Only one way for carbon tax to go – “up and up and up”, Tony Abbott warns
Tony Abbott(Photo: Australian Conservative.)
It was significant that Climate Change Minister Greg Combet said that the carbon tax rate will be well short of $40 a tonne when it first starts, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said yesterday.
“Underline those words ‘when it first starts’ because the point of this tax is that, whatever level it starts at, it’s going to go up and up and up, and I say to the Australian people: you trust this Prime Minister at your peril,” Mr Abbott said.
The Opposition Leader was responding to the disagreement that has arisen between the Gillard Government and one of its partners in power, the Australian Greens, over the rate of the planned carbon tax.
The Greens are pushing for a price of at least $40 a tonne while the Government is believed to be favouring a price of between $20 and $30.
“Never forget that the Prime Minister said six days before the election ‘there will be no carbon tax under the government I lead’. Within a couple of months ‘yes there will be a carbon tax’. So this is a Government which is both incompetent and untrustworthy,” Mr Abbott said during a tour of the Ford Motor Company plant at Geelong yesterday.
“It’s estimated the carbon tax will hit motor manufacturers’ bottom line to the tune of $84 million a year and add $412 to the cost of the car,” he said later on MTR 1377 radio.
“Now, with all the other problems that motor manufacturers face, why hit them with this?
“Now, as someone who drives a Ford Territory I know that Australian motor manufacturers can make a great product, but we’ve got a government who’s trying to make their lives more difficult and I just wonder whether Wayne Swan, who is supposed to be visiting the Kenworth plant today is going to be upfront with people about how much harder it will be to manufacture trucks in Australia with the Government’s carbon tax.”
The proposed carbon dioxide tax only taxes goods made in Australia. Goods made in China/USA etc will have no tax, how does this make sense unless you want to export all manufacturing jobs out of Australia?