Eric Abetz (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

As Senator Colbeck interjects, then why does that count against us? There are a number of questions that the Australian Labor Party needs to answer. My colleagues will be asking a lot of technical questions and of course Labor will not be able to answer them. But there is a fundamental threshold question; indeed, there are three. On what basis do you bring this legislation in? Was it an election promise, was it because you received an electoral mandate or was it because there is overwhelming public support? We know that the answer to all three questions should dictate what you actually promised the Australian people, which was no carbon tax. You have no moral authority, you have no mandate, you have no moral support, so on what basis do you bring it into this chamber? And please do not tell us the line that we have to do it because it is the greatest moral challenge of our time. Remember that Ruddesque line of the 2007 election: the greatest moral challenge of our time? That was the reason we needed it. The great moral challenge of our time could be so easily dispensed with when the electoral polls turned sour on them. If it is indeed the greatest moral challenge of our time, why did you deny its existence during the 2010 election? That is another question that the Greens might have to answer in this debate.

So I would invite the Australian Labor Party to search their collective conscience, knowing that they were all elected into this place on a promise of no carbon tax, as to why they are still supporting this legislation. They know they have no moral authority, they know they have no mandate, they know that there is no popular support. They have dispensed with the argument that somehow it is the greatest moral challenge of our time. So what is it? I suspect that, if the minister were truthful in her answer, she could be quite brief and say to us: 'The answer is because we did a deal with Mr Bandt, the member for Melbourne, and the Australian Greens to cling on to power.'

Senator Milne sits there smiling like the cat that has just swallowed the canary. I say, good luck to the Australian Greens, but bad luck to the Australian Labor Party. They have sold out their traditional supporters like never before in their history. They have junked the manufacturing workers, they have junked the miners, they have junked the agricultural workers, they have junked those who are on low incomes who battle on a weekly basis with the cost of living, because they will be imposing job losses and increased cost of living on those people in a manner which is a complete betrayal of that for which the Australian Labor Party was actually founded. So, without delaying the committee further, Minister, on what moral authority, what mandate or indeed what popular support do you claim to bring in this legislation?