Big business has reacted with dismay as the uncertainty surrounding Australian climate policy grew after a pledge by the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, to repeal any carbon price that had been legislated with the agreement of Labor, the Greens and the independents.
”We argued long and hard … for a bipartisan approach on this important issue in the interests of longer-term certainty,” said the president of the Business Council of Australia, Graham Bradley. ”As soon as that breaks down we are in a very difficult political environment for business.
”We are heading into extremely uncertain territory … we have nothing more than a framework from the government, all the devil will be in the detail … we would prefer the two major parties to come together so there is some longevity to the policy.”
The chief executive of the Energy Supply Association of Australia, Brad Page, urged the main parties to work together because electricity sector investors needed ”an equitable and enduring greenhouse gas emissions price signal”. This could be achieved only ”through bipartisan policy agreement”.
Mr Abbott raised the political stakes in the carbon price battle yesterday, winning shadow cabinet endorsement for a pledge that the Coalition would rescind any carbon price in place when it came to office.
Seeking to concentrate the debate on the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard’s honesty and ”lack of mandate” for a carbon tax, rather than on climate science or the as-yet-unresolved details of the proposal, Mr Abbott said of the carbon price: ”We will oppose it in opposition. We will rescind it in government.”
The chief executive of the Australian Industry Group, Heather Ridout, said there was so much uncertainty about the details of Labor’s plan as well as the Coalition’s intended ”direct action” alternative that all options had to stay on the table. This included the possibility of ”rolling back” the tax.
But the chief executive of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Peter Anderson, backed the rationale argued in shadow cabinet - that it was desirable and possible to scrap the proposed scheme during its first three to five years, when it was in effect working as a tax rather than as a market.
Sources said there was general agreement in shadow cabinet that the Coalition had so vociferously opposed a carbon price it had little choice but to promise to repeal it. Some members who had previously supported an emissions trading scheme agreed to the stance because Labor is in the first instance proposing a tax rather than a market.
Malcolm Turnbull, who lost the Coalition leadership over his support for an emissions trading scheme, said yesterday that he still supported the principle of a market mechanism but the scheme likely to emerge ”from this Green-Labor coalition … is likely to be a very extreme, economically damaging model”.
In a fiery question time dominated by the climate issue, Ms Gillard branded Mr Abbott’s decision to repeal the tax ”the most reckless political position taken by a national leader in the last 15 years” and promised Labor would stare him down and ”get this done”.
The Greens leader, Bob Brown, said Mr Abbott’s taxpayer-funded alternative, to cost $3.2 billion in its first three years, proved the Coalition leader was ”the doyen of featherbedding the big polluters against the interests of the average Australian”.
The Coalition’s ”direct action” plan, released in February last year, envisaged a review in 2015 to consider whether international negotiations had progressed far enough for Australia to adopt a carbon price. But Mr Abbott said yesterday the United Nations meeting in Copenhagen in 2009 had ”changed everything” and the world was now ”moving against cap and trade systems”.
