By Andrew Bolt ~
The IPA’s Alan Moran on the latest carbon tax con:
MYSTERIOUSLY, once the election was over, an OECD report with a Treasury official’s input emerged indicating the carbon tax would need to be 10 times the EU rate and twice the $38-per-tonne level posited by Treasury to allow Australia to meet its 5 per cent carbon reduction goal…
The OECD report indicates that unless the developing world also implemented a carbon tax, Australia would see considerable de-industrialisation, moderated only by a retreat into an illegal protectionist regime. And the competitive pressures would further intensify if, as appears likely, Japan, the US and other OECD countries also reject a carbon tax.
This is contrary to the official Treasury line that we need a price on carbon now, that the longer we wait the more painful the transition and that the costs will be trivial. Treasury secretary Martin Parkinson would have known of the report’s findings months ago.
But the Abbott Government shouldn’t stop at cutting the carbon tax to save us from rising power bills and job losses:
…even if the carbon tax legislation is repealed, the subsidies to wind and photovoltaics remain through the 20 per cent Renewable Energy Target.
Aside from undermining the commerciality of lower-cost fossil fuel-based generators, by 2019 these subsidies will raise the average wholesale cost of electricity by 40 per cent.
I don’t understand why the Coalition didn’t commit immediately to scrapping the RET when it hurts the economy and scars the environment with hideous wind farms, yet does nothing to cut the world’s temperature – which may not be rising anyway.
Andrew Bolt is a journalist and columnist writing for The Herald Sun in Melbourne Victoria Australia.
Andrew Bolt’s columns appear in Melbourne’s Herald Sun, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and Adelaide’s Advertiser. He runs the most-read political blog in Australia and hosts Channel 10’s The Bolt Report each Sunday at 10am. He is also heard from Monday to Friday at 8am on the breakfast show of radio station MTR 1377, and his book Still Not Sorry remains very widely read.
Read more excellent articles from Andrew Bolt’s Blog . http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/
