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

 

 

Good to have you with us, Mr Abbott.

 

 

Thanks for having me on the programme, Scott.

 

 

Where have you been today?

 

 

Well I’ve just been to Sulo, which is Australia’s largest manufacturer of wheelie bins. It’s here at Somersby.

 

 

I won’t throw in the old, ‘where your wheelie bin’ joke, though!

 

 

And look, the carbon tax, they estimate, will add about $200,000 a year to their power bill and that’s before the carbon tax comes in on their transport bill in 2014, should the Labor Party win the next election. This is just going to be a hit on their bottom line, a potential hit on jobs and the point I make is that I want to repeal the carbon tax because I want to do the right thing by families, I want to do the right thing by businesses, and I think we should have a government whose policy makes our country stronger, not weaker. You see, Sulo are competing against imported wheelie bins and the imported wheelie bins are made in accordance with much less exacting environmental standards, and they will have an additional cost competitive advantage against Sulo because of the carbon tax.

SCOTT LEVI:

 

Mr Hunt called it a tax on electricity. Would there be compensation for businesses like Sulo under this scheme?

 

 

No, absolutely not. You see, there is so-called compensation for taxpayers and for pensioners, there’s so-called compensation for some large businesses, but small and medium-sized businesses don’t get any compensation. So, they either take a hit to their bottom line or they just put up their prices, or they lose staff and in a highly competitive industry like the one that Sulo is in, obviously the first thing that tends to go is employment and that’s the last thing you want at a time like this, businesses having to shed staff because of the carbon tax.

 

 

We’ve had it since the weekend, four days in and the Daily Telegraph doesn’t have a single story to report about the carbon tax today or rather stories of businesses and households failing or falling over, closing down. The main story yesterday was about a business actually trying to use the carbon tax as an excuse to jack up prices before having any indication of what effect it would have. Does this prove that you’re overreacting a bit?

 

Well, don’t forget that the carbon tax is going to go up and up and up and up. It’s $23 a tonne now. Under the Government’s own figures it will be $37 a tonne in 2020 and, would you believe it, $350 a tonne in 2050. So, if the Government is re-elected, this thing is here forever and it’s going to be a permanent hit on families’ cost-of-living, a permanent threat to the security of our jobs and let’s also not forget that it’s a bad tax based on a lie. The Prime Minister gave us a solemn pledge before the last election, ‘There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead’, and having said that to win votes, she reversed that position to save her job in the secret deal she did with the Greens.

 

 

Have you got a good alternative to lower greenhouse gas emissions, because we really can’t lecture the Chinese or the Indians or the Vietnamese, can we, until we get our act together? Per capita, we’re not looking so good.

 

 

Well, I don’t much like lecturing other countries at the best of times, but you know the really crazy thing about this carbon tax is - and again, you’ve got to look at the Government’s own figures - but the really crazy thing about this carbon tax is that the Government’s own figures say that our emissions are going to go up by eight per cent, not down by five per cent despite a carbon tax of $37 a tonne in 2020. So, this is the perversity of this tax. It’s going to hit families and threaten jobs, but it won’t actually reduce our emissions. That’s on the Government’s own figures.

 

 

And Mr Hunt said you’re committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Can you do a better job with the schemes you’re proposing, more green energy? The Government are also saying the difference between your scheme and theirs is that they’re taxing the big polluters, but you’re going to tax the people to prop up the big polluters.

 

 

Well, this is quite misleading as you’d expect from the current government. We’re going to spend about a billion dollars a year, which we’ll find from savings in the Budget, to do things like plant more trees, get more carbon in to soils and use smarter technology. Now, these are the sorts of things which make a lot of sense. Businesses and farmers have been doing this kind of thing anyway without a carbon tax and we’ll give them incentives to do more. We won’t hit them with a great big new tax.

 

 

Mr Hunt said it would be a good idea to get in and clean up dirty power stations. I know the brown coal ones are bigger carbon polluters than the ones around here. How can you go about doing that unless you’ve got a lot of money?

 

 

We think it’s best to clean up power stations, not to close them down, but in any event, the important thing is to try to get Australia’s emissions down and if we get the emissions down, that’s the main thing and we think we can do that through, as I said, more trees, better soil and smarter technology. One of the things that’s often forgotten is that Australia has actually reduced its emissions intensity – not its total emissions, but its emissions intensity, our emissions per year in production, so to speak – we’ve reduced that by 50 per cent over the last two decades, not through a carbon tax but just through businesses taking sensible measures to reduce their power, to reduce their fuel bills and so on and we want to see incentives to business to encourage this, not penalties on business and one of the perverse outcomes of the carbon tax is that it’s actually going to make it harder for many businesses to do the kind of common sense initiatives that they've been undertaking for the last couple of decades.

 

 

Will there be a lag in the effect, because Mr Swan the other day went out and bought his lamb roast for $20 to make the point that Joyce’s claim of $100 under the new tax was irrational. Will there be a lag until these sorts of impacts that some of your colleagues are claiming?

 

 

I think people will really start to notice the bite of the carbon tax when they get their winter power bill. Now, here in New South Wales, power bills are going up on average by about 20 per cent and at least half of that increase is the carbon tax. In some states and territories the carbon tax is bigger because of the unique circumstances of every state and territory’s power generator, but the winter power bills are going to be big ones and they’re going to be made much, much worse because of the carbon tax. As time goes by, it’s just going to go up and up and up and that’s why the best thing I can do for the Australian public, if we want to reduce cost of living pressures and keep jobs more secure, is to repeal the tax.

 

A consumer group was on the other day talking about this problem and it’s a major problem in New South Wales. Seventy-six per cent, I think, increases over the last five or so years. At this next IPART recommendation we’re up around 112 per cent and we pay 50 per cent more for our power, the same power that’s generated by the same places as they do in the ACT.  

 

Well, you’re right. There have been studies coming out by reputable groups that suggest that we have already got the world’s highest power prices, we are now going to have the world’s biggest carbon tax. It just doesn’t make any sense. This is why you’ve now got the Government in panic stations trying to think of ways of changing the carbon tax when it’s just five days into its operation and it wasn’t in The Tele this morning but it certainly was on the front page of The Australian and the point I make is that you can’t fix this tax, you’ve just got to get rid of it and the point I made at Sulo is that if you really want to bin the carbon tax, well, you’ve got to change the government.

 

 

Alright. Considering the carbon tax has practically dropped off the media agenda, are you concerned that the electorate might, this might be a bad move, if it doesn’t pan out the way you’re expecting? You know, running up to a campaign, that it might be seen as a negative campaign?

 

 

I think the next election will be a referendum on the carbon tax. It’ll also be a referendum on Prime Ministers who don’t tell the truth and I don’t think too many members of the public are in favour of more taxes. I don’t think too many members of the public are in favour of politicians who tell fibs. So, I’m confident that electoral justice is going to be handed out to this particular government. I mean, what serious Labor government makes it tougher for families and harder for workers to maintain job security? Yet, that’s exactly why I think a lot of traditional Labor people are shaking their heads in bewilderment and saying, ‘What’s happening to the party I used to support?’

 

 

Alright, Mr Abbott. Thank you very much for joining us on the Central Coast today.

 

 

Lovely to be with you.

 

[ends]