Greg Combet (Charlton, Australian Labor Party, Minister Assisting the Minister for Climate Change) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Lindsay for his question. The most efficient and the most cost-effective way to combat climate change is to implement an emissions trading scheme. It is demonstrably the sound economic approach to reducing emissions, and that is the government’s policy. In contrast, the coalition’s policy will not work. The Department of Climate Change, of course, has modelled that under their policy emissions will rise by 13 per cent over 2000 levels by 2020. In addition to that, we know that their policy will cost more. The scheme will have a greater fiscal impact than they have stated. In addition, we know that taxpayers will pay, not the emitters of carbon pollution, and all the costs are going to be on the budget. It is going to put pressure on to force up taxes.

On that front, we know that their policy is not funded. But now we are learning even more from other analyses of their policy. This is what Mr David Pearce, the director of the Centre for International Economics who last year conducted a review of greenhouse policy for the coalition, had to say. It was reported in the Financial Review yesterday:

… the apparent simplicity of the coalition plan would soon disappear if it were ever implemented … The cost of the scheme could also rise significantly once details such as penalties and assignment of risk were taken into account …

So an expert that the coalition have relied upon in the climate change policy area is saying that their plan is too complex, it is incomplete and the costs will go up. Yesterday, in addition, as the Prime Minister just adverted to, Senator Joyce again was out there saying that business will be subject to unspecified penalties, but he has no idea what the penalties will be, how they will be applied or who is going to be liable for them, and no-one in the business community has any idea whatsoever what costs they are going to have to meet. Talk about business uncertainty! It is a policy for chaos.

Just before question time, a fresh analysis of coalition policy was issued by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. They have done an analysis of the opposition policy. They have estimated that the opposition climate plan ‘would result in an average carbon price of $64 per tonne over four years’, compared to a carbon price under the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme of only $14 a tonne. Part of their reasoning for that analysis, which is quite a stunning assessment of the cost of their policy, is that the CPRS will be more cost effective because it is a market based mechanism. Is it any wonder the business community is running away from you? You are creating uncertainty and cost, and it will affect investment and jobs.

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