Christine Milne says Julia Gillard wasn’t initially on board over carbon

CHRISTINE Milne has revealed she didn’t believe Julia Gillard was initially across the detail of carbon pricing.

GREENS leader Christine Milne has revealed she didn’t believe Julia Gillard was initially across the detail of carbon pricing or on board with the policy, and made a disastrous political error when she conceded the Labor-Greens scheme was a carbon tax.

Speaking today on Sky News’ Australian Agenda, Senator Milne also defended the Greens’ position in 2009 to vote against Kevin Rudd’s emission trading scheme, the carbon pollution reduction scheme.

“It was a dog of a policy, that’s the fact of the matter. It was a lousy policy that would not have brought down emissions,’’ she said.

“In fact, it was worse than nothing. It would have increased over time the amount of money going to the big polluters, not only the coal-fired power generators but the big miners.’’

On Thursday, Tony Abbott finally secured enough crossbench support in the Senate to repeal the carbon tax which was a policy the Greens demanded as a “price of government’’ when it supported Ms Gillard to form minority government after the 2010 federal election.

Asked how the policy had unravelled, Senator Milne said she believed a “fundamental error occurred when Julia Gillard went on television and conceded that an emissions trading scheme with a fixed price was a tax - that gave Tony Abbott everything he needed to ramp up his campaign’’.

Senator Milne indicated she did not believe Ms Gillard was across the climate change policy detail when she made the misstep early in the life of her government.

The “concession to the idea of a tax was disastrous’’, Senator Milne said, and agreed it was one of several turning points which led to the demise of the carbon pricing policy including Labor’s broken election promise.

“I absolutely take responsibility for negotiating with her (Ms Gillard) the price of government was to achieve a carbon price to be implemented on the July 1, 2012 and we brought in a policy that is leading the world … but Labor had credibility difficulties in that regard.’’

Asked why Ms Gillard did not just announce an ETS, Senator Milne said “I think part of the problem was I don’t think former prime minister Gillard was really on board with the policy, she was one of the people who had opposed Kevin Rudd continuing with carbon pricing early in 2010.

“And I don’t think she was across the policy detail … understanding the difference’’.

Senator Milne said it was early in the life of the Gillard government and the multi-party climate change committee had only just been set up.

“Once that committee got underway and all of the detail was being discussed then everybody was across all the issues but at that point I don’t think that the depth of knowledge on that policy issue, she hadn’t been involved in those negotiations previously in the former government.’’