Opposition leader Tony Abbott will have difficulty repealing the carbon tax, says Independent MP Andrew Wilkie
- From: AAP, AAP
- July 02, 2012
UPDATE: INDEPENDENT MP Andrew Wilkie says it will become increasingly difficult for Tony Abbott to abolish the carbon tax as Australians get used to it.
It comes as a group of big businesses publicly declared their support for the controversial tax.
Mr Wilkie says the coalition is not a certainty to win the next federal election but, if it does, it will face a battle to deliver on its promise to repeal the controversial tax.
”If the coalition win the election, and that’s not a certainty, (it depends) whether or not they control the Senate,” Mr Wilkie told reporters in Hobart.
”I think (it’s) a bit like the GST – highly controversial but, once people have realised the sky hasn’t fallen in, they see the sense in the reform, they live with it a while, I think it becomes increasingly difficult for Tony Abbott to unwind it in the future.”
Mr Wilkie supported the carbon price and says many in his Tasmanian electorate of Denison, where he is riding high in a number of polls, are behind him.
On the first business day of the carbon tax, a a consortium of almost 300 big businesses, including Westpac, AGL, Unilever and GE, have signed a joint statement backing the tax and accused the coalition of creating uncertainty by promising to scrap it in government.
But the Australia Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) says small and middle-ranking companies stand to lose and the consortium’s view is not mainstream.
”The tax had little consequence for energy providers who would pass it on while banks ”had no skin in this game”, ACCI director of economics and industry policy Greg Evans told AAP.
”Our members are overwhelmingly price takers in the marketplace and are not in the position of being able to unilaterally set prices and simply pass those on down the chain.”
Both the Labor government and the coalition have begun a two-week blitz on the carbon tax, with Opposition leader Tony Abbott embarked on an intensive campaign to discredit the levy and Prime Minister Julia Gillard taking to the airwaves.
By 9.30am, Ms Gillard had already given seven radio and television interviews.
During an interview on ABC Darwin, a caller known only as “Wazza” gave the PM some timely advice on lowering the power bill – only use the beer fridge on weekends.
But the Prime Minister had to admit that wouldn’t be much help to her because The Lodge didn’t come with a beer fridge.
“I don’t think we really have a beer fridge, we’re not drinkers of that much beer,” Julia Gillard said of herself and partner Tim Mathieson.
Mr Abbott spent the morning in Victoria’s second largest city, Geelong, to talk about the impacts of the tax on the area.
He said a federal coalition government would call on the powers of the consumer watchdog to ensure prices fall once it followed through on a promise to scrap the carbon tax.
He said the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) would ensure there was fair competition under a government he led.
Tony Abbott
”We can ensure that there is fair competition in the market place and if businesses don’t respond to reductions in their costs, well there isn’t fair competition,” he said.
”The ACCC will have the job of ensuring people aren’t being ripped off, when the carbon tax goes off, and costs are appropriately reduced.”
He said the last thing people wanted was a reverse tariff and urged business to support the coalition at the next election if they want certainty.
Mr Abbott said millions of households would miss out on the government’s compensation, and said the coalition, if elected, would reduce emissions in other ways.
“We’re going to get emissions down by spending money from savings in the budget, going to the market and buying abatement through our emissions reductions fund,” he told ABC Radio.
“We will have tax cuts without a carbon tax and we will have pension benefits without a carbon tax,” he said
Ms Gillard said people could make up their own minds “not based on the claims of politicians but from by what they can see in their own lives”.
“What people are going to see is tax cuts … and people are going to see that the claims like the coal industry is going to shut down is all untrue,” she told the Seven Network today.
Ms Gillard acknowledged there would be some flow-on effects from about 300 big polluters paying $23 a tonne on carbon, but said tax cuts would benefit seven million people.
A Nielsen poll published in Fairfax newspapers found opposition to the carbon tax had risen three points to 62 per cent.
Just over half of those surveyed thought they would be worse off as a result of the tax.
According to the latest Newspoll, Labor’s primary vote in Queensland is down to just 22 per cent.
The results mean federal Labor MPs in the state are facing a swing against them of 10 per cent, which would unseat every Labor MP, The Australian reported.
But Ms Gillard said implementing a price on carbon wasn’t about the polls.
“This is about what is right for our nation’s future,” she said.
“We have had some very divisive debates in the past – the GST, universal superannuation, Medicare … and when the dust has settled and people have had the opportunity to judge it all for themselves they recognised it was the right thing for the nation.”
Ms Gillard said Abbott would create a “fiddle” and only pretend to scrap the carbon tax if he wins power.
But Mr Abbott said the Coalition would get carbon emissions down without saddling the coal and gas industries with extra costs.
Geelong carbon tax
Mr Abbott is today campaigning hard to convince people it will be all financial pain for no environmental gain.
He is warning it will kill off the gas and oil industries.
“The whole point of a carbon tax is to use less coal, less gas, less oil,” Mr Abbott told ABC Radio.
The Coalition would do things differently, he said.
“We want to get emissions down without loading up the coal and the gas industries with these kind of additional cost imposts,” he said.
“We’re going to get emissions down by spending money from savings in the budget, going to the market and buying abatement through our emissions reductions fund.”
Mr Abbott said millions of households would miss out on the Government’s compensation.
“We will have tax cuts without a carbon tax and we will have pension benefits without a carbon tax,” he said.
The Australian Industry Group said a survey of 621 manufacturing and construction businesses found 42 per cent would try to put up prices immediately.
Ms Gillard said making companies pay for the pollution they put in the air would create the cheapest incentive to transform the economy to clean energy sources such as solar, wind, geothermal and natural gas.
“If Mr Abbott ever becomes prime minister he won’t take carbon pricing away. He’ll engage in a little fiddle, a little fudge to kind of pretend, but carbon pricing will still be here,” she said yesterday.
She said the Opposition had wrongly said the carbon tax would mean a roast dinner would cost $100.
Climate Change Minister Greg Combet said Mr Abbott could not and would not repeal the carbon pricing scheme.
Mr Combet is confident the Government will be able to win back the Australian public’s support once it has “lived” the carbon tax.
“A lot of claims have been made that are quite notorious – towns falling off the edge of the country and industries destroyed and hundreds of thousands of jobs gone and unimaginable price increases – now it can be tested against reality,” Mr Combet told ABC Radio today.
Mr Combet said Australians were practical people who would judge the tax changes over the next twelve months of “lived experience”.
The Federal Government is aiming to cut carbon emissions by five per cent by 2020, with the carbon tax shifting to an emissions trading scheme in 2015.
Regulators across the country have have priced the impact of the carbon tax as on average $3.30 a week, but the Government will be providing an average of $10.10 a week in tax relief, Mr Combet said.
“We’re taking a lot of the revenue from that paid by the largest polluters and using it to implement a significant income tax reform that will treble the tax free threshold from $6000 to $18,200 liberating one million people from having to pay tax and file a tax return,” he said.
“As the message gets through and we keep arguing our case, I’m sure that we can win people’s support back.”
Julia Gillard
