A new Australian manufacturing industry group has launched a fresh attack on the proposed carbon tax.
Manufacturing Australia is a new group that has brought together manufacturers Amcor, BlueScope Steel, Boral and several other companies.
The carbon tax is expected to be voted on in the House of Representatives this week.
The group’s executive chairman, former Reserve Bank board member Dick Warburton, says the bills should at least be deferred until it’s clear how other countries are going to deal with carbon emissions.
“It seems quite wrong to be going ahead of the rest of the world when in fact countries are actually pulling out of carbon taxes and ETSs,” Mr Warburton told ABC Radio.
“And therefore for us to go ahead with very little protection of the emissions at a distinct disadvantage to our economy just doesn’t seem right.
“The manufacturing industries that have received help are very grateful for that help. But it’s not going to be sufficient in the long haul to match the disadvantage held by those other companies in manufacturing areas overseas.”
Mr Warburton defended his support for a carbon tax in 2009, which he said would have operated differently from the current plan.
“Now we’re getting into permits and rights which the ETS is involved in. Once you get permits and rights you are then completely locked into those.
“They happen to be property rights which are almost impossible then to reverse should you find that it’s no point in having a carbon tax when the other countries don’t have it.”
Mr Warburton later told ABC Radio the science on climate change was “definitely not settled” and temperatures had not risen during the past decade in line with modelling.
“Now maybe they’ll come back in line with those models, but they’re certainly not in line with the models at the moment,” he said.
Mr Warburton said there was a significant difference between the introduction of carbon tax and the way the GST was handled.
“The GST was 15 years in the consultative phase,” he said.
“The carbon tax is one that people voted on only a year or so ago against.”
Former prime minister John Howard held lengthy discussions and then put the GST to the Australian people, Mr Warburton said.
“That’s what was sadly missing in the discussion on the minerals super tax. It was sadly missing on the carbon tax.”
The way the government had handled the carbon tax was “a fatal mistake” for its longevity.
