Australia’s abatement challenge has shrunk significantly in recent years, as highlighted in figures released by the Department of the Environment today.
We will easily meet our commitment to reduce Australia’s emissions by five per cent from 2000 levels by 2020.
Under Labor, Australia’s abatement challenge to achieve the five per cent target was forecast to be 1,335 Mt CO2-e in 2008. This has now fallen to 236 Mt CO2 e.
Labor’s numbers exaggerated the abatement task by more than a billion tonnes of emissions.
Labor used these figures in an attempt to justify the world’s largest carbon tax that hurt families and businesses by pushing up electricity prices.
It is now absolutely clear that we can meet or beat our targets without a destructive carbon tax.
Labor said we needed to push up electricity bills by billions of dollars in order to achieve our targets. It’s crystal clear this isn’t the case. They got it massively wrong.
Since 2006, Australia’s emissions have been on a downward trend. Labor’s painful $15.4 billion carbon tax simply wasn’t needed to achieve a reduction in emissions.
We’re committed to tackling climate change, but we can do it without hurting Australian families in the process.
Through the Emissions Reduction Fund, we are committed to achieving measurable and identifiable cuts in emissions. By contrast, Bill Shorten is committed to hiking power bills for families, pensioners and businesses.
(ENDS)