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

I thank the Leader of the Greens for her question. I trust that she is not trying to play crass politics with the situation being confronted by the people of Kiribati. The people of Kiribati clearly have an issue that they need to deal with. But a quantum leap has been made from their difficulties to the domestic debate in this nation about the carbon tax. The carbon tax, as we have pointed out all morning, has a perverse outcome on the world's environment because what we are doing is exporting emissions from Australia to other countries whose emissions are worse and who have less control than we do in Australia. As a result, if you do want to have lower carbon emissions into the atmosphere, you would have to vote against the carbon tax because of its perverse outcome for the Australian economy which would see the shifting of jobs and economic activity out of our nation which has such an excellent record in relation to matters environmental in comparison to other countries. We can learn from the experience of Europe, where they tried the same thing, only to see their aluminium smelters and similar activities go offshore to Africa and elsewhere. Does anybody in this chamber actually believe that those new smelters in those other countries are delivering less CO2 emissions than was the case in Europe? Of course not. What the Greens are seeking to do is replicate that mistake for the Australian economy. We as a government will not be part of it, nor will we be part of your crass politics of trying to involve Kiribati in this situation.