our 5 per cent cut in 2020 because Australian businesses will buy $3.5 billion worth of credits from foreign carbon traders.

 

So far, since July 1 when the carbon tax came into being, I've done 25 radio interviews, 9 TV interviews and 12 media conferences. I've made 10 carbon tax visits, starting with the Romeo family in outer-metropolitan Melbourne, a one-income couple with three children on about $95,000 a year who will be worse off, not better off, even on the government's own figures.

 

I've been to a fertiliser plant in Geelong; a fishermen's co-operative in Darwin; a soft drink factory in Adelaide; a plastics manufacturer in Gosford; a smelter in Gladstone; a pie-maker in Brisbane; a civil engineering company and a supermarket in Perth; and the fish markets in Melbourne.

 

All these businesses will be badly damaged by a carbon tax that hits power, refrigeration and eventually transport. Collectively, these businesses provide work for more than 3000 people. Every one of these jobs will be made less secure by a unilateral carbon tax that acts as a reverse tariff penalising local jobs and protecting overseas ones.

 

Since July 1, the Prime Minister has not been to a single small or medium-sized business. They get no tax cuts, no benefit increases and no free permits. She's in hiding from unstructured contact with the Australian people.

 

The carbon tax is redistribution pretending to be saving the planet. It's socialism masquerading as environmentalism. It's a bad tax based on a lie.

 

Many times during the last election I declared that "as sure as night follows day, if the Gillard government is re-elected, there will be a carbon tax".

 

So the Prime Minister's solemn declaration six days before the election: "There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead" was a coldly calculated, premeditated attempt to reassure the public that there really would be no carbon tax, no emissions trading scheme, nothing, in fact, until her citizens' assembly (remember that!) had deliberated and achieved a "deep and lasting consensus" well beyond the term of the current parliament.

 

When I tell the people "there will be no carbon tax under a government I lead" I am telling the truth. On day one of a new government, I will start scrapping the carbon tax. On day one of a new parliament, I will introduce the carbon tax repeal bill.

 

The next election will be a referendum on the carbon tax and on governments that deceive people.

That's something else this Prime Minister would rather not face up to.

 

 

12 July 2012