Greg Combet (Charlton, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change, Industry and Innovation) Share this | Hansard source

Firstly, I re-emphasise that the carbon price that the government announced in 2011 and implemented effective from 1 July last year is working. I will come to the specifics of the member for Flinder's question but it is important to emphasise that in the first 11 months of the operation of the carbon price mechanism emissions in the national electricity market are down by 7.4 per cent. It is an equivalent of a 12-million-tonne reduction of greenhouse gasses in the national electricity market. Renewable energy generation in the market is up almost 30 per cent, all at the same time as the economy is growing with the national accounts confirming today an annualised rate of growth in real GDP of 2.5 per cent.

Since carbon pricing started 150,000 jobs have been created, inflation is contained, the CPI impact has been less than the Treasury modelling suggested, millions of households have been assisted with tax cuts, along with increases in family tax benefits, higher pensions and allowances. The impact on the cost of living having been lower than anticipated, of course that household assistance goes further. So, all the nonsense that the coalition have gone on about is to be regarded with the greatest scepticism. There is not one thing that has been said in the terror campaign that the coalition has run about carbon pricing that has had the slightest bit of validity, integrity or legitimacy—all rubbish.

Part of what we announced in 2011, so it is not new at all, is that until 30 June 2014 there will be no effective equivalent carbon price imposed on heavy on-road vehicles. That remains the case. The budget does reflect the policy provision that was announced in 2011, that the government is committed to and that is reflected in the budget papers, that there would be an equivalent carbon price on heavy on-road vehicles subject to the specific detail that would be brought forward from 1 July 2014.

This is important to contemplate from the stand point that the coalition have gone running around for the last two years arguing that the carbon price is going to destroy the economy—it has not and we now have had 11 months of experience. They said it would be the end of the world—it has not been the end of the world—and that the price was going to go up and up and up. Now they are running around because of low market prices in the European market, arguing it is terrible because it is going to go down and down and down.

Contained in the budget are revised projections, independently formulated by the Treasury, for carbon pricing from the time that we move to an internationally linked emissions trading scheme on 1 July 2015. I am sure that the member is well familiar with them. That means from 1 July 2015, subject of course to the market conditions and there are two more budgets before that time when Treasury will of course be revising their projections and ultimately their estimates and forecasts as that time nears, the price may be lower than the coalition is endeavouring to try to terrify people, including those in the heavy on-road vehicle industry.

The carbon price is an important environmental reform. It has been implemented in an economically responsible manner. It has been implemented in a manner that is socially fair—

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