Gillard faces tough sell on carbon package
- 10 July, 2011 18:55
- Comments 2
Prime Minister, Julia Gillard
Prime Minister Julia Gillard will be wearing out her shoe leather and hitting the airwaves to sell her carbon price package to a tough audience.
Reactions to the package, announced on Sunday, brought few surprises.
Those for a carbon price backed the scheme; opponents hated it.
The government will tax the 500 biggest polluters over three years from July 1 next year, starting at $23 per tonne of emissions. The revenue will be spent on compensating households and industry, and developing renewable energies.
Australia's adoption of a carbon price to combat carbon missions is controversial, with the coalition and many commentators doubting its effectiveness and predicting a bad impact on the economy.
Industries affected by the change - particularly steel and coal - will receive $9.2 billion over the next three years.
But Minerals Council chief Mitch Hooke said the climate plan would "take a baseball bat to the Australian economy", including a $25 billion hit to mining, while doing little to reduce emissions.
Australia's biggest employer lobby group, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, says the carbon tax will weaken the economy.
"Unfortunately, the environmental gain the government is looking for through innovation and changed business and consumer behaviour will be very limited because this is a tax that gets passed on, coupled with widespread compensation to protect people from it," said chief executive Peter Anderson, who sits on the federal government climate change business roundtable.
Businesses in the renewable energy sector were happiest with the package.
"We will see solar on steroids," the chief executive of the Australian Solar Energy Society, John Grimes, said.
The Australian Geothermal Energy Association (AGEA) says the scheme will provide a foundation for the development of clean energy projects.
"The industry and its potential investors need to see the details before funds will flow into clean energy projects," AGEA chief executive, Susan Jeanes said.
Low and middle-income earners will get tax cuts, pension rises and welfare payments worth $14.9 billion over the next three years to compensate for price rises, which the government says will amount to only 0.7 per cent in 2012/13.
Consumer advocacy group Choice says the impact of a carbon price on households will be "relatively modest".
"With so many households identifying increasing energy costs as a concern, it will be crucial that the government does not take a backward step in the levels of compensation for consumers," Choice head of campaigns, Matt Levey, said in a statement.
"Businesses should also be put on notice that they should not use the carbon tax as an excuse to pass on unrelated costs," Mr Levey said.
UnitingCare director, Lin Hatfield Dodds, said the compensation arrangements were very good and clever, and she praised the lifting of the tax-free threshold.
"Essentially what they've done is made it simpler and fairer for low-income Australians who are working or for Australians moving from welfare payments," she told the Seven Network on Sunday.
National Seniors Australia says more than 280,000 self-funded retirees will miss out on any carbon tax compensation.
NSA chief executive, Michael O'Neill, says the government has been generous in compensating pensioners and Commonwealth Seniors Health Card holders, but not helped those who have provided for their own future.
"The very people who have had the good fortune to provide for their own future again fall through the cracks," O'Neill said.
Gillard says she will spend the next five weeks - "wearing out the shoe leather" - to sell the carbon tax around the country.
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has vowed to do the same fighting the tax.
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Comments
gnome
And all that shoe leather, no-I-won't-yes-I-will tax imposition and taxpayer-funded spin and hype won't make one iota of difference to carbon dioxide or to global climate.
Still, it will make some people in the warmist industry very rich, so it's not all bad. Pity about the much larger number of people who have to pay the sharply increasing bill for all this flummery, though.
Thinkoutsidethe
@gnome - If you saw someone getting bashed in clear daylight, where it was plain to see they were getting bashed and the outcome was likely to be very bad, and you saw other people standing by doing nothing, would you also do nothing? Is that not the argument you are making when you say "it won't make any difference so why do it?" It is plain as day that we need to slow the overall the rate of pollution REGARDLESS of whether you accept climate change or not. While it is cheap and profitable to pollute, there is no incentive in place to stop the bashing of our finite resources. There is a cost involved and of course we have to pay for the change. Most Australians have benefited directly and indirectly profited from living off the back of the mining sector in this country for many years - (althought the Govt policy on protecting these benefits for future generations is pathetic) but it is just as important that future Australians get to benefit from living in a country that is less polluted than it is today.
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