EO&E..............................................................................................................................................................

 

 

Ok, well look it’s good to be here at Incitec Pivot’s Geelong plant. I want to thank the management and staff of the plant for making myself, Sophie Mirabella the Shadow Minister for Industry and Sarah Henderson, our candidate for Corangamite so welcome today.

 

This plant is in the front line of the battle over a carbon tax, because Incitec Pivot’s operations are very much directly targeted by the carbon tax. It is one of the so-called big emitters. They calculate that their carbon tax bill will be directly some $7 million a year and then there are all the indirect costs which at this plant are estimated at about $1.5 million. Now, $1.5 million in the context of a very large company doesn't sound like a fortune, but this is a plant which closed down for quite some time recently because it simply didn't become profitable. Plants like this are always a touch and go proposition. Something like 60 per cent of the fertiliser that we use in this country is imported and if we want to protect the continued viability of plants like this, if we want to protect the continued provision of jobs at plants like this, the very worst thing is to load them up with additional burdens like the carbon tax.

 

Now as I’ve been saying consistently for well over a year, the carbon tax is a bad tax based on a lie. It will raise every family's cost of living, it will make every job in our country less secure and it won't actually reduce emissions which under the Government's own figures are going to go up by 8 per cent in 2020, not down by 5 per cent in 2020. Now, the Prime Minister was on television this morning television telling people she'd always believed in putting a price on carbon. Why didn't she tell us that before the last election? If this is something that she's always believed, why wasn't she honest and upfront about that before the last election? Now, the point I make, my pledge in blood as I have described it, with the Australian people is that there will be no carbon tax under a government I lead. And when I say that, the Australian people know that I'm telling the truth.

 

I'm going to ask Sarah to say a few words about the impact of the carbon tax on Geelong. This is an anti-Geelong tax. And then I will ask Sophie to say a few more words about the impact of the carbon tax on Australian manufacturing industry.

 

 

Tony, thank you very much. As you say this is pretty much an anti-Geelong tax. About 40 per cent of our regional employment is employed in manufacturing. Manufacturing is a very important part, a very proud history of this town. And of course, with agriculture, timber, dairy are very, very important industries as well in Corangamite. So it's going to devastate Corangamite and I'm very proud that we will be repealing this tax.

 

 

Since Julia Gillard announced her carbon tax, we've lost one manufacturing job every 15 minutes. We see good Australian industry that has voluntarily reduced its emissions here in Victoria, state-wide, by 33 per cent since 1990, being penalised when their imports will have a leg-up and will become even more competitive. And what do we see? We see local members like Richard Marles hobnobbing at a Pacific arts conference in Honiara having a great time sunning himself while the workers in Geelong and the region are very concerned about their jobs, about the future viability of the very good industries here in the Geelong region. And that anxiety, that concern goes right around Australia because those workers know that manufacturing is doing it tough. There are very challenging international conditions and now is the worst possible time to add to those cost challenges and to those difficulties in manufacturing. Now is the worst possible time to introduce the world's biggest carbon tax. They're not fools. They're not going to believe the lies from this Labor Government anymore.

 

 

Ok thanks Sophie. Ok, any questions?

 

 

Mr Abbott, you said that you’ve pledge that you will abolish the carbon tax. But can you also pledge that the cost to businesses are passing on to consumers today will be rolled back when you do abolish that tax?

 

 

Well I’d ask people to cast their minds back to the GST introduction in 2000. The GST wasn’t a new tax. It was a replacement tax. But the ACCC was vigilant and the ACCC ensured that lots of prices came down as the wholesale sales tax came off. And the ACCC will have the same job of policing prices when the carbon tax is repealed, if the Coalition is elected to government, as it did back in those days.

 

 

But you can’t force businesses to roll back their costs, can you?

 

 

We can ensure that there is fair competition in the marketplace and if businesses don't respond to reductions in their costs, well there isn't fair competition. So the ACCC will have the job of ensuring that people aren't being ripped off and that when the carbon tax goes off, costs appropriately reduce.

 

 

Are you still asking businesses not to over commit in their plans to deal with this tax?

 

 

Look, I am making it absolutely crystal clear to Australian business that if they want certainty, they should support the Coalition because we offer them the certainty of no carbon tax, should we be elected.

 

 

Many large companies are saying today that they're willing to give the carbon tax a go. Indeed Incitec Pivot said they supported, in principle, a price on carbon. That's obviously against what you're saying today?

 

 

Well, I think the last thing we need is a new tax which acts as a kind of a reverse tariff on Australian jobs. There are a lot of Australian businesses which have overseas operations and domestic operations and the consistent message that I'm getting from those businesses is that thanks to factors such as the carbon tax, they're going to be boosting investment overseas, not here. They're going to be boosting jobs overseas, not here and this is the absurdity of a go it alone carbon tax. It is a reverse tariff damaging Australian jobs and protecting foreign jobs.

 

 

Do you support the financial assistance that the Federal Government gave to Alcoa here in Geelong just at the end of last week?

 

 

While you've got a carbon tax you need to have the compensation. Now, let's be absolutely crystal clear. This is effectively a carbon tax bailout. I know that the carbon tax isn't the only pressure that Alcoa faces but it is a significant new pressure that they face and it's no coincidence that the quantum of the bailout corresponds with the estimated carbon tax liability of the company.

 

 

Who estimated that cost?

 

 

Well, as I said, there is a parallel and we didn't just have the Geelong carbon tax bailout last week. We had the Latrobe Valley carbon tax bailout last week and we've previously had the Whyalla carbon tax bailout. There are lots and lots of companies that are being pushed very close to the edge by this carbon tax and that's why the Government's going around bailing them out.

 

 

If the Coalition wins the next election, you're going to be faced with both Ford and Alcoa looking for financial assistance within your first term. Will you assist them?

 

 

Well, the best thing we can do for them is to get rid of the carbon tax. Then we can get their red tape costs down. We can try to ensure that we don't add to their burdens with militancy in the construction industry and so on. So there's a whole range of measures that an incoming Coalition government will swiftly put in place to try to ensure that Australia is a better place to work, to invest, to employ.

 

 

What do you think of the latest polls that show even Kevin Rudd would lose his seat if an election were held today?

 

 

I think that governments which do the wrong thing by the Australian people, that tell lies before an election to the Australian people, are rightly punished by the Australian people and it is interesting that notwithstanding the billions in handouts that this Government has been channelling to people, the tens of millions in government advertising that we've seen in the last month or so, that the Government is in a dire position. But this is the electoral justice that awaits governments which aren't honest and straight with the Australian people.

 

 

Can I ask Sophie Mirabella about the figure of one job every 15 minutes how that’s calculated?

 

 

That’s come from the recent ABS statistics from a few weeks ago and it's no surprise that that is the case.

 

Since Julia Gillard announced the carbon tax, it has hit confidence in business and investing. It has hit consumer confidence and the Government's rolling disasters have done nothing to turn that around.

 

 

But that actually showed, those same figures showed that manufacturing jobs in Victoria had actually risen for the second quarter in a row.

 

 

In some fields, manufacturing jobs have risen but overall we are losing one job every 15 minutes and that contrasts very sharply to the last months of the Howard Government, where 13 of the 14 months we saw consecutive increases in manufacturing activity. So it can happen. It can be done but in so many areas, whether it's in the Geelong region, whether it's in Dandenong, whether it's in Gladstone, whether it's in the Illawarra, we see so many good businesses under a lot of pressure. There is no logic in introducing a carbon tax that is destroying confidence, destroying jobs, shipping manufacturing offshore, to countries that will create more emissions making the same things we used to make. It's a lose-lose. It's bad for the environment and it's bad for jobs.

 

But we had the Victorian Manufacturing Minister crowing about the about the same figures about the same figures only a week or two ago, saying that manufacturing jobs across the state have grown?

 

 

Well overall, but I think we've seen hundreds of job losses here in the Geelong region and I think when you speak to those workers, they’re not feeling very confident about what's happening in this region and they're not very confident about the future and the businesses in which they work. And we all know there are very thin profit margins, if at all, in manufacturing at the moment. Why would any government that cared about the future of manufacturing in this country clobber it with another cost that is going to send many of them to the wall or overseas?

 

 

Ok. Thank you.

 

[ends]