Mrs MIRABELLA (Indi) (15:35): We heard the Prime Minister today talk about the challenges facing the manufacturing sector. You would think that, in acknowledging ever so briefly some of these challenges, she would not embark on a carbon tax that was going to send our manufacturing offshore and export our jobs. Alan Oster, the chief economist from the National Australia Bank, said that manufacturing is effectively in recession. Yet, with all this objective evidence the government is still indifferent to what a carbon tax will do to manufacturing. In fact the Prime Minister was asked in this House earlier this month to nominate any representations she had received from a host of members on the other side relating the concerns and negative impacts that a carbon tax would have on local jobs and local manufacturing. What was really embarrassing was that she struggled and shuffled around, tellingly and frighteningly, and could not identify or point to a single discussion or a single piece of correspondence between any of them. In a desperation that continues the government's moral bankruptcy and disregard about Australian jobs and manufacturing, all they can resort to are cries of claiming that the coalition is running some sort of scare campaign. If you want to look at scare campaigns, all you have to look at are the apocalyptic warnings about global warming coming from the other side. We have the minister for climate change, after purchasing a million dollar coastal resort, recently feigning concern about rising sea levels, yet he has been buying a seaside mansion! You can just imagine him sucking in the seaside breeze, all of that fresh air, and telling all those poor little workers, those who put him there and gave him that profile, that they need to sacrifice their jobs so the Prime Minister can keep hers. We had the scare campaign from the member for Corio during the last election saying that the coalition was going to take all this money away from Ford in Geelong and that jobs would be lost, knowing full well that was not the case. But where is the member for Corio when the workers in his electorate are demanding a voice in the Australian parliament? He is nowhere to be seen. All he does is go around the country slagging and bagging the opposition and refusing to stand up for the rights of and to note the anxiety of workers in his electorate. Where is the climate change minister, who has light and heavy industry and coal in his electorate? It was good enough for him to stand there shoulder to shoulder with the workers while trying to get a bit of publicity and increase his national profile when he wanted to get into parliament, but he has got to where he wanted to get—well, almost, as he wants to move further up those green benches. But all those workers are quite dispensable now because they got him into this parliament and he does not care, like so many other members on the other side. If they truly cared about manufacturing jobs and workers, they would have the courage to get out of that queue, the one that gives them a lobotomy, stop being zombies and actually stand up for the jobs of people in their electorates. We have the member for Hunter, with all those coalmining jobs at risk, being silent. We have the member for Blaxland, who has manufacturing in his electorate, remaining absolutely silent. Surely he understands how important manufacturing is and not just to his portfolio of Defence. And the member for Melbourne Ports walks out because he knows he was next on the list. There is manufacturing in his electorate but what does he do? He remains silent. Where is the member for Chifley, the member for Kingsford Smith, the member for Throsby or the member for Cunningham? Where are they standing up for their local jobs? All I can say is thank goodness there is some integrity left in the Labor Party albeit among recently departed members from this House. We had Jennie George, a former ACTU president and the member for Throsby, say: 'Local considerations rightly focus on the importance of the steel industry in underpinning our regional economy and providing jobs both direct and indirect. Constant references to the need to "tax the polluters" are superficial and facile by failing to acknowledge these benefits.' So when the government tries to run a scare campaign and when the government tries to diminish the opposition and belittle the arguments that we make we say: 'Fine, don't listen to what we say. Why don't you listen to what your own people say, what your own voters are saying, what your own union members are saying, what former members of the Labor Party are saying and what other trade unionists are saying?' We have had Paul Howes say that he will not support this carbon tax if a single job is lost in the steel industry—and we know that jobs will be lost in the steel industry. But where is he trying to force the Prime Minister to back down? He wanted to play the big man and be one of the faceless men to put the Prime Minister in, but I think he has been taking too many lessons from current members sitting in this House who occupied senior trade union positions but abandoned their basic responsibility to look after those people who thought that being a member of a union would give them some basic rights and would give them a voice in the political landscape in political debate in Australia. We have an almost empty House on that side and sitting in it a very morose current member for Throsby. Mr Stephen Jones interjecting— Mrs MIRABELLA: I would hang my head in shame if I were you. You strut around this place thinking you have made it and thinking you are some big shot but you are neglecting your basic responsibilities, you pathetic little man. The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Hon. Peter Slipper ): Order! Mrs MIRABELLA: You abandoned all those workers. The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The honourable member for Indi will resume her seat. I warn the honourable member for Indi. She has been making accusations in the direction of the chair, referring to 'you', 'you' and 'you'. In this place when you say 'you' you refer to me as the occupant of the chair. I now call the member for Indi. The microphone will be turned on because I have now given her the call once again. Mrs MIRABELLA: My attentions were directed to the member for Throsby because he should hang his head in shame as a pathetic individual. He has turned his back on the workers in his electorate. He has turned his back on the unions that supported him. He should have the courage to walk down that corridor with the blue carpet up to the Prime Minister's office, knock on her door and say, 'Wake up to the concerns and anxieties of the people in my electorate.' But he will not do that because as we know, because Dougie Cameron told us, they have all gone down that path of having that special operation to become lobotomised zombies on the government benches. Why would the Prime Minister be going down this path? For one simple reason: she has sold her soul. She has fought all her political life to get to this point and she wants to hold on to it whatever the price. If the price is Australian manufacturing, so be it. If the price was getting rid of Kevin Rudd, the man she promised to support, last year, so be it. If she is prepared to sacrifice the base of Labor Party support, those trade union workers who are members of unions right across Australia and who form the backbone of our manufacturing sector, what moral bankruptcy reigns in the Labor Party of today. As Tony Sheldon from the Transport Workers Union said: '... it won't cost jobs. It will cost lives if there is not an appropriate approach by the government.' Somehow the government has tried to demonise those in the manufacturing sector, calling them polluters and the like. What they have not actually admitted is that we cannot have a modern economy without steel, without aluminium, without cement. Imposing a carbon tax will do only one thing: it will send those jobs offshore. It will send those businesses offshore to countries like China, which will create more emissions to make the things that we used to make. Those arguments seem to fall on deaf ears because political desperation has infected this government to such a point that nothing else matters. They are deaf to any reason, to any logic, to any compassion, to any vision for a country that makes things. Remember, there was a time when Kevin Rudd was Prime Minister and he said he did not want to be Prime Minister of a nation that did not make things. The only thing that is being made by this government is an absolute mess, an absolute disaster without vision. I for one, standing on this side of the House, do not want my country to be one that has relegated manufacturing to the dust bin. We have other former trade unionists on the other side who loved to get on TV every morning when a couple of unfortunate miners were stuck down a mine. They were salivating to get on TV. The member for Maribyrnong was thinking: 'This is great. I can get my face on TV. I hope those miners stay down that hole for a bit longer so I can get my bit of publicity.' In his maiden speech, which he quoted on his own website, he talked about lessons: … the lessons of my family, the lessons of my education, the lessons of business, the lessons of my union days. All these lessons can be distilled into one phrase: never give up. Well, this fraud has given up on those union members who put him there, as have so many of his colleagues sitting on the front bench. Why do they not have the courage of Labor members past to understand their basic responsibility to speak on behalf of those who do not have the political or economic power to get up and defend their jobs and defend manufacturing? It was that great Labor Party hero Kim Beazley Sr who said that when he was a member of the Labor Party it was 'full of the cream of the working class; now it contains the dregs of the middle class'. I am afraid to say that is too kind a description to explain the quality of the current members on the other side. Worst of all, the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency is ignoring his constituents. One particular business, just a few doors down from his electorate office, was reported as saying: 'It's just the wrong way to go. It's unnecessary, it's unfair and it will hurt businesses like ours.' Did the minister care? Of course not, because he has his eye on the prize as well. The only question we need to ask is: how long will he keep the rest of the backbench suffering before he does the inevitable and taps the Prime Minister on the shoulder? She is determined to proceed with a carbon tax in the mistaken belief that it will show her as a tough woman, a decisive woman, a woman who achieved something that Kevin Rudd did not achieve. She has certainly done that. She has had a record fall in the polls and, as long as she persists with this tax that destroys jobs and manufacturing, she will continue to break records in those polls. I am sure that will cause great concern to the members on the other side. Whether the fear of losing their seats will actually give them some encouragement to speak out remains to be seen, but I am afraid the quality on the other side does government in this country no justice. When every single group involved in manufacturing, from one end of the country to the other, is telling the government, 'Do not kill our business; do not kill our industry; do not put food manufacturing at risk; do not risk our food security' what is the government saying? 'Oh, they are just scaremongering.' Ignoring the facts and ignoring rational debate, the government are bunkering down into a position where they have nowhere to go. The only place to go is to an election, but we know the government will not do that in the mistaken belief that if they can somehow tough it out and see it through they will survive. I call on members of the other side: the member for Wakefield, the member for Port Adelaide, the member for Isaacs, who boasts that there is more manufacturing in his electorate than in the rest of Melbourne, the member for Bruce, the member for Gellibrand, the member for Bendigo, the members for Corangamite and Corio. Where are you when the people in your electorates are demanding a voice in this House? Their voice is loud. It is being heard by many on this side. It is being heard by industry. But you are neglecting them. That is the typical arrogance of the Labor Party aristocracy. They come here on the work and the sweat of workers to get their positions of power and then totally and utterly ignore them and the sectors in which they work. (Time expired)