Great Read: Gillard's Socialist Desire To Tax EVERYTHING exposed

This is an edited transcript of a speech given by the Hon. Dr. 

Peter Phelps MLC in the NSW Legislative Council on climate 

change and the socialist underpinnings of the Clean Coal Act and Labor's desire 

to tax EVERYTHING:

The Hon. Dr PETER PHELPS [3.35 p.m.]: Why was the Clean Coal Administration Act originally put in place? That is a question we need to ask ourselves. This Act was put in place because the socialist Federal Labor Government has decided that it is time to tax the ordinary hardworking people of Australia. 

The socialist Labor Government has decided to impose a great big new impost on every man, woman and child in Australia. Originally it was going to be an emissions trading scheme. Then it was going to be a tax. Now we are not really sure if it is going to be an emissions trading scheme after a tax or a tax that lasts in perpetuity. But whatever it is, whatever the socialists in Canberra decide, there is this great big new tax hanging over us.

As part of the response to that great big new impost previous governments decided that it would be good if there were some way of reducing emissions. Quite frankly, if there is a tax on carbon dioxide emissions, since 90 per cent of our base load power is based on clean, cheap coal, we are going to have to pay a lot of money in tax. So they decided sometime previously that we need to have a program that will attempt to present a low carbon dioxide emissions coal program. That is well and good and we can think that it is fine, but let us get to the real point of this. The real point of this is that it was forced upon them because there is a Damoclean sword of tax hanging over the heads of the governments of New South Wales past and present. 

I want to refer to some other matters that were raised. The Greens interjected to the effect that if we do not do anything earth will end up like Venus. Of course, they failed to mention exactly how many parts per million they believe is the tipping point to push the planet into unrestrained global warming. How many parts per million of carbon dioxide are needed to hit this tipping point?

The Hon. Lynda Voltz: Five hundred.

The Hon. Dr PETER PHELPS: Five hundred? I note the interjection. Perhaps members opposite would like to explain how during the Cambrian period on earth carbon dioxide levels were not 10 per cent or 20 per cent higher but 10 or 20 times higher. If the tipping point is 450 or 500 parts per million then why did we not tip into a Venusian situation when we had levels of 2,000 or 3,000 parts per million? It is all a great big scare campaign so they can justify a great big new tax. That is the truth of the matter. The other great misnomer is that this is a carbon tax. This is not a carbon tax; this is a carbon dioxide tax. If this were a carbon tax engagements rings would be taxed, because the last time I checked my chemistry diamonds were made out of carbon. So will there be a tax on engagement rings? 

The Hon. Jeremy Buckingham: Yes.

The Hon. Dr PETER PHELPS: There will be a tax on engagement rings. There will be a tax on everything if The Greens have their way. The carbon contained in the diamonds of engagement rings is apparently an evil thing in the eyes of The Greens and so all carbon is to be abolished. I look forward to an alcohol tax because the last time I checked—

The Hon. Steve Whan: There is one.

The Hon. Dr PETER PHELPS: No, an additional alcohol tax. The last time I checked the formula for the alcohol molecule it contained carbon. Can we expect an additional carbon tax on alcohol? The point is that the Opposition does not want to talk about carbon dioxide. Why is that? It is because they know full well that carbon dioxide is a safe, harmless, inert, colourless, odourless gas which is essential to life on Earth. That is the simple fact of the matter. They do not like to talk about that.

Of course, Labor is in disarray. We were told that the Leader of the Opposition, Mr John Robertson, had told his colleagues yesterday that they will never hear him publicly support a carbon tax. I do not hear any objections from members opposite saying, "That's untrue." 

We know that he does not support a carbon tax and we know that he is in bitter and vehement opposition to the Hon. Julia Gillard because the only thing he could manage to say when he was caught on this was that he supports the pricing of carbon dioxide. But he does not support a carbon tax. He may support an emissions trading scheme. Does he? It would be remarkable if he does because everywhere there is an emissions trading scheme that involves market determination there has been failure. The carbon dioxide market has failed three times in Europe. What is the price of carbon dioxide on the Chicago Futures Exchange at the moment? Can anyone opposite tell me that?

The Hon. Lynda Voltz: Eight dollars.

The Hon. Dr PETER PHELPS: Eight dollars. That is considerably less than the $23 that the socialist Gillard Government plans to impose. Once again, this is not government acting to respond to market failure; this is government initiating market failure. The way things have gone saddens me very deeply. When a government intervenes on such a ridiculous matter so often I am left with this thought: Imagine that a group of pseudo-capitalists wants to create a new motor car. Let us call it the Robbo 2010.

The Hon. Duncan Gay: Let's call it the Keneally Special.

The Hon. Dr PETER PHELPS: Let us say they start up a company called Robbo Motors and they want to create the Robbo 2010, which is the same basic standard as a Falcon or a Commodore. The problem is that Robbo Motors has to face competitors such as Ford and Holden that can build a car for, say, $20,000 apiece. But Robbo Motors can only produce the Robbo 2010 for $60,000 apiece. What do they do? They go straight to their friendly Labor socialist government and say, "We want you to put tolls on every road in New South Wales so that every motorist has to pay to subsidise our operation." That is Labor economics for you. When you get to a situation where governments deliberately try to create market failure it reminds me in many ways of the comment by the character Francisco in that great book Atlas Shrugged, where he makes the obvious point that:

•  
  When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion—when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing—when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favours—when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you ... you may know that your society is doomed.

That is exactly what the socialist Federal Labor Government is trying to do. The Greens are the coalition partners of the Labor Party in New South Wales and federally. Nothing ever satisfies The Greens. Not until we are living barefoot in caves, relying on whale oil candles presumably, will they be satisfied because they say, "No, you can't have coal: coal is terrible." Okay, what are we going to do for base-load power? Ziggy Switkowski says, "Let's go to nuclear." The Greens say, "Oh, no, you can't have nuclear power." How about hydro? The Greens say, "You can't have hydro." In Greentopia you are not allowed to build any dams because you might destroy the habitat of the left footed wombat or the hairy nosed butterfly. What about natural gas? Do The Greens support the use of natural gas? No they do not because that also produces carbon dioxide. Do they support coal seam gas? We know they certainly do not support coal seam gas. What is coal seam gas? It is natural gas. So, The Greens do not want coal, they do not want hydro, they do not want nuclear, they do not want natural gas and they do not want coal seam gas. What do we do? Presumably we rub two sticks together and sleep with three dogs. It is a three dog night in Greentopia.

Nothing satisfies The Greens. The original bill came about because of the socialists' dreams and their unwitting compliance with the green agenda in Canberra. If this were to be a serious matter the four points that the anthropogenic global warmists claim is true would be met. They would be able to point to a significant hotspot in the troposphere.

I return to my point. Where is the hotspot in the troposphere? It is not there. It was predicted by the International Panel on Climate Change and it does not exist. Why is it that while carbon dioxide emissions have been growing exponentially there has been no temperature change since 2001? Why is it the case that the Vostok ice cores show that changes in CO₂ demonstrably happened after changes in temperature, therefore there can be no possible reason to assume they are the primary force that created the temperature changes in the first place. Finally, and I thank the Hon. Rick Colless for raising this, why do the warmists not accept the fact that the addition of an additional molecule of CO₂ to the atmosphere does not represent a lineal increase in the amount of temperature it can absorb? It is a sliding scale that heads down towards zero.

The Hon. Rick Colless: It is logarithmic.

The Hon. Dr PETER PHELPS: That is exactly right: it is a logarithmic scale. Unfortunately, I am running out of time, thanks to the time limits this Government has wisely introduced; otherwise I would be forced to run on for much longer than this. I raise one further point, and that is this. If the Federal Government thinks it will be able to extort money out of the energy producers of New South Wales it may want to think again. I am not a constitutional lawyer: I achieved the remarkable figure of 54 per cent in constitutional law—any mark over 50 representing wasted study time—but I rely on the advice I have been given by a constitutional lawyer, who made this point: 

• If State owned generators of electricity are to be significant payers of the carbon tax, then the Commonwealth could be in for an unwelcome surprise. Relevantly s 114 of the Constitution provides that the Commonwealth shall not … "impose any tax on any property of any kind belonging to a State". In short, these emissions belong to the States and hence are not liable to be taxed by the Commonwealth. To illustrate from page 17 of its 2010 Annual Report, Macquarie Generation would on my reckoning have emitted 23.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. Taxed at $23 per tonne this would create a tax liability of $536 million, (Bayswater at $324 million and Liddell at $212 million). Equal to roughly half of its revenue of $1.2 billion and turn its profit before tax of $269 million into a loss of $267 million. Happily for Macquarie and other state owned electricity generators, s. 114 of the Constitution would seem to exempt them from this proposed tax.

I thank honourable members for listening and I commend the bill to the House.

Peter Phelps is the Government Whip in the New South Wales Legislative Council, and is a former long-term staffer in the Howard Government. He has a PhD in Australian History.  Please note that this transcript was edited to remove many of the interjections. Click here for the full transcript.