Page 1741 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 1 May 2012
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autumn and spring. We have the government actually acknowledging that Canberra families will feel it.
It is worth commenting in this context on their efforts. We have a carbon tax that is actually supported by ACT Labor, supported by Katy Gallagher. Of course, this carbon tax will make their 40 per cent meaningless. They have got a 40 per cent target which they are going to subject Canberrans to. Canberrans will be asked to pay extra for that 40 per cent target, but we will also be asked to pay a lot extra under the carbon tax. As Richard Dennis says, under the carbon tax legislation any efforts to reduce emissions here in our community will simply allow more pollution to be emitted in other states. It does not have to be this way. Local efforts can make a difference, but for this to be so the federal legislation needs to be amended.
Did Labor ask for that to be amended? No, they did not. They support a carbon tax, which is going to put all these cost pressures on Canberrans, at the same time as they support a 40 per cent reduction target, which is going to put on extra cost pressures. But under the very carbon tax they support, those extra efforts, those extra costs, those extra burdens on Canberra families will do nothing, absolutely nothing, to reduce emissions in Australia. That is how the carbon tax has been put together by the Labor Party and the Greens.
We had Brian Hatch, an old Labor friend, saying:
… can I suggest we abandon green ideology before all private employment in the ACT moves across the border. Spain has already been down the green energy path. Its unemployment rate is now 20 per cent.
It is actually a lot higher than that now. People rightly ask why it is they have a government that wants to impose this burden. The response, of course, from federal Labor is: “We’ll compensate you. So we’re going to impose this cost burden, but we’ll compensate you.” That causes one to ask the question: what is it all about? It is about a very, very large tax that is going to have no environmental benefit. While some families will be compensated, many will be compensated either not at all or very little. In fact, in Canberra most families will not be adequately compensated. Most families will be paying a lot more.
The ICRC has said that there will be a $244 increase as of 1 July in power bills and that the vast bulk of that comes as a result of the carbon tax. Some of that, of course, is as a result of the feed-in tariff. So Canberrans are being asked to pay $220-odd extra every year over the next few years once it is fully implemented as a result of the feed-in tariff. They are going to be asked to pay at this stage about $200 extra on electricity just as a result of the carbon tax. All of these cost pressures are piling on and piling on and piling on. If you are a family, say, with three kids—a family of five—you might have an increase that is significantly more than that average.
Families who can least afford it—of course, many families in the suburbs, whether they live in suburbs in Tuggeranong, in places like Conder and Banks and Gordon, or whether they live in places like Amaroo or Gungahlin itself, or whether they live in Dunlop, are going to be forced to pay more. If they have got two or three kids, they
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