Lisa Singh (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Acting Deputy President. The fact that Australia is introducing the biggest carbon tax in the world is simply not right. People who make this claim ignore two things. Firstly, several countries have carbon prices similar to or even higher than Australia's. These include—for Senator Williams's information—Norway's carbon price, which on petrol is up to A$64, and Switzerland's carbon price, which is around $37. Sweden has a tax on heating fuels of $145. Ireland has a carbon tax of around $24. Finland's taxes on fuels range from $38 to $76. In Canada, the province of British Columbia's carbon tax is around $28. The UK has introduced a price floor for the electricity sector starting at $24 from next year.

While Australia's headline carbon price starts very much at $23 a tonne, the government is giving extensive assistance, as those senators opposite would know, to industries that compete in those international markets. Those industries, like steel, aluminium, oil refining, papermaking, cement manufacturing and the like, will get up to something like 94.5 per cent of their carbon permits from the government for free. That means that the effective carbon price they will pay is actually $1.30 a tonne, not the headline $23 a tonne—which is the other lack of detail and myth that Senator Cormann, along with those other senators, likes to contribute. It is actually $1.30 a tonne through the fact that, through the government's package, we have addressed those industries I have listed that will get extensive support to compete in those international markets. That, of course, in turn will support jobs in those industries, which obviously face strong international competition.

I think I also heard Senator Cormann allude to the fact that our climate change package, our carbon price, will not actually achieve anything—that it will not actually cut Australia's emissions. Again, that is another furphy, another myth by Senator Cormann. The carbon price will exactly reduce Australia's carbon emissions—by at least 150 million tonnes, in fact, in 2020. That is the equivalent of taking more than 45 million cars off the road by 2020. How will that be achieved? The carbon price will not only apply, of course, to the large emitters such as the coal-fired electricity generators and other large industrial activities. Those emitters will have to buy a carbon permit from the government for each tonne of carbon pollution that they put into the atmosphere each year, which creates very much a powerful incentive to cut their pollution. When the carbon price moves to an emissions trading scheme from 2015-16, the government will put a limit, or cap, on the number of carbon permits it issues each year. This cap is how the government ensures Australia will meet its targets for reducing carbon pollution. Both sides of politics have agreed that Australia should reduce its carbon pollution to a level five per cent below the year 2000 level, by 2020. The difference is that we understand that the carbon price—the carbon-pricing system, the ETS—is the best way of achieving this pollution reduction target at the lowest cost to our economy.

I have been able to demonstrate in my contribution some of the ways in which this motion by Senator Cormann is about fearmongering and not putting forward the truth about the government's carbon-pricing scheme. Senator Cormann's motion is about denying that there is actually a problem. It is about not accepting the science, not wanting to act and misleading those in the community who actually listen to them. That is what I have been able to demonstrate through my contribution today—that some of Senator Cormann's contribution to this debate is nothing but fabrication.

I could go on to talk about a number of other claims made by Senator Cormann and other opposition senators: their fearmongering about the cost-of-living impact, their claim that the carbon price will not achieve anything; their claim that the carbon price will make electricity prices rise astronomically or their argument that, since Australia only produces a fraction of global emissions, there is no point in acting. We have all heard the opposition this week blame the carbon price for job losses at Fairfax and for electricity price rises—when the carbon price is not even in yet. It is not even 1 July, but we already have the opposition out there front-footing it: 'Blame the carbon price. Let's blame everything on the carbon price.' That will be their next mantra—in fact it has already started being their mantra this week. It is an easy stock standard line they can throw around to try to generate more fear in the community and to put more mistruth into the debate.

We all know very well that recent electricity price rises have been driven by the fact that a lot of the infrastructure that provides our electricity is ageing—it is really old. Coming from Tasmania, I can certainly attest to that. We have one of the oldest hydro schemes in the country and, yes, those wires and that infrastructure need to be updated. The electricity price rises were certainly not the result of a carbon price that has not even come in yet. It will start on 1 July. When it does, we know that the sky will not fall in and that we will be acting to reduce our carbon emissions—and that is good for Australia and Australia's children.