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Carbon Pricing on Q&A (Read 404 times)

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Carbon Pricing on Q&A
Nov 12^th, 2013 at 3:10pm

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s3873461.htm#transcript

LES GALLAGHER: Thanks Tony. I'd like to ask if any of the business people on the panel supports the carbon tax.

TONY JONES: Carol Schwartz?

CAROL SCHWARTZ: I think that when you think back to 2007/2008, there was an absolute consensus in this country about the need to deal with carbon emissions. The fact is that Australia is the second largest polluter per capita globally of carbon and I don't think that any of us are very proud of that. And I think that the carbon tax, although a good - well, sorry was meant to be the first stage of the Emission Trading Scheme and Julia Gillard herself has said that, by calling it a carbon tax she actually created a big problem for herself, a political problem. So all of a sudden, the consensus that had been gained was actually lost and it became a political football. I actually think that had she said, "This is the first stage of the carbon trading scheme and we are then moving into the global market for carbon", I think that it would have been much more successful and I think that we, as a nation, would have been very happy to accept that.

TONY JONES: John Symond, let's hear you on that. I mean the carbon tax, of course, was named that by Julia Gillard when asked a question about it. Do you think the carbon tax or a carbon price is still a good idea?

TONY JONES: No. I think there needs to be a price on carbon but I think the way it was structured as a carbon tax was the wrong way to go and I still firmly believe that is the wrong way to go but there needs to be a price on carbon.

TONY JONES: Graham Bradley? There needs to be a price on carbon?

GRAHAM BRADLEY: Well, I'm not quite so convinced what we put in place here was a good idea and the way it was implemented. We had one of the highest taxes on carbon of any country in the world. Much, much higher than the Europeans. Much, much higher than any other country has put in place and that's been a huge impost on Australian industry. It's lost us jobs. It’s sent overseas jobs. It's closed smelters. It's had quite an impact on the Australian economy and that's why I think there has been a popular mandate for the repeal of that tax. It was too far, too soon without the backing of an international agreement.

TONY JONES: The Australian Industry Group says that we shouldn't expect prices to drop once the carbon tax is axed, if it is axed, because most businesses did not pass on the cost of the carbon tax. Is that true in your experience?

GRAHAM BRADLEY: Look, there is a lot of factors that go to make electricity prices go up, as they have, you know, significantly for most Australians’ households and businesses over recent times. For example, the carbon tax was just one of them. There is also the price of gas, there’s also the cost of linking renewable energy and wind farms into our system and the capital cost associated with that. So it would be wrong to expect a sudden and dramatic reduction in all costs across the economy by abolishing just one of the factors that's affected that.

TONY JONES: Elizabeth?

ELIZABETH PROUST: It was a broken promise and it looked and felt like a broken promise. The price was too high. But I don't know anybody who doesn't believe that climate change is real and we do need to deal with our emissions. The problem, I think, as Carol has pointed out, the consensus about it broke down and broke down early, so that it became a divisive issue, both in the community and between the political parties and getting back to some kind of consensus is now going to be hard.

TONY JONES: Do you agree with both Carol and John there still should be a carbon price?

ELIZABETH PROUST: There should be a carbon price and an Emission Trading Scheme and I don't think there is many people in business who would disagree with that.

TONY JONES: See, the Coalition is going to find that surprising, because their basic argument is we will get rid of the carbon tax and business confidence will go back up again.

ELIZABETH PROUST: Well, I think that’s, again, another difference between being in Opposition and being in Government. It is easy in opposition to have the, you know, stop the boats, end the carbon tax, but when you get into government you actually have to do something about the fundamental causes of those issues.

TONY JONES: Do you think business is actually saying this to government at the highest levels? Because we now have a coalition government and it’s absolutely set on having no carbon tax, no carbon price, no Emissions Trading Scheme and yet we hear a kind of consensus on this table that there should be a carbon price and an Emissions Trading Scheme?

CAROL SCHWARTZ: Tony, can I just say one thing? I want to agree with Elizabeth and I was at a number of international conferences - I don't know, five, seven years ago - where each CEO of multinational companies were saying they were already putting a price on carbon. That's the way that they were costing their businesses. They were putting a price on carbon and I believe that a number of the Australian businesses do as well.

[continued ...]

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Re: Carbon Pricing on Q&A
Reply #1 - Nov 12^th, 2013 at 3:11pm

[... contiuned]

TONY JONES: Let’s go to, yeah, David Knox.

DAVID KNOX: Yeah, as Carol says we have been assuming and modelling in our economics a price on carbon for a very long time. The key issue here is we need to have, ultimately, a global price on carbon in order to really make this scheme work. A global price. But in the meantime, you know, the Government has chosen to go to direct action policy. That's clearly their choice and we, as business, will support them in moving to that. But the fundamental thing here is we want to achieve two things. We want Australia to remain competitive. You know, that's extremely important, and we want to drive down our carbon footprint. So we want to achieve those dual things and through Direct Action that can be done, provided we get it right. So we now need to engage with Government to get that right. The second thing we need to think about is we need to think in the longer term. Now, how are we going to get our emissions down in the Australian economy so they go down and they stay down? And you’ve really got a few levers. You haven’t got very many. I would say you’ve got three levers to pull and you’ve got to decide, through science and through discussion, how are you going to do that? So how much coal do you burn in the economy? How much gas do you burn in the economy and how much renewables do you want? Those are your three levers and it’s important you think about that very hard. The key thing here is, I think, everybody in this room understands if we can get our emissions down - right now we produce about 0.9 tonnes of carbon for every megawatt hour. I would challenge that we could get emissions in Australia down by, say, half of that if we really went for it, if we pulled those levers in the correct way, by mixing renewables, mixing gas and then basically keeping the coal to a bare minimum in order to provide base load we can do it and that, I think, is the real challenge that we need to set ourselves going forward over the next five to 10 years.

TONY JONES: David, one of the fundamental reasons for a carbon price, carbon tax, was to actually make it competitive for gas-fired power stations to work compared to coal fired power stations. In other words to price in the pollution from a coal fired power station, gas being quite a bit cleaner. So can you make that work in another way with a direct action policy?

DAVID KNOX: Yes, I believe - obviously the Government hasn't rolled out the actual details of the direct action policy but, yes, clearly they could. They could do that by fundamentally reducing the amount of brown coal that's burned in our economy. That's why our emissions are quite high. They are at, as I say, about 0.9 tonnes per megawatt hour. The state I live in, in South Australia, where we have far less coal in the mix and we have a lot of renewables - we have 25% renewables in South Australia and we combine it with gas - those emissions are down to 0.6 tonnes per megawatt hour. So it is absolutely feasible to bring emissions down by playing with the levers, adjusting the mix and, frankly, South Australia has done it and done it very effectively.

TONY JONES: But you can only do that by taxing the polluters can’t you or by penalising the polluters?

DAVID KNOX: No, you don’t need to. You need to make choices and they need to be based on science and you need to use obviously the taxation system wisely but you need to do it in such a way that you get the outcome you want, which is to lower the carbon footprint and yet we want this economy to stay fully competitive.

TONY JONES: Okay. I’m just going to - Graham wants to get involved, so I want to go quickly to that questioner on the floor. Go ahead.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: On that carbon footprint, on that, what is the real tangible difference, in the former Government's scheme or the current Government's scheme, to the environment? I put it to you it’s zero.

TONY JONES: Okay. We will take that as a comment. Let’s hear from Graham Bradley?

GRAHAM BRADLEY: Yeah. I was going to make the point, Tony, that the country in the world that has made the greatest reduction in its carbon emissions is the United States and it didn't sign up to Kyoto and it hasn't put a tax on carbon and it’s done it by a regulations of the emissions of vehicles, which is a direct action sort of technique, and it’s also brought on stream a great abundance of coal seam and shale gas, which has allowed it to substitute for higher emission technologies for electricity. So there is a country that has used technology and science and its natural resources to, in fact, address this problem without a carbon tax or a price on emissions.

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BatteriesNotIncluded Gold Member Offline MediocrityNET: because people died for this! Posts: 26966	Re: Carbon Pricing on Q&A Reply #2 - Nov 12^th, 2013 at 3:17pm It's already priced in
Back to top	Sure....they're anti competitive as any subsidised job is. It wouldn't be there without the tax payer. Very damned difficult for a brainwashed collectivist to understand that I know.... (swaggy) IP Logged

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