Tag: carbon tax
Doublespeak : “This isn’t a Carbon Tax”, Just as the “No cuts to the ABC”. Morrison the Ad man spends more time with his spin doctors, playing with words than he actually does doing the things he was elected to do. Because actually doing things might seem as if he’s riding on the coattails of the ALP
There is a recent precedent for the federal government to introduce a $1-a-tonne levy on fossil fuels – and it was set by Scott Morrison. As Treasurer in 2017, Mr Morrison successfully legislated a new industry-specific tax he forecast to collect $6.2 billion over four years. Of course he did not call it a “tax” – governments are rather allergic to that word, much preferring fee/levy/surcharge/toll or whatever other euphemism comes to mind. In this case, it was called the Major Bank Levy.
Source: Michael Pascoe: Scott Morrison set precedent for carbon levy
Ten years ago, in the lead-up to Australia’s short-lived carbon price or “carbon tax” (either description is valid), the deepest fear on the part of businesses was that they would lose out to untaxed firms overseas. Instead of buying Australian carbon-taxed products, Australian and export customers would buy untaxed (possibly dirtier) products from somewhere else. It would give late-movers (countries that hadn’t yet adopted a carbon tax) a “free kick” in industries from coal and steel to aluminium to liquefied natural gas to cement, to wine, to meat and dairy products, even to copy paper. It’s why the Gillard government handed out free permits to so-called trade-exposed industries, so they wouldn’t face unfair competition.
The sudden, global move to tax carbon puts billions of Australian coal and gas exports at risk, indeed this country’s largest sources of income. Hard on the heels of the EU’s carbon border tax declaration, the US declared a carbon border scheme. Others are poised to follow. Callum Foote and Michael West report on the immense risk to Australia’s largest source of income.
So much for axing the tax: a growing crisis in the electricity market has led to wholesale power prices more than doubling in a year, and rising to at least twice what they were under the controversial Labor-Greens carbon price.
Source: Energy crisis: Wholesale power prices have doubled since the carbon tax was axed
In Australia the very phrase is political poison, but in Norway, even oil and gas companies support a carbon tax.
olddogthoughts 
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