Page 1748 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 1 May 2012
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federal colleagues believe and what their Liberal Party counterparts all over the country are arguing. So the question for those opposite will be: what is their position? Will they stand up for Canberra? Will they stand up for the fair distribution of the GST? This issue is significantly greater in terms of fiscal impact on the territory budget than any cost implications from the carbon tax. If we are going to be real about the economic debate for this territory and we are going to be real about the debate around the territory budget then the biggest single risk to our economy and to our budget is Tony Abbott: 12,000 jobs to go and now he wants to rip $165 million of revenue off the territory. (Time expired.)
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Leader, ACT Greens) (5.11): I welcome the opportunity to speak on this matter of public importance. The new commonwealth scheme to price carbon will be compensated and this will actually exceed the amount of the carbon price that Canberrans may incidentally incur. In their draft determination of the 2012-14 retail electricity prices the ICRC predicts that electricity prices will increase by 17.22 per cent, of which 13 per cent is attributable to the carbon price with the remainder attributable to network costs. The contribution of the carbon price to this amounts to an additional $3.65 in weekly energy bills.
However, this will be more than offset by the $10.10 weekly compensation provided as part of the federal government’s clean energy future package. I understand that the average total impact of the carbon price package on households will be about $9 and, as I said, the compensation to be provided is $10.10. So households will be compensated $50 a year and real action on climate change seems quite a reasonable deal to me.
I think it is important to make the point that in its determination report the ICRC also emphasised that the impact of the carbon price is highly uncertain, noting that the current estimates may or may not turn out to reflect the actual impact of the introduction of the carbon price. What this means is that the carbon price associated component of the 17 per cent price increase is based on little more than expectations of the big polluters and really reflects an ambit claim by the fossil fuel industry, who are determined to vilify any and all action on climate change.
There can be no doubt that it is in everyone’s collective and individual interests to tackle climate change. This will inevitably involve some costs, but the reality is that over time the costs will be far less the earlier we act. There are costs to addressing climate change, but what we know for certain is that the most expensive way of dealing with climate change is to do nothing—to stick our heads in the sand and do nothing.
I would say that the other certainty is that those that act first and those that act fastest will do best and over time will incur the lowest costs in the transition away from fossil fuels and towards renewable technologies. Making polluters pay and driving the development of renewable energy is the best way to protect Canberrans and the Canberra budget from the future cost increases that will inevitably come from the impacts of climate change.
On the issue of the costs to the budget from the increase in electricity prices the first point to make is that, thanks to the parliament agreement item providing for greater
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