Prime Minister Julia Gillard says she is unfazed by the “scare campaign” surrounding her proposed carbon tax and emissions trading scheme.
Ms Gillard said figures widely quoted about the hip-pocket impact of the initial fixed price for carbon, which would come in three to five years before an ETS starts, were misleading.
The figures, used by Opposition Leader Tony Abbott in parliament this week, showed a $26/tonne carbon tax would push up power bills by an average $300 a year and fuel prices by 6.5 cents a litre.
“Those figures in newspapers are speculation and they are not dealing with the assistance that we will be providing to households,” Ms Gillard told reporters in Canberra today.
“Mr Abbott is someone who believes in scare campaigns.”
It has been estimated a $26/tonne carbon tax would raise around $15 billion a year.
Ms Gillard said the biggest use of the revenue would go to “assisting households”.
The prime minister said she expected a “fast and furious” debate, as the multi-party climate change committee negotiated the detail of the final scheme to start from July 1, 2012.
But she said the scheme was necessary.
“We cannot be stranded with a high pollution economy as the world changes,” she said.
She dismissed claims that she misled voters at the 2010 election over the carbon tax.
The Labor leader said her party had tried to introduce an emissions trading scheme in 2009, but had been blocked by the Greens and the coalition.
“Does anybody seriously contend at the end of that political debate … that the Labor party didn’t believe in pricing carbon?” she said.
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said no one should assume the carbon tax would get up, likening it to the shelving of the Rudd government’s original mining tax.
“There will be a people’s revolt against this,” he told ABC Radio.
“I don’t think anyone should assume that this tax is going to get up.”
Nationals senator Fiona Nash said the government had declined to rule out the carbon tax being applied to transport fuel.
“In terms of transport and farmers, who have huge transport costs, it will be enormous,” she said.
“If the rest of the world is not doing this, it’s not going to make the slightest difference to the globe if Australia - which contributes 1.5 per cent of global emissions - leads the world on this.”
