Adjournment Debate - Carbon Tax Propaganda
August 17, 2011
Thank you Mr Speaker. I rise to speak with absolute disdain about the latest attempt by the Labor-Greens Government to sell the Carbon Tax the Australian people don’t want and didn’t vote for.
Over the last few weeks my offices in Hume have been inundated with requests from constituents asking where they can return the taxpayer-funded Carbon Tax propaganda booklets that have been hand delivered to households across the electorate.
People are rightly outraged by the sheer hypocrisy of the Rudd/Gillard Governments.
The Labor party once condemned taxpayer funded advertising as a ‘cancer’ on democracy. But, true to form, this Labor Government have gone back on their word, sending out millions of propaganda pieces wrapped in environmentally unfriendly plastic wrapping!
As I have always said, never trust what Labor says – always look at what they do.
Where are all of the pro-environment groups such as Friends of the Earth and GetUp? I would have thought they would be screaming from the treetops to condemn the amount of carbon-neutralising forests that were cut down to make the millions of 20 page booklets; or the emissions pollution created from the petrol-chemically produced plastic wrapping?
In my book, silence equals complicity.
The Prime Minister not only deceived the electorate before the election by stating ‘there will be no carbon tax under the government I lead’, but her Government has now spent $4 million on the 20 page propaganda booklet as part of the overall $25 million taxpayer funded advertising campaign to sell its Carbon Tax that not a single Australian voted for.
And Mr Speaker, propaganda is exactly what this material is. I took the liberty of getting the Oxford Dictionary definition of propaganda, which is as follows: “information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view.
Mr Speaker, you can take the girl out of the Socialist Alliance, but you can’t take the Socialist out of the girl. The Prime Minister’s Carbon Tax pamphlets are blatant propaganda pieces. There is no doubt this is information being used to promote a political cause or point of view. Nor is there any doubt that the information contained in the pamphlets is biased at best - misleading at worst.
In the Yass Tribune today, contributor Brian Millett – a person I don’t normall agree with - summed up the biased and misleading portion of the Carbon Tax propaganda pieces. And I quote:
“The document claims that Australia generates more pollution per person than any other developed country including the United States.
“This is certainly a frightening claim which becomes fairly meaningless when it is appreciated that Australia’s population is about 7% of that of the US and is spread over a huge area with only 22 million Australians against more the 320 million Americans in a similar area. Australia’s pollution, when viewed from this perspective is almost nothing at all and is only 1.5% of the world’s total greenhouse gases – and certainly not worth a radical carbon tax.”
Mr Millett, your ‘Musings’ are spot-on for a change.
Australians are sick and tired of this Government’s wasteful, hypocritical and reckless spending on pro-carbon tax propaganda. Perhaps by Australians sending their pamphlets back to the Prime Minister she will get the unbiased message from the Australian people – we don’t want your pamphlets – what we want is an election.