Abbott criticises BHP carbon price call
By a staff reporter
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has criticised a call by the world's largest miner, BHP Billiton, for Australia to introduce a carbon tax, saying a go-it-alone approach will do nothing for the environment but inflict "enormous damage" on the nation's export industries.
Mr Abbott has promised the Coalition will stand firm on its 'direct action' climate change policy and opposition to a carbon tax, describing the latter as an act of "economic self-harm" without similar moves from China, India and the United States.
"Reopening climate change policy ... is not at trap that this opposition is about to fall into," he said in an address to the Menzies Research Centre.
"We will oppose a go-it-alone carbon tax because it won't help the environment but will inflict enormous damage on our export industries."
BHP chief Marius Kloppers last week called for a hybrid approach to emissions reduction: a carbon tax, a limited version of Labor's failed emissions trading scheme, and parts of the Coalition's 'direct action' plan.
Speaking in Sydney, Mr Abbott said BHP "could be right to prefer a transparent and upfront carbon tax to the stealth tax of an emissions trading scheme".
"Arguing that we need a price on carbon because the low-carbon economies of tomorrow could become the low-cost economies of the future ignores the fact that a carbon tax means a massive, immediate hit on people's cost of living and on the cost of business.
"As things stand, Australia's prosperity fundamentally depends on the higher energy exports that are necessary to fuel rising living standards in China and India.
"The notion that Australia should henceforth treat coal as it has long treated uranium - as something that's alright to be exported elsewhere but too environmentally suspect to be used here - is more environmental snobbery than serious analysis of our national interest."
Comments on this article
Re: going at it alone
Australia would not be going at it alone. In fact, Australia is miles behind the rest of the world already. THAT might hurt Australian companies in the long term if anything.
Abbott Opposition
And so he should. The AGW hypophysis (if the subject can be dignified by that term) is based upon flawed, if not downright fraudulent science. David Chapman.
Abbott opposition
If you have no ideas, no vision and little understanding of a wider horizon then it is a lot safer to just be 'against everything' that other people propose as possible solutions to present of future problems.
Abbott has the attitudes that would have seen us without all the great scientific innovation of the last century ... because he doesn't understand it or believes it can't be achieved.
I think Australia needs to ignore what this foolish man says and listen to some of our high achievers. Let's be honest. What does he stand for other than grubby politics, blind faith and a fear of the future.
Pam Maegdefrau
BHP's carbon price call
Kloppers is wrong on every count.
There is NO empirical evidence or scientific consensus supporting the IPCC's anthropogenic global warming (AGW) hypothesis, none.
There will never be an international agreement to reduce GHG's that includes China, India, Brazil and many other nations.
Australia, if it was stupid enough to 'go it alone' would seriously damage its economy and standard of living.
Sound policy must be based on sound science not on pseudo-religious type 'beliefs'.
Kloppers is probably driven by the desire to promote nuclear energy (BHPB owns Australia's biggest uranium mine) and is prepared to use populist sentiment to acheve this end.
Meaningless talk from Abbott.
So Abbott has again stated what he is against.
Trying to get this person to say what he is actually FOR is an impossibility.
How, for example, does he specifically and definitely seek to achieve his goals, and at what cost? What are the definite outcomes and how will these be measured, audited and displayed to the public?
The same person who asks for a cost-benefit study of the NBN is the one who has absolutely no idea of either the costs or the outcomes of his own "direct action" talk. Talk but no action is what I expect, but I am certainly prepared to consider the guts of the proposal, when they are displayed.