‘Why the hell did we ever drop it?’: Labor should push for new carbon tax, ex-Treasury head says
‘Why the hell did we ever drop it?’: Labor should push for new carbon tax, ex-Treasury head says
Some related reading from The Conversation that I liked when I was doing exploratory background reading for some related uni work a few months back:
I thought it was particularly funny how the first of these articles is saying that it is/was a good time to try for a carbon tax again and that the alternatives are essentially inadequate, while the second one says:
[...] Importantly, they found most emissions reduction relied on a mix of policies. The results point to a way forward for Australia, where an economy-wide carbon price is currently politically impossible.
I don't think I made use of that juxtaposition in my assignment but now I can use it to write a comment which four people will read :'D
Whether the author of article 1 is right (it's close to a silver bullet policy and is politically feasible) or whether the author of article 2 is right (it's both not a silver bullet and politically impossible) I don't know.
I read your comment. I wonder if I'm the first, second, third or fourth reader.
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You dropped it because you were in minority government and Abbott was raking you over the coals talking about a "big new tax". If I remember, what's his excuse?
The truth is they didn't drop it, because a carbon tax was never a Labor policy. Both Rudd and Gillard presented emissions trading schemes to Parliament. The difference was in the details of those ETSes, with Rudd's being estimated by his own treasury modelling to not result in any decrease in emissions until 2035. That's why the Greens pushed back and later worked with Gillard to pass a much better ETS that actually showed a decrease from day one.
I'm fairly ignorant about carbon taxes. How do they work roughly?
the government charges carbon emitters for their emissions - this is done in multiple ways, but the gist is big polluters (power generation, industrial, etc) are charged at the source and things like petrol is charged at the pump
as part of taxes, or whatever other means, the revenues from that tax is evenly distributed back to the population
this makes the cost of carbon-heavy products more expensive, making carbon neutral products cheaper relative to them
it also means that if you live a carbon neutral life, you’ll end up paying no tax, and just getting a nice payout to offset the slight extra you paid for eg green energy
carbon trading schemes are different
it’s all very elegant imo, but the language is bad (nobody likes new taxes) and the govt didn’t do a good job at marketing the chunk of cash they were giving everyone
Well, making necessities more expensive is difficult to sell no matter how it’s packaged. Like it or not, oil is used in everything from transporting food, to growing food, to medicine and supplements, to commuting for work, to home insulation and building, to iPhones and computers. Making those things more expensive, no matter the righteousness of the intention, hurts especially the working classes and the poor. Targeted subsidies to compensate them for their loss is impossible to fairly calibrate, and usually results in even greater political turmoil.
Carbon taxes can work if the country is wealthy and can afford the productivity loss (and the citizens are willing to give up that economic progress and wealth). Given the relatively small size of Australia, and the tiny reduction in global CO2 output relative to the exponentially higher output of China alone, I think most Australians believe the very small ecological benefits are vastly outweighed by the social and economic costs. Such a tax is political suicide right now. Making the cost of housing and transport and food more expensive given current geopolitical events would be highly irresponsible.
Let's call it a Carbon Tariff, they're so hot right now.
A carbon tax is political suicide now, thanks Bandt.