Today Bill Shorten committed to force higher electricity and gas prices on Australian families and put jobs at risk.
It's back to the future for Labor. It's Julia Gillard's carbon tax all over again.
The choice at the next election could not be clearer. A vote for Bill Shorten is a vote for higher electricity prices and a carbon tax.
Bill Shorten is conning the Australian people when he says he will not being back a carbon tax.
It doesn't matter what you call it, Bill – a price on carbon through a carbon tax or an Emissions Trading Scheme will jack up power prices for families, pensioners and businesses.
The result is the same and families will suffer as a result.
An Emissions Trading Scheme is just a carbon tax with a different name. We all know this.
When Labor left office, they left a carbon tax of $24.15 a tonne. Under Labor’s own modelling, this was projected to rise to $38 a tonne in 2020 and continue to increase to $85 a tonne by 2030.
To add to this money-go-round, Labor then made $30 billion in payments to heavy industry and other subsidies including $5.5 billion of direct payments and subsidies to brown coal generators – all from the taxpayer’s hip-pocket and with little impact on reducing emissions.
The Energy Supply Association of Australia has also confirmed that, Labor’s proposal, “will increase the cost of electricity”.
Today we're once again reminded that you just can't trust Bill Shorten. He tricked Kevin Rudd, he tricked Julia Gillard and now he's tricking the Australian people – once again.
Last week Labor was caught red handed with its secret plan to bring back the carbon tax. Their plan was exposed for all to see – and yet Bill Shorten says it’s just a scare campaign.
It’s not a scare campaign – it's the truth and we all know it. We all saw it last week in black and white and today Bill Shorten told the ALP Conference he's committed to taking it to the next election.
On top of that, they are adding an extra cost from a new renewable energy target but they haven’t even worked out how much it will be.
But at least they’ve now conceded that it will cost jobs by acknowledging the need to retrain workers, the people the Labor Party claims they represent.
The Coalition is committed to tackling climate change without a painful and ineffective carbon tax – and we're already achieving real and significant abatement at around one percent of the cost.
Only the Coalition will combat climate change without hurting Australia's standard of living.
(ENDS)