No ‘sneaky carbon tax’ on my watch: Angus Taylor

Angus Taylor will rail against calls for Australia to adopt a carbon price, declaring he will not introduce a ‘carbon tax by stealth’.

Energy Minister Angus Taylor. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Angus Taylor will rail against calls for Australia to adopt a carbon price, declaring he will not introduce a “carbon tax by stealth” by capturing more businesses under the safeguard mechanism.

The Energy and Emissions ­Reduction Minister on Wednesday will warn that lowering the threshold of the safeguard mechanism would capture hundreds of businesses and increase red tape. Speaking to the nation’s major commercial and industrial electricity and gas users, Mr Taylor will say that “instead of imposing a sneaky carbon tax, we’ll incentivise the uptake of new low-emissions technologies”.

The safeguard mechanism, which came into effect in mid-2016, currently covers businesses across the electricity, mining, manufacturing, transport, construction and waste sectors ­accounting for about half of Australia’s emissions. It requires the biggest emitters to keep their net emissions below a baseline limit.

Mr Taylor will tell an Energy Users Association Australia conference that changes to the safeguard mechanism would “impose new costs on more than 500 of Australia’s most energy-intensive businesses and facilities, many of whom are exposed to internat­ional competition”.

“Rather than free up business to get on with the job of supporting Australia’s economic recovery, it will tie them up in green tape,” Mr Taylor will say. “It would require businesses in sectors like agriculture and food production, mining and resources, waste management, trucking and railways to ­reduce or offset their emissions – regardless of whether the technological solutions for them to ­reduce their emissions exist.

“The safeguard mechanism was never meant to be a tool to force businesses to reduce their emissions – which is a carbon tax by stealth.”

Mr Taylor will use the speech to announce the government has opened consultations on the Wallumbilla gas supply hub and attack Labor for refusing to rule out ­expanding the safeguard mechanism, accusing Anthony Albanese of wanting Australia to become “a nation of form fillers”.

“Blue-collar workers on the factory floor will be replaced by lawyers and consultants. The can-do capitalism that has powered our country will be smothered by the hand of government bureaucracy,” he will say. In the wash-up of the COP26 summit, Mr Taylor will say “it is the entrepreneurs and innovators who will solve this problem, not activists, bureaucrats and politicians who have attended the last 26 global climate change conferences”.

With Nationals MPs trying to distance themselves from the Glasgow agreement, Resources Minister Keith Pitt poured doubt on the government’s net-zero modelling prediction that the coal industry will halve in value by 2050. “Modelling is modelling is modelling,” Mr Pitt told Sky News.

“It all depends on what the ­inputs are and what the assumptions are that go into it.

“We believe the future of coal in Australia is very strong. There will be more demand for it after 2030.”

Labor is embroiled in internal discussions on what to do about its 2030 target, with MPs split on whether to adopt a 35 per cent target or one above 40.

Hunter MP Joel Fitzgibbon said it would be “madness” for Labor to revive the 45 per cent target Bill Shorten took to the last election, despite the Business Council of Australia pushing for a 46-50 per cent target.

“Setting a medium-term target from opposition is in itself crazy,” Mr Fitzgibbon said. “Because we don’t have the information, we don’t have the advice of the department and the various entities that provide government with information on these things.”

PAUL KELLY P11