The Coalition will stop federal funding for clean energy commitments as well as abolish the carbon price if it wins government.
Opposition finance spokesman Andrew Robb today labelled the planned Clean Energy Finance Corporation a reckless slush fund.
“This will be a referendum, the next election, on the carbon tax and all of the associated reckless actions that this government has put in place including this $10 billion slush fund,” he told ABC Radio.
The corporation would only “fund projects that the private sector won’t touch with a barge pole”.
The Coalition would not back out of any contracts the corporation had already signed, but Mr Robb expected it would not be set up for at least another year and so would not have been running for long by the time of the next election, due in late 2013.
But Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the Coalition was just “huffing and puffing” with its claims of repealing the carbon price and associated schemes.
“I did note yesterday that [the opposition’s] climate change spokesperson is now saying if they were ever elected to government in this country, they’d have a white paper,” she told ABC Radio in Wollongong.
“That is code for they’d have an expert study to help them climb down from all the false promises they’re now making about repeal to the Australian community.”
Australian Greens leader Bob Brown said if the opposition stymied energy investment there could be “a shortage of energy” as well as ramped up energy prices.
Ms Gillard later told reporters in Wollongong that Mr Abbott would walk away from his “blood oath promises” to repeal the carbon pricing legislation.
“Underneath all of this carry-on, all of this feverish campaigning, Mr Abbott is on the record supporting a price on carbon,” she said.
“His so-called promises to repeal it are absolutely hollow.”
