Page 1742 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 1 May 2012
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
are likely to pay hundreds of dollars extra. Many of those families will get very, very little compensation.
For those families it will not just be felt through their electricity bills. We have heard figures from the housing industry that the cost of a home will go up by several thousand dollars as a result of the carbon tax. There is no compensation for that. If you are buying a home there will be another few thousand dollars on the mortgage that will play out over 30 years. Every month you will be paying a little bit extra on your mortgage in order to pay for the carbon tax. If you go down to your local shops, all of those small businesses where we shop as Canberrans will be paying a lot more for their electricity—and many of them use a lot of electricity—as a result of this carbon tax, this 17 per cent increase in electricity that is coming as of 1 July.
I go down to my local butcher at Chisholm, Alf’s Butchery. Doug who runs Alf’s Butchery is going to have two choices: he is either going to see his margins squeezed and he is going to have to absorb that, which is very difficult for a small business to do, or he is going to be passing on the costs of the extra electricity to us as consumers. So when we go and get our stuff for our barbecue we will be paying more.
I was talking to the owner of the Torrens fish and chip store. This is a small store, a small family business. He was talking about electricity costs at the moment of about $1,000 a month. At 17 per cent that is another $170 a month. Now he is going to have to look at ways of passing that on. That will be multiplied time and time and time again for every activity, for every business. Remember that none of these businesses are going to be compensated. None of these many small businesses in Canberra who use a lot or a moderate amount of electricity, who have been doing their best to keep their costs down, will be compensated. They will be faced with two choices: either their profits suffer and their businesses become less profitable and less sustainable or they have to pass it on and the consumer pays a lot more. Of course there is then the danger for them that people buy less of their product.
It is time we got some answers from this government about what are their estimates of the cost of this tax. They support this tax. Katy Gallagher supports this tax wholeheartedly. Katy Gallagher has mentioned to people when it comes to the issue of cost of living that maybe they should give up their Foxtel for a while. That is not going to cut it. There are so many cost pressures on Canberra families, and that dismissive attitude that we get is not going to cut them.
We discovered through questions on notice that there is a $73 million black hole in the ACT government’s budget as a result of the carbon tax. That $73 million is going to have to be found. Knowing this ACT Labor government, we know that, if they are re-elected, they will raise it through extra taxes. As sure as night follows day, if they are re-elected, the Labor Party will impose new cost burdens to pay for this shortfall in their budget as a result of the carbon tax.
It is time that the government were honest. They have been up there supporting Julia Gillard on this tax. They do not mind that she lied about it before the election. The Labor Party say that is okay because she is doing what they want her to do. But we now hear murmurings that the federal Labor Party, when they dump Julia Gillard, are
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video