05-May-2009
Portfolio Media Releases, Emissions Trading Scheme
Topic: Government’s changes to their own Emissions Trading Scheme.
FRAN KELLY: Well the Opposition’s spokesperson on emissions trading is Andrew Robb.
Andrew Robb thanks for joining us.
ANDREW ROBB: My pleasure, Fran.
FRAN KELLY: Andrew Robb, your leader Malcolm Turnbull says as it stands the Opposition won’t support this recast emissions trading scheme. What’s wrong with it?
ANDREW ROBB: Fran, it is still deeply flawed. The key problem; there are many problems and I have been around many industries;, there are all sorts of issues for individual industries, but the common and key problem, the fundamental flaw, is that as it stands today, despite the tinkering announced yesterday, Australian companies employing millions of Australians will have to pay literally billions of dollars in tax that none of their competitors will be paying.
It is going to lead, the current design of the scheme, to tens of thousands of people losing their jobs, particularly in regional centres all around the country.
FRAN KELLY: Isn’t that inevitable when you bring in any emissions trading scheme? It’s impossible to bring in a scheme that doesn’t put some kind of impost on business that their competitors in countries without a scheme won’t have to pay.
ANDREW ROBB: It’s not inevitable if the rest of the world has a price of carbon, if the rest of the world has a scheme, if the rest of the world has a tax on it. This is the problem, Fran. We... or the Government has designed a scheme which takes Australia too far ahead of the rest of the world. The scheme needs to be able to accommodate a very slow and modest introduction while the rest of the world comes on board.
If we have a scheme as designed now which will literally put billions of dollars of tax on, you know, $60 million on meat processing - none of that..there is no compensation, it will all flow back to a tax on cattle farmers. There’s 90% of minerals exports get no compensation. $60 million on the dairy industry, on the processing industry. That will lead to about $6 – 8,000 tax on every dairy farmer around this country and it will go straight to the bottom line. They’ve got no capacity to alter that one whit and yet they’re out there in world markers trying to compete.
This is the fundamental problem with this scheme. It is poorly designed. It will lead to tens of thousands of jobs lost and the Government has bungled this. It is a mess. They’ve had to make the changes yesterday. It has not done the job. It was really a political exercise yesterday, not an exercise to fix the scheme and we will not let this thing go through until they sit down, do the analysis that must be done and has not been done, look at what happens out of Copenhagen to see whether the rest of the world is going to move or not, and then design the scheme and put it to a vote then.
FRAN KELLY: Isn’t it fair to say that what Kevin Rudd announced yesterday, whether it is political or not, does go towards in some key elements exactly what you and Malcolm Turnbull have been calling for – a delayed start until 2011, and your position as I understand it is 2011 or 2012, more support for business in terms of more free permits and higher targets.
ANDREW ROBB: No, Fran. We have been saying all along, in fact we went to the last election with a scheme of our own which still is the guiding principal for our approach to this, and that was a scheme which ensured that all of those trade exposed industries – all of the export industries and the import competing industries around the country, hundreds and hundreds employing millions and millions of Australians, would get 100% protection from permits and from the tax until such the time as their competitors faced a similar tax.
Why shoot ourselves in the foot? This is the great strength of our country, all of these, all of the resource industries and the energy industries. It’s why we have a high amount of emissions per person is because we have had 150 years of using those resources - were good at it, it’s a great strength of this country and we need to be as efficient as possible with those resources but not destroy our great strength while the rest of the world has not a scheme in place.
All we will be doing is exporting jobs and exporting emissions to countries which will be less efficient. It will do nothing for the global environment and it will just destroy jobs and destroy communities across the Australian economy.
FRAN KELLY: Well, if it is so diabolical for business why does the Business Council of Australia, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Australian Industry Group, why are all those groups supporting this revised scheme as announced by the Government yesterday? They say bring it on, they want certainty.
ANDREW ROBB: Of course business wants certainty and we’re saying they should get certainty but certainty will come when you get the design of the scheme correct. The only certainty …
FRAN KELLY: But these business groups are supporting this.
ANDREW ROBB: The only certainty that will come out of the scheme at the moment is the certainty of tens of thousands of jobs being lost. There are many, many organisations around the country – the Minerals Council, the Framers Federation, many of those who are employing and are representing tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of small businesses who know that this scheme is fundamentally flawed and that there will be a massive tax on their members which they cannot recoup, which they cannot compete against on world markets and until those issues are resolved we will not support this. The Government can go back and do some fundamental analysis which our report identified last week identified was not done. They do not know what impact there will be on jobs in regional areas, that work should be done. They should wait to Copenhagen to put this to a vote next year when they’ve fixed the scheme.
FRAN KELLY: You say wait for Copenhagen. We had John Connor from the Climate Institute on earlier in the program who said this is all about trying to get ready to try and get some kind of agreement out of Copenhagen. That Australia can actually help with that task if we’ve got a legislated target that is at the 25% level as an aspirational target and that we should be pushing forward to try and bring the global agreement on. You’re saying we should wait?
ANDREW ROBB: We should wait to see what the rest of the …
FRAN KELLY: Maybe we could play a leadership role in that. What do you think?
ANDREW ROBB: Fran, look I was in the Foreign Affairs role for 12 months and I went around the world last year. Across the region people were not interested in what we were doing. On climate change there is an interest, on emissions trading I couldn’t get a discussion in many countries. Look, we can play a part and we should be there and be aggressively putting a point of view. We can and we should. We’ve already done and helped. We’ve got a design of a scheme that both sides of politics have been contributing to. We’ve got strong objectives we can take to that forum. But having a piece eof legislation in place in my view will be a detriment if that scheme is seen to be flawed, if that scheme is seen to deliver huge unemployment in our country it will show no leadership at Copenhagen. We will require and be dependent on what happens out of the United States and out of China principally as to whether a sustainable scheme can be put in around the world.
FRAN KELLY: What’s your political antennae telling you? Do you think the Prime Minister wants this through or does he want the Opposition to oppose it and have a pretty handy double dissolution trigger there?
ANDREW ROBB: We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Our focus is principally on getting this policy right. Fran, it is the biggest deliberate structural change that will have been confronted in this country in our history. It is of great moment. Its potential to disrupt regional communities – you could see shrinkage of up to 20% across all of our major resource based regional centres around the country. It is of great moment what we do with this scheme. It must be carefully and properly designed and implemented. Kevin Rudd, if his objective is political it’s a deep shame and it is no credit to him. This policy must be approached in a sensible and measured way. We’ve got to get this right. Too many lives at risk and we’re right in the middle of the worst financial meltdown in eighty years. It beggars belief that this thing is not being done in a measured and structured way and there are just politics being played.
FRAN KELLY: Can I just ask you briefly on another issue? Today’s Newspoll shows the gap closing – a pretty big closing of the gap in terms of what we’ve seen in recent times. Are you heartened by that? Do you think there has been that shift in sentiment?
ANDREW ROBB: Well, what I do think, Fran, is that as I go around the community there is an increasing and deep concern about Australia being loaded with unsustainable debt. A lot of people are just bemused by the spend, spend, spend approach. Money being thrown at everything without any consideration about how this will ever be paid back, without any concern about the fact that even within twelve months we will have interest bills which are just crushing in terms of what will be required in terms of taxation just to pay the interest. People are deeply worried and I think that is starting to come through in what you are seeing in the polls today.
FRAN KELLY: Andrew Robb, thank you very much for joining us.
ANDREW ROBB: Thanks, Fran.
Media Contact: Stuart Eaton, 0433 298 620