CO2 Tax Australia – We Pay Europe $1 Billion For Nothing

Posted on Fri 08/31/2012 by PA Pundits - International

By Andrew Bolt ~

Alan Moran says the Gillard Government’s latest backflip on the carbon tax – letting the price fall to European levels – makes a mad tax even madder:

First it has abandoned the intent of the carbon tax, which as the Government appears to have forgotten, is an 80 per cent reduction in Australian emissions by 2050. Achieving such a level would be impossible at $23 per tonne (a tax that has raised the wholesale price of electricity by 40 per cent). To achieve its 80 per cent emission reduction objective would require a tax of over $150 per tonne… Linking the price to the European floor means it falls to $10, a level that will mean hardly an iota of emission reduction but imposes price rises to consumers and industry that will still drive many firms offshore and shrink the number of the most productive jobs.

Secondly, the fact that the existing and future spending requires a carbon tax of $23 per tonne escalating year by year has been abandoned leaves a massive hole in the budget… Dropping the price to $10 means tax collections halve from the $8 billion or so a year anticipated by the government. And if emitters fulfil all their requirements in emission credits from the EU then the Government will gain no tax…. If 100 million tonnes of carbon dioxide credits are bought in this way that means gifting the EU some $1 billion a year.

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, 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/