Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

I did not catch the first part; I think it was the IBIS report. I will make a couple of comments in terms of the advice I have from Minister Combet. This is modelling which overstates the impacts of the carbon price. It does not consider the impact of government assistance programs and it assumes no improvement in the emissions performance of farms or downstream processes. We would refer you, Senator Williams, to the modelling undertaken by the Australian Treasury, which takes into account changes in the prices received for Australia's agricultural exports as well as cost changes. When these important effects are taken into account, Treasury modelling shows that output from Australian agricultural industries will continue to grow by 12 per cent between now and 2020 and by over 130 per cent by 2050.

The senator would probably also be aware—I think he might have asked me about it previously—of the detailed modelling and the impacts for carbon pricing by the Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences released late last year, which shows that at most the carbon price would have a 0.37 per cent impact on the cost of dairy farmers per unit, about 0.9 on wheat farmers and 0.26 per cent on sheep farmers. These numbers do not take into account the benefits of the Clean Technology Food and Foundries Investment Program, which I spoke about yesterday and which is there to leverage the productivity benefits and cost reductions to food processors across the country. I would suggest to the senator that he would do well for the people he represents if he were not part of making claims which are not backed up by facts and referred people to the assistance that the government is also providing.