Energy ministers Angus Taylor lashes Labor’s carbon cap plan
Energy Minister Angus Taylor has warned Labor’s carbon cap will freeze investment and cut employment growth.
Energy Minister Angus Taylor has warned Labor’s carbon cap will freeze investment and cut employment growth by punishing Australian businesses for “being successful”.
Mr Taylor will use his address at a business function in Sydney today to renew his attack on Labor’s proposed expansion of the Coalition’s carbon plan, arguing that the move will discourage growth. He likens the plan to having the same impact as “bracket creep” where taxpayers are pushed into higher tax brackets as their wages rise.
Labor has proposed to lower the threshold for inclusion in the Coalition’s carbon plan from 100,000 tonnes of carbon emissions a year to 25,000 tonnes a year.
Mr Taylor will tell today’s American Chamber of Commerce in Australia event that the Labor policy would deter companies currently just below the 25,000 tonne threshold from investing in their businesses further.
“Why will it stop them from expanding? Because the incentive to invest in an expansion of your plant evaporates, especially if you’re in the 15,000 to 24,000 tonne range,” Mr Taylor says.
“That means no extra production line, no putting on an extra shift and running for longer hours, and no building the extra space in your warehouse.”
The lowered threshold is expected to include some of Australia’s biggest building materials companies and food manufacturers, including Telstra, Fletcher Building, Crown Resorts, Coca-Cola Amatil, Bega Cheese, GrainCorp, Inghams, Lion, McCain Foods, Arnott’s Biscuits, Nestle and Parmalat.
The number of companies captured under the mechanism will increase from 140 to 250 under Labor’s plan, with Brickworks, Santos, Qantas, Virgin Australia, Linfox and Glencore also among those that will qualify.
Mr Taylor will also argue that the companies likely to be caught up under the expanded policy “aren’t large emitters by any stretch”.
He will say that the policy would double the number of facilities impacted by the plan, but only increase the amount of emissions covered by the policy by 8 per cent more emissions.
“To put it simply, they are taxing people out of principle rather than for any significant environmental benefit,” he will say.
“They are punishing businesses for being successful.”
The emissions threshold is part of Labor’s plan to cut carbon pollution by 45 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030.
Labor leader Bill Shorten has previously said that the cost of inaction would be greater than the economic pain of the policy, saying that extreme weather had caused $18 billion of damage in the last year alone.