Voters tell Clive Palmer: axe the carbon tax

A MAJORITY of voters want Clive Palmer and his senators to immediately support the removal of the carbon tax.

A MAJORITY of voters want Clive Palmer and his senators to immediately support the removal of the carbon tax as the repeal legislation is expected to be reintroduced into parliament today.

A Newspoll conducted exclusively for The Australian after last Thursday’s chaos in the Senate saw the repeal bills rejected, reveals 53 per cent want the controversial tax to be abolished.

Only 35 per cent want the Palmer United Party to continue to block the removal of the tax, while 12 per cent are uncommitted.

Environment Minister Greg Hunt warned that playing “games in the Senate’’ is costing voters $11 million a day as the government steps up efforts to get the repeal bills through the Senate before the end of the week, when parliament begins a five-week winter break.

Mr Palmer’s senators voted to keep the tax last Thursday over a dispute about the amendments — despite having government agreement to support them.

Mr Hunt, who will meet Mr Palmer today to finalise a deal on a revised consumer savings amendment to the tax repeal bills, said voters would be “angered’’ if the repeal is torpedoed again this week.

But after more talks with the Palmer United Party he believed there was “no barrier’’ to passing the repeal bills.

GRAPHIC: Newspoll finds 53pc want tax axed

The poll of 1207 voters taken on Friday, Saturday and yesterday shows Coalition supporters overwhelmingly want to see the end of the carbon tax, with 85 per cent supporting its immediate removal, 8 per cent wanting it to remain and 7 per cent undecided.

And while the opposition will vote against the tax repeal because it says the government is putting no effective climate change policy in its place, 33 per cent of Labor supporters want it removed immediately.

About 53 per cent of ALP supporters want Palmer United to block the repeal.

A majority of Australians aged over 35 want the carbon tax axed, with support at 58 per cent among those over 50 and at 52 per cent in the 35-49 age group.

Among voters aged 18 to 34 the numbers are closer, with 46 per cent backing the removal of the tax and 38 per cent wanting to keep it.

PUP senator Jacqui Lambie said last night she believed the government and Mr Palmer had reached a “clear-cut” agreement and passing the repeal “shouldn’t be an issue”.

The revised amendment is understood to address business concerns that a wide range of operations would be covered but guarantees full repeal savings will be passed back to consumers.

The electricity industry warned that it faced major complications unless the carbon tax repeal bills were passed by the Senate this week. Energy Retailers Association chief executive Cameron O’Reilly said the industry had always said a fast repeal was in the best interests of customers. But if the repeal did not happen this week there would need to be a new plan on how to pass savings back to consumers.

The electricity industry incurs $11 million a day in carbon tax charges and market-traded contracts have not been trading carbon since July 1. But a carbon price of $25.40 a tonne will be returned to the contracts if the repeal fails to pass the Senate by Friday. Mr O’Reilly said failure to achieve the repeal by Friday would complicate returning savings to customers by “an exponential amount’’.

The carbon tax would be repealed retrospectively to July 1 under the current legislation but if it does not pass this week “it makes retrospectivity far more challenging”, he said.

The meeting between the government and Mr Palmer should pave the way for the carbon tax repeal legislation to be introduced into the House of Representatives today and sent to the Senate in time for a vote later this week.

The Australian understands Mr Palmer’s amendment has been narrowed after negotiations over the weekend to ensure it applies only to about 80 electricity and gas companies.

The Weekend Australian reported concerns from the Australian Industry Group that the amendment, which would impose a 250 per cent penalty for not passing on savings, was drafted so widely it could impose carbon-tax savings reporting requirements on businesses outside electricity and gas.

The revised amendment, which tightens the focus to electricity and gas companies, appears to have satisfied business concerns and increased the chances Liberal Democratic Party Senator David Leyonhjelm and Family First’s Bob Day will support it. The pair had said they could not support the original amendment.

Senator Leyonhjelm said he had been assured electricity companies were not unhappy about the new amendment and had the systems to cope with it.

Senator Day said the original amendment would have been worse than the carbon tax but the new amendment appeared to address his concerns.

Mr Hunt said that after “electronic communications’’ with Mr Palmer over the weekend, he believed there were “no barriers’’ to the repeal of the carbon tax.

He said there had been no barriers to the passage of the bills last Thursday as the government had agreed to the amendments proposed by the Palmer United Party.

“So, people can play games in the Senate but at the end of the day, it’s your listeners who are paying $11m a day,’’ Mr Hunt told Melbourne radio 3AW.

“I am firming up my approach from diplomacy to sending a very clear message that we all went to the election — all eight crossbenchers and the Coalition members — with a pledge to repeal and the Australian people would be deeply disappointed, and I imagine in many cases angered, if that were not followed through this week.”

Bill Shorten said Labor would introduce an amendment to the carbon tax repeal bill to introduce an emissions trading scheme.

The Opposition Leader accused the government of having a “born to rule’’ mentality and of not being able to negotiate with the crossbench senators.

“If Tony Abbott truly wants to govern Australia, he needs to show that he’s got the skills of governing, which includes talking to people who don’t agree with his initial ideas and compromising,’’ Mr Shorten said.

Mr Hunt said the government had supported the Palmer United Party’s final amendment last week and the PUP senators needed to explain why they voted against the repeal. “The final version which had been ticked off by the clerk, or the umpire, of the Senate was constitutional, was about to be moved by the Palmer senators and they walked out on their own amendment and never presented that constitutional version.”