Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

asked the Minister representing the Treasurer, upon notice, on 18 August 2011:

With reference to the Treasury Carbon Tax modelling, ‘Strong Growth, Low Pollution: Modelling a carbon price’:

(1) Is it correct that Treasury did not use Warwick McKibbin’s G-Cubed model on this occasion for any of its modelling; if so, why not, given the G-Cubed model is a highly regarded global model which has been widely used for precisely these sorts of exercises, and it was used for the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme modelling in 2008.

(2) Is it correct that, for the 2008 modelling (Australia’s Low Pollution Future), the G-Cubed results for the 5 per cent emissions reduction scenario showed a cost to the level of Gross Domestic Product in 2030 that was more than twice as large as in the Global Trade and Environment Model (GTEM).

(3) Is it correct that, for the 2008 modelling (Australia’s Low Pollution Future), the G-Cubed results for the 5 per cent emissions reduction scenario showed only just over half as much abatement being achieved globally via internationally-linked Emission Trading Schemes (ETS), in 2050, as the GTEM model.

(4) Is it good modelling practice in general – especially for complex exercises like Carbon Tax Modelling that are potentially so dependent on assumptions about factors such as technological progress – to run several different models so as to allow comparison of the results (as was done in 2008).