E&OE….
Topics: Labor confirms plans to bring back a massive carbon tax, Bronwyn Bishop, marriage equality
GREG HUNT:
(Inaudible) today is that the Labor Party has let the cat out of the bag. It’s a carbon tax. It’s always been a carbon tax. It’s going to increase electricity prices like a carbon tax. The Labor Party knows it, now Joel Fitzgibbon’s admitted it. We know it and the Australian public are going to pay for it.
JOURNALIST:
I understand that Joel Fitzgibbon said that “you can call it a carbon tax if you like, it’s a trading system”. He says characterising it – that characterisation is a scare campaign. Are you scaring voters?
GREG HUNT:
No. Mr Fitzgibbon didn’t say it once, or twice. He deliberately said it three times, “you can call it a tax if you like”. He used Julia Gillard’s words about the carbon tax. Deliberately, not just once or twice, but three times. We know and he knows it’s an electricity tax. If it were a floating price by 2020 on Labor’s last figures in government, it wouldn’t be $24, it would be $38 on Labor’s own modelling.
So in other words, electricity prices are going up, gas prices are going up, household costs are going up. That’s the way a carbon tax is meant to work and we now know from Joel Fitzgibbon, it is a carbon tax – clear, simple, no ifs, no buts.
JOURNALIST:
The Coalition under John Howard supported an ETS. Are you saying that the Coalition was never in favour of a carbon tax?
GREG HUNT:
Well of course it was.
JOURNALIST:
And so are you saying that the Coalition was supporting it then? What about now?
GREG HUNT:
We have after six years said there’s a better way than a massive electricity price, a massive carbon tax and we’ve shown that – 47 million tonnes of reduction at approximately one percent of the cost per tonne of abatement under the carbon tax.
What we saw was a massive price hike for electricity. It’s an Electricity Tax Scheme under Labor and now what we have under us is, according to the Bureau of Statistics, the largest drop in electricity prices on record. Labor lifted electricity prices with their carbon tax, we reduced it and reduced emissions. You can reduce emissions without a massive Electricity Tax Scheme.
JOURNALIST:
And just on Bronwyn Bishop, as a Cabinet member, the Secretary of the Finance Department has made public comments suggesting that Ms Bishop has been treated unfairly because she’s a woman. Isn’t that (inaudible) to the inquiry?
GREG HUNT:
Oh look I haven’t seen those comments and I’ve previously said that precisely because there is an inquiry going on, I shouldn’t be adding to that.
JOURNALIST:
And when will the Liberal Party, or is the Liberal Party any closer to a conscience vote on same-sex marriage?
GREG HUNT:
Look again I will leave that for the Prime Minister and the Party Room.
JOURNALIST:
Thanks very much.
GREG HUNT:
Thanks a lot.
(ENDS)