Senator BERNARDI (South Australia) (11:24): It is with a heavy heart that I rise to make a contribution to this debate on Senator's Ludwig's motion to vary the hours and days of sitting and routine of business of the Senate, because in some way I feel dirtied and sullied by being dragged into this debate— Senator Conroy interjecting— Senator BERNARDI: and somehow complicit in being asked to endorse the government's breaking of an election promise. It is a question that comes to the credibility of this government. I note that Senator Conroy is in the chamber and interjecting. Whilst I will not respond directly to his interjections, I note that Senator Conroy is galvanising as much support as he can in his party to prevent Kevin Rudd from assuming the leadership once again. He is also trying to dump this dreadful policy, because there are many on the Labor side who realise the political damage that has been done to the Labor Party by the words of Ms Gillard—'There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead'—and Mr Swan and other acolytes. That was a crystal clear, rock-solid promise, and we are being asked today to endorse the breaking of that promise by granting additional hours. We know that many in the Labor Party do not want this to see the light of day, but we also know that the real power behind the Gillard throne is resident in the wedge at the end of the government side of the chamber, and that is Senator Bob Brown and his Greens party. If there ever was a credibility gulf amongst politicians and political parties, it is demonstrated every single day by the Greens party. We can talk about their openness and transparency requirements for donations. Whilst they rail against corporate donations, they have taken the single largest corporate donation in the history of politics in this country—$1.6 million from the founder of Wotif. Then, by some strange quirk of fate, some coincidence, Senator Bob Brown and his tribe have asked questions that are going to benefit that donor in his commercial operations. In any other forum, there would be questions about how such a coincidence arose, but not to the pious and sanctimonious Senator Brown, who says, 'I'm doing everything within the legitimacy of this parliament.' This is the same party, might I add, that say they are out there looking after children and young people and speaking up for their interests and yet, when I introduced a private senator's bill to protect children overseas from predatory Australians who would seek to exploit them for child sex tourism offences, they voted against it. They voted against protecting children from predatory sexual tourists under Australian law. It makes you wonder where their moral compass is. As Senator Joyce said, this is the party that voted against an inquiry into the abusive rape of a 14-year-old Aboriginal girl in Queensland. This is the party of hypocrisy, the party that says you should not be allowed to use plastic water bottles unless it is for a medical emergency, and yet their deputy leader has on her own website a picture of herself clutching a plastic water bottle as she strolls around some mountain bushland environment. This is the party of hypocrisy, where Senator Bob Brown exceeded the number of flights of both the former environment minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and the shadow environment minister at the time, Peter Garrett, while travelling around the country and preaching to others that they should not be emitting these noxious fumes that are destroying the planet. We have established beyond a shadow of a doubt—and I think the Australian people need to understand—just how dangerously hypocritical the Greens party is. What they say and what they do are two different things. What they say in public is to appease people and make them think they are protecting the environment, but what they do is that they are trying to shut down industrial Australia. They are trying to increase taxes. Unfortunately, they have an inordinate amount of power over a hapless, hopeless, rudderless government in Australia at the moment, and that is the Gillard government. Frauds have been perpetuated on so many Australians with the misuse, abuse, waste and squandering of taxpayers' money. We have seen it with pink batts, with GROCERYchoice, with Fuelwatch and with a whole bunch of other schemes. Today it has been reported that regional rorts are going on, that two-thirds of the money has gone to Labor electorates and only one-third to other electorates in regional Australia—completely disproportionate. We know that the standards, scrutiny, accountability and ethics of the government and their alliance partners, the Greens, are at rock bottom, and that is why their vote is at rock bottom. That is why they are all scrambling around to get the numbers for Kevin Rudd to come back. I know there are those on that side of the chamber who are deeply concerned about that, because they possibly will lose their jobs. They will lose their frontbench jobs because they so brutally knifed Mr Rudd before the Australian people could do it. There will be a big reshuffle. There will be a grand realignment of the factional schemes. You may not see Senator Conroy and Senator Carr lining up on the same team anymore. But we will see a change of government and hopefully the restoration of some integrity to it. We need to get a bit of decency, honesty and transparency back in the public debate. One of the areas that strikes me as extraordinary is that Senator Wong and others will stand up and talk about green jobs and the experience overseas. What I would like to do for the benefit of the Australian people and those listening to this broadcast is detail one of the experiences overseas of the great hope for Centre Left governments right around the world—and that is the American government, led by Barack Obama. Only this morning a commentator reported that $17.2 billion has been spent by the US government on creating green jobs. I wonder just how many jobs $17.2 billion could create under a Centre Left government. Remember: the dream that is being pitched to all Australians is that this carbon tax will not hurt our economy because it is going to create jobs. How many jobs did $17.2 billion create in America? Was it one million? Was it two million? Was it 500,000? Unfortunately, that was not the case. It created 3,545 jobs. If you quickly do the maths, it works out to be $4.853 million per job. This is the future that we are being sold. The Australian people are being peddled this nirvana. But the results are there. The examples are there. If you look at Spain, you will see that it is virtually broke. It is suffering from this great European crisis where productivity is down, work ethic is down, government spending is up and money is being spent and wasted on these obscure green schemes that the Labor government has tried to impose upon us. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Marshall ): Senator Bernardi, I want to draw your attention to the question that is in fact before the chair. Senator BERNARDI: Indeed, I do come back to it. We are talking about the decarbonisation of our economy, which is what this extension of powers is intended to legitimately pursue. We know that. You may have missed my reference to the $17.2 billion being spent in America to create 3,545 jobs. It concerns me that we are heading down the same path, because the Greens tail is wagging this dog of a government. That is not the future I imagine. I imagine a future for my children where there will be industry, productivity, growth and a sense of optimism about the future. Unfortunately, this tax, which we are being asked to endorse ipso facto through this extension of hours, endorsing a broken promise, is really beyond the pale. When we examine why this government is pursuing this ideological bent we see there is no benefit at all for Australia to go down this path and for the Senate to extend sitting hours without applying that time to examining the implications of this broken promise for the Australian economy. I know the Treasurer released Treasury modelling just a few moments before a committee was due to sit. The credibility of this Treasurer has to be brought into question as well. I know much will be made of the fact—and he posed for a great photo—that he was named Euromoney Finance Minister of the Year. It follows a great tradition, as Senator Joyce referred to, set by Paul Keating, a former world's greatest Treasurer who gave us 'the recession we had to have'. But I think the tradition of Euromoney awards is more starkly and contemporaneously spelt out by revisiting their 2006 awards. Euromoney said the best investment bank was Lehman Brothers. Of course, Lehman Brothers went broke in 2007. In 2006 Euromoney said that the best equity house was a group called Morgan Stanley. Of course, Morgan Stanley had to be bailed out to the tune of billions of dollars in 2007. In 2006 Euromoney, the same people who awarded Mr Swan Finance Minister of the Year, said the best risk management house was a group called Bear Stearns. Bear Stearns, of course, busted and went broke in 2007. In 2006 the best investor services according to Euromoney were Citigroup, another group that had to have billions of dollars worth of bailouts in 2007. So when they award Treasurer Swan as best finance minister of the year we are right to be dubious about the category he is inserting himself into because he follows in the great tradition of those busted outfits and the man who said Australia had to have a recession with 17 per cent interest rates, and it follows in the tradition that this Labor government has run up billions of dollars of taxpayer debt, mortgaging the future. Labor want to further compromise the future of the Australian people and hurt successive generations by imposing an all-pervading tax on carbon dioxide. They are doing it under the mantle of presuming that there are going to be green jobs. We have busted that myth, just like Euromoney have given the kiss of death to other firms. We also know there is a very clear indication that this is a tax that will grow and grow and that tens of billions of dollars ultimately will be sent to countries without the scrutiny and accountability that exists under the Australian legislative and corporate framework. We also know that this is an attempt at an election sweetener by reforming some of the tax system and applying some additional benefits to pensioners and others, most of which would be welcome because of the cost-of-living rises that have taken place. This is the disingenuous nature of it: the government has steadfastly refused to identify and acknowledge that this all-pervading tax will only increase in the future. It will go from $23 at the starting point and it will rise to $29 within a couple of years. Of course, that will put the price of electricity up. It will put the price of everything we use up because ultimately electricity is the thing that is used to light shops, keep refrigeration going, create cement; there are a whole range of applications. This is a tax on electricity, so nothing will escape it. It will continue to rise. Even when it goes to a market based mechanism, of course, which was rejected by the Labor Party; that was their 2007 policy— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator Bernardi, again I do want to draw your attention to the motion that is before the chair, which is a motion moved by Senator Ludwig with respect to the days and hours of meeting and routine of business. Senator BERNARDI: Mr Acting Deputy President, you must have missed my link between the reason we are having— Senator Jacinta Collins: Very subtle, Cory. Senator BERNARDI: I am known for my subtlety, thank you, Senator Collins. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Order! I have simply drawn your attention to the motion before the chair, Senator Bernardi. Senator BERNARDI: I appreciate that, Mr Acting Deputy President, and you are doing a mighty fine job and I congratulate you on that. The purpose of seeking this extension of hours is to debate a broken promise by this government. It is a broken promise that is going to have a serious impact on electricity prices, a serious impact on the cost of living for everyone in this country and a serious impact on our international competitiveness. We are going to see the export of industry and the export of jobs; we are not going to see the creation of green jobs. We know that this government is desperate for the cash that is going to be generated from that. But it cannot even do that appropriately. This is a new tax where apparently everyone is going to be better off, but we know that is not going to be the case. When we are discussing these extended sitting hours and when we are discussing a range of measures that are going to impact on the Australian people, we on this side of the chamber are being asked to be complicit in the breaking of a solemn promise to the Australian people. Senator Sterle: No, you are being asked to come back and debate this. Senator BERNARDI: Many of us take our promises seriously. I know Senator Sterle is interjecting. No-one takes anything he says seriously. I am not sure that he takes his own promises seriously. But the point is this: we are entrusted to speak up for the Australian people. When we go to an election we take a policy platform there and people vote for it. I know that people like Senator Sterle were elected on the basis that they were not going to support a carbon tax. I know that was the case because his Prime Minister, the one that he so warmly embraces as leading this country boldly into the future— Senator STERLE: Too right; you've got that right. Senator BERNARDI: I only wish Hansard could pick up irony and sarcasm. When they are elected on this platform and when members of the House of Representatives are elected on this platform, it is right to question how they can break such a promise that is going to have such massive implications for this country (1) without proper scrutiny and (2) without actually taking it to the Australian people. These are common-sense questions that most Australians I know want to ask. Despite the protestations of the Greens and those who are advocates and acolytes of the green agenda within the Labor Party, there is very little demand other than contrived, drummed up, astroturf support for this carbon tax out there in mainstream Australia. If you move more than five or 10 kilometres out from the major cities and you talk to the millions of Australians who are already struggling with the burdens placed upon them by this government, you will find that they do not want a carbon tax. They do not want a carbon tax, not because they do not care about the environment but because they know that it will do nothing for the environment. They know that it will not lower global temperatures one jot or tittle. We know that. We absolutely know that and no-one has ever disputed it. They also know that billions of their dollars are going to be sent offshore to unaccountable regimes or organisations. You are going to see it go to an international United Nations fund and you are also going to have to buy permits from nations which have a less than rigorous reputation for financial transparency and honesty. These are things that all concern us. There is a more deliberate concern amongst the Australian people and that is that we have a government that have deceived the Australian people. I wish you could say that they had a deceptive aura of confidence or competence even, but unfortunately you cannot, because they have demonstrated no competence in any aspect of administering the national affairs of this country. We can look at it in so many ways—I touched upon pink batts and GroceryWatch and Fuelwatch. We can look at the rorting in Building the Education Revolution, as they called it. We can look at the laptops in schools rorting. We can look at border protection: the East Timor solution, the Malaysia solution. It can go on and on and on. It is one disaster after another. And today we are being asked to extend hours to be complicit in another disaster for the Australian people. On this side of the chamber it is very clear that we will not support that and we will not support it because we want our integrity intact. We want to be consistent in our approach to taking effective policy solutions—not things that are going to damage the Australian people, not things that are going to irreparably damage our economy, not the myth of green jobs. We do not want the $17 billion that Barack Obama, President of the United States, spent on creating 3,545 jobs. We do not want that myth. We want accountability, we want strength and we want, most of all, competence from the Australian government. Unfortunately, the weakness of the government, their shallowness, their lack of capacity in administrative skills and their lack of vision for the future of this country mean that they are now being driven by an extreme left-wing green ideology. We know the hypocrisy of that ideology. We know that they will stand up and say and do anything and then do something else behind the scenes. We know that they want to apply different standards to different people. It is like Orwell's Animal Farm, where some animals are more equal than others. Let me tell you that in this place we should all be equal and we should all have one vote. Unfortunately, those on the government side of the chamber have effectively given their votes away to their faceless men and to the faceless women of the Greens party. We know who is driving the government and the agenda. We know that Labor are weak and they are perhaps the worst government in the history of this country. Senator Williams: Not 'perhaps'; they are. Senator BERNARDI: Yes, indeed, Senator Williams, they are. I have not lived as long as you, Senator Williams, so I will take your word for it. Senator Williams: You probably won't! Senator BERNARDI: The way I am going I may not, Senator Williams. The point is that we have a weak and hopeless government and now we have a green wedge that is seeking to drive its own ideological, obsessive agenda into destroying Australia as we know it and recreating it in the image of Bob Brown, Christine Milne and others like them. It is not the future for this country; it is not the future we anticipate and envisage for our children. It is a future which we can foresee by looking at America and Europe and at the failings of the green agenda there. That is why I do not support this motion.