Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you very much, Mr President, and congratulations on your appointment. I thank Senator Ruston for that question. The reason that scrapping the carbon tax will bring down the cost of electricity is that scrapping the carbon tax reduces the cost of generating electricity and reduces the cost of generating gas, and of course those cost reductions flow through in terms of lower electricity costs for families, for pensioners and for business.

The carbon tax is the tax we were never meant to have. Now it has imposed $15.4 billion of damage on the Australian economy so far, and it has only been in place for two years. It is the tax that we were never meant to have. It is the tax that went up again on 1 July this year. It is the tax which, in the lead-up to the last election, the Labor Party said they already had removed.

I warmly welcome Senator Bullock from the great state of Western Australia because, as recently as the WA Senate by-election, a re-run of the Senate election, he said, as quoted in The West Australian:

Labor is scrapping the carbon tax …

That was on 20 March 2014, the very same day that Labor was voting in this chamber to keep it. And guess what. More than three months later the Labor Party are still playing games. They are still playing political games and they are still playing procedural games, in defiance of the will of the Australian people.

The Australian people want the carbon tax gone. The Australian people want the $550 a year in lower cost of living that will come with scrapping the carbon tax. The Australian people want the boost to economic growth that will come with scrapping the carbon tax. The Australian people are sick and tired of the political games and the procedural games that are being played by the Labor Party, week in, week out, saying one thing to the Western Australian people in Perth in the lead-up to the Senate by-election but then doing the exact opposite on the very same day and ever since in this chamber. (Time expired)