E&OE……………………….…………………………………………………………………

 

 

Tony, good morning.

 

 

Leon, how are you?

 

 

I’m good, thank you. Tony, you’ve constantly said that you will repeal the carbon tax if you are elected. I note that at a mining conference you stated that there are elements of the carbon tax that are going to be very hard to unwind. Would you take this opportunity and tell us what those elements are?

 

 

Well, I was referring, Leon, to the fact that there are tax cuts and pension increases that are part of the carbon tax package and we have to find ways of ensuring that we do give a tax cut without a carbon tax and we do boost pensions without a carbon tax. Now, that’s going to require quite significant savings. I think we’re up to the task because we did it before the last election, we can do it before the coming election. So, the bottom line, Leon, my absolute commitment to the Australian public is that we will repeal the carbon tax. That is an absolute commitment. What we will do though is ensure that you do get tax cuts without a carbon tax and you do get pension increases without a carbon tax.

 

 

Now, one of the changes made to the income tax system is that you don’t pay tax up until $18,000 and again, the carbon tax is part of that. So, you’re going to keep that intact?

 

 

Well, the precise details of how much of the compensation people will keep we will release in good time before the next election but the point I make, Leon, is that if what you’re getting is compensation, it’s not a real tax cut, it’s not a real increase, it’s really just a money-go-round where they take money out of your left pocket and put it into your right pocket. The tax cut and the pension increase that you get under us will be a real tax cut and a real benefit increase because it won’t be compensation for anything. It will be a tax cut and a pension increase which is paid for by sustainable savings in government spending.

 

 

Tony, do you expect businesses who have fixed their prices to the carbon tax, reducing them, if and when you repeal it?

 

 

Look, if the carbon tax is an element of your costs and the carbon tax comes off, your costs should go down and your prices should adjust accordingly, yes, absolutely and the ACCC will be tasked with ensuring that businesses whose costs fall will appropriately reflect that in their prices.

 

So, again you’re going to give the ACCC a task – the task at the moment for them is that nobody can mention the carbon tax as being an increase, but if they do without proving it they can be in trouble, so you’re going to re-task the ACCC?

 

 

That’s essentially correct, Leon. You might remember back when the GST was introduced in 2000, the GST was not a new tax, it was a replacement tax. It replaced the wholesale sales tax which in many instances was considerably higher than the GST and the ACCC was tasked with ensuring that where the wholesale sales tax came off, prices came down and that was why at the time of the introduction of the GST, yes, some prices went up, but quite a few went down as well.

 

 

So, what about the Senate because if you’ve got a situation where the Senate is hostile, even if you win in the lower house, you won’t be able to repeal the carbon tax, will you?

 

 

Well, let me make two points on that. First of all I don’t believe that the Labor Party, having lost an election which is a referendum on the carbon tax, is going to want to commit suicide twice and persist in supporting a carbon tax when the people have just rejected one. So, that’s the first point. The second point, Leon, if I’m wrong on that and if the ALP is completely politically crazy and completely arrogant and out of touch, if I’m wrong on that, well, we won’t hesitate to have a double dissolution because if I go to the election saying, ‘There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead’ and the Senate tries to make that impossible, well, I think I should then use all of the avenues available to me under the Constitution to ensure that I keep my commitments and that’s the big difference, Leon. I want to be a Prime Minister who keeps commitments, unlike the current Prime Minister who breaks commitments.

 

I want to ask you about what the Coalition plans for the environment, because remember, this carbon tax was predicated originally on getting CO2 emissions down, by changing industrial behaviour. That was the ideology. Now, I don’t want to argue about that one way or the other but that was what was said to us during the rhetoric of this whole campaign. What does the Coalition plan to do in lieu of not having a carbon tax to get CO2 emissions down?

 

I’ll come to that in a second, Leon, but before I do it’s worth repeating on your programme that according to the Government’s own modelling, Australia’s emissions go up by eight per cent, not down by five per cent, despite a carbon tax which will be $37 a tonne by 2020. So, this carbon tax will not only hurt families, not only threaten jobs, but it won’t do what it’s supposed to do which is get emissions down. The only way they can actually achieve that five per cent emissions reduction is by spending, in 2020, about $3.5 billion buying foreign carbon credits and that’s why I think this tax is so bizarre, that it doesn’t actually reduce the emissions that it is supposed to reduce.

 

Now, having said all of that, how are we going to reduce emissions? Well, we’ve got a direct action policy and that includes an emissions reduction fund of about $1 billion a year which we’ll find from savings in the Budget and with this money we’re going to go to the market, say to businesses and farmers and community groups, ‘Give us your proposals for reducing emissions,’ and we will support the proposals that we think are the best value way to get emissions down and to help the environment. So, it might be planting more trees, it might be improving soil by getting more carbon capture in soils. It might be using smarter technology like these kind of co-generation power plants that you’re now seeing in various places around the country. So, that’s what we’ll be doing and we are confident that with our direct action policy we can get domestic emissions down by five per cent by 2020.

 

 

One of the senior government ministers, Craig Emerson, was so motivated by the carbon tax, he sang:

 

No Whyalla wipe-out, there on my TV. No Whyalla wipe-out, there on my TV. No Whyalla wipe-out there on my TV, shocking me right out of my brain!

 

 

Leon, you wouldn’t call that singing, surely?

 

 

Well, I’m not going to call it anything except to ask if you have a musical response to Mr Emerson?

 

 

Look, the short answer is no, Leon. I remember years ago reading a Joseph Conrad book where he describes an orchestra playing in some isolated spot as not so much making music as "murdering silence". I think Craig was murdering silence the other day!

 

 

Just quickly, you’re up in Darwin at the moment, you would be aware of accusations that the people smugglers of those last couple of boats that sank deliberately sank the boat. What’s your reaction to that?

 

Well, I don’t know what evidence there is for this and I would like to think that even the people smugglers would not be so utterly callous and evil as to do something like that but certainly these tragic sinkings that we have seen in the last week or so should stiffen our resolve to stop the boats because, in the end, the only way you can stop these tragedies is to stop this trade in people in leaky boats. That’s why I’ve been so adamant all along that the policies that worked have to be put back in place: that’s rigorous offshore processing at Nauru, temporary protection visas to deny the people smugglers a product to sell and the option of turning boats around where it’s safe to do so. Now, I think these policies need to be put in place urgently. I deeply regret that the Prime Minister is constantly procrastinating on this and this idea that she now needs yet another committee, well, it’s a total abdication of leadership from our Prime Minister.

 

 

Tony Abbott, thanks for joining us.

 

 

Thank you, Leon.

 

[ends]