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October 18th, 2011 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda 
Labor warns that the uncertainty caused by the climate change standoff could cost consumers $5bn a year.
Source: The Courier-Mail
THE Coalition is planning to abolish the carbon tax within six months of an election victory as Labor warns that the uncertainty caused by the climate change standoff could cost consumers as much as $5 billion a year.
As senior government ministers and the Greens intensified their attack on the Coalition over Tony Abbott’s warning to business not to buy forward carbon permits, opposition energy spokesman Ian Macfarlane told The Australian it was a “realistic” expectation that the carbon tax could be struck off within six months of a change of government.
Mr Macfarlane sought to turn the spectre of uncertainty created by the Opposition Leader’s comments on to the government, insisting the Coalition had opposed a carbon price since before the last election and it was Julia Gillard who had changed position.
But Energy Minister Martin Ferguson said from Europe, where he was attending an International Energy Agency meeting, that “the costs of uncertainty can be measured not only in risks to energy security, but also in real cost impacts on consumers”.
“Analysis commissioned by the government earlier this year shows that the cost of policy uncertainty in Australia could be as high as $5bn,” Mr Ferguson said.
“This debate needs bipartisan policy maturity — and sadly the Coalition at the moment are not up to the task.”
The political row over the future of the carbon tax intensified as new research by the University of Canberra’s NATSEM economic modelling unit estimated the impact of the carbon tax would be lower than predicted by Treasury.
The research also estimated the average benefits from the government’s compensation package to be higher than predicted by Treasury. The NATSEM research showed the estimated impact of the carbon price would be $8.50 per household per week compared with $9.90 in Treasury modelling.
The average benefit to households from tax changes and government benefits would be higher at $10.90, compared with Treasury’s prediction of $10.10 per week. The NATSEM modelling suggested 69 per cent of households would be better off, with 11.5 per cent of households better off by more than $10 a week, while 4.8 per cent of households would be worse off by $10 a week.
Greens deputy leader Christine Milne said Mr Abbott’s pledge to scrap carbon pricing and his warning to business not to buy emissions permits would drive up the cost of electricity and put jobs and future power stations at risk.
“The problem we’ve got is that in the short term . . . what he will be doing is driving up electricity prices, because we all know that if people can’t hedge in terms of future investment it will drive up risk and drive up the cost of capital,” Senator Milne said.
But Mr Macfarlane said the Coalition had been ” unwavering” in opposing the carbon tax.
He said the Coalition was telling companies to meet their carbon tax obligations “but they don’t need to do any more than that”.
People who bought permits overseas expecting they would go up were “speculating in the market” and should not expect the Coalition to compensate them when the scheme was scrapped.
The Prime Minister yesterday described the Coalition’s pledge to abolish the carbon tax as “absolutely hollow” and she attacked opposition Treasury’s spokesman Joe Hockey’s promise to abolish the $10bn Clean Energy Finance Corporation as a destroyer of clean energy jobs.
“They are sending a message that they want to see electricity prices go up,” she said.
“The Business Council of Australia has warned today that the Coalition’s strategy will put electricity prices up, and at the same time we’ve got experts who advise government in Senate estimates saying that the Coalition’s strategy will put electricity prices up and create more bureaucracy.”
But Mr Abbott dismissed concerns electricity prices would rise as “nonsense on stilts; taking the tax off will reduce costs and reduce prices”. He said the clean energy fund was part of “a squalid little side deal with the Greens”.
“This fund isn’t allowed to look at clean coal technology and generally speaking we don’t support picking winners,” he said. “We certainly don’t support picking green winners in this way. We think that if the project is economic it should stand up on its own two feet.”
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