Gillard says a carbon price must be set this year or it will never happen
Sydney Morning Herald
Thursday March 17, 2011
JULIA GILLARD has declared this year the last chance to price carbon as she positioned her government between the two extremes of the Coalition and the Greens in the climate change debate.Delivering the annual Don Dunstan address in Adelaide last night, the Prime Minister acknowledged she was "taking a few knocks" but said, "I chose action over inaction because of this simple truth: if Australia does not adopt a carbon price in 2011, we probably never will."Ms Gillard said only Labor could price carbon while simultaneously protecting existing jobs and creating new ones.By contrast, the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, with his direct-action plan to pick polluters and pay them from the budget to cut emissions, "will cost this nation jobs" because there would be no incentive to develop new, clean technologies.Without naming the Greens, she painted them as the other extreme which would cost existing jobs if their course of action was followed.Ms Gillard cited "some people" who oppose giving compensation to big polluters because it will remove the incentive to decrease emissions.Ms Gillard said emissions-intensive industries which have competitors in countries no carbon price exists needed assistance to help with the transition. She said there would still be an incentive for industries to reduce emissions and jobs would be protected."If the government chose to provide that assistance in the form of free permits as some have suggested, though this decision has yet to be made, these businesses would then have an opportunity to reduce their carbon emissions, sell their surplus permits and actually make money," she said.Ms Gillard said a carbon price would create jobs. She gave as examples welders and steelworkers building and maintaining large-scale solar plants, and plumbers and electricians installing domestic solar energy systems.Ms Gillard said human-induced climate change was real and opinion polls could not change that. "I ask, who would I rather have on my side?" she said. "Alan Jones, Piers Akerman and Andrew Bolt?"Or the CSIRO, the Australian Academy of Science, the Bureau of Meteorology, NASA, the US National Atmospheric Administration, and every reputable climate scientist in the world?"
© 2011 Sydney Morning Herald
