25-February-2011
Portfolio Media Releases
Topics: Julia Gillard’s carbon tax lie, Greens running the government, threat to Australian industry and jobs.
E&OE
JON FAINE:
Andrew Robb, good morning to you.
ANDREW ROBB:
Good morning Jon.
JON FAINE:
It’s fairly clear that Tony Abbott is going to run on a scare campaign here and what Bob Brown tells us just a moment ago, an essential ingredient of a modern, international economy could therefore be sacrificed.
ANDREW ROBB:
Two or three things here Jon, firstly we will seek to annunciate the facts in this area. If they want to call it a scare campaign, it is scary when you’ve got a prime minister who made such a big thing before the election about a government under her would not bring in a carbon tax.
That was really the last major promise, so people would focus on that at the federal election and yet within days, really within three weeks I think it was, she had already indicated that she would reverse that decision, mainly because Bob Brown is now effectively the deputy prime minister. The Green tail is wagging the Labor dog in all of this.
JON FAINE:
Well, if you for instance had negotiated with the Independents and the Greens to form a government you would have had to do the same deal too.
ANDREW ROBB:
We would not have in any sense committed to this Jon.
JON FAINE:
That’s why you are not the government Andrew Robb, that’s precisely the point.
ANDREW ROBB:
The Greens were never intending to negotiate with us in any good faith in any event Jon, you know that. They are well left of the Labor Party.
JON FAINE:
Julia Gillard said if I form government in my own right I won’t bring in a carbon tax, but she never was thinking what would happen if she was forming some sort of minority government. Politics requires that sort of change of circumstance.
ANDREW ROBB:
She said quite emphatically, it was a major issue it was the issue as Bob Brown said that framed this last election. We quite categorically overrode the legislation that sought to bring in a carbon tax and we went to the election with a very strong position on that. People understood it. The now prime minister mimicked that. The bottom line is, it is a betrayal of people. It is going to add hundreds-and-hundreds-of-dollars to people’s everyday costs. Petrol, right across the board, it’s an electricity tax in many senses.
The real issue it is a futile, ideological, futile move because if Australia, which only produces one per cent of the world’s emissions, if we move ahead of the rest of the world, and remember the president of the United States has ruled it out in the US, if we move ahead of the rest of the world, all it will do is see emissions and jobs exported, because major industries like our aluminium industries and others will simply go to China, or go to Malaysia, or go to Indonesia.
They could tomorrow outsource the steel production and the aluminium production of these companies. Many of these companies are already in the Asian region and it would simply mean losses of jobs and we would be no better off with emissions because our emissions would go in to China and up into the atmosphere at the same time.
JON FAINE:
Andrew Robb this argument reminds me of the argument about protectionism, that Australia will be ruined and that we’ll all be walking around in the dark with the last person to leave the country to turn off the light bulbs. Those sorts of scare campaigns have been waged through the ’70s the ’80s, the ’90s and they’ve been perpetually proven to be wrong. Australia’s economy is in better shape than any of our trading partners and we are the envy of the rest of the world.
ANDREW ROBB:
Jon with trade and tariff policies and all the rest we have moved with the world, we have not moved a long way ahead of the world. In this area, even at $26 a tonne, which is what the study estimated, that would add $300 to the electricity bills of Australians, add 6.5 cents per litre to the cost of petrol and feed into every other consumable item that people buy, but even at $26, it doesn’t even make gas competitive with coal-fired power …
JON FAINE:
We can’t sit at the table and demand that the Chinese and the Indians clean up their act if we are not prepared to do something ourselves. Surely we are one of the wealthiest nations with the highest standard of living who can afford to do something.
How can we tell poor countries to do something if we won’t?
ANDREW ROBB:
We agree. We have a program that is available to the government and they have picked up elements of it, where you can encourage, you can help to pay for companies to store carbon and to take measures which reduce the amount of carbon that they use and the amount of emissions that they make. But you can do that without bringing in a carbon tax and you wait and see what the rest of the world does.
We are a minnow in terms of the rest of the world on this issue. We are competing for capital all around the world. The generators are looking to invest in coal-fired power production, electricity production and they will go where they will get the best return.
If we put a carbon tax on of $40, $50 per tonne we will not be competitive, electricity prices will go up, emissions will go overseas, jobs will go overseas. It’s a futile exercise for Australia to move ahead of the world. This is pure politics this is Bob Brown dictating to the government. This is a prime minister who has no authority and is simply playing politics to try and hold onto power, to hold onto groups within the community so that she can stay in power.
This is not in Australia’s interests and it is not thought out. It is pure politics.
JON FAINE:
I’m grateful to you and we’ve had equal time from Bob Brown and this morning from Andrew Robb as well, Shadow Minister for Finance, Debt Reduction and Deregulation.