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:

Given that the Treasury modelling asserts on p. 3 of the 'Overview' that 'delaying global action by 3 years adds around 20 per cent to the first year global mitigation cost':

(1) How can the notion that delay is very costly be reconciled with the fact that in the latter part of the modelling horizon, under what is supposedly the optimal approach to emissions reduction (global carbon pricing), the world does a huge fraction of its 'abatement' simply by borrowing abatement from the future.

(2) How can such a 'delay', year after year through this latter part of the modelling horizon, be economically desirable as part of a global market mechanism, when far smaller scale delay earlier on is reportedly very costly.

(3) If such global delay were not allowed later on, how much higher would the global carbon price need to be in 2050 than its projected level of $131 per tonne in real, 2010 Australian dollars.