A large-scale solar farm. Australia is blessed with renewable resources. Photo: Australian Renewable Energy Agency.
Is the Albanese government, having made a virtue of its reworking of the Stage 3 tax cuts, capable of making an even bigger pivot to reintroducing a carbon tax to fund the transition to the new green economy?
That’s the question posed by two of Australia’s most eminent economists, Professor Ross Garnaut and former ACCC boss Professor Rod Sims, both of whom worked for the Hawke Government.
They have proposed a carbon solutions levy on fossil fuel production that would raise $100 billion and help industries, including steel and aluminium, move to a de-carbonised footing and offset the subsequent cost of living and energy bill increases.
The levy would help Australia exploit its vast renewable energy resources of wind and solar to become a green energy superpower, reboot productivity and living standards, and do its bit in reducing greenhouse gas emissions to combat global warming.
The pair argue that fossil fuel producers reaping billions from an activity imposing huge costs on the nation should contribute to the solution, which makes perfect sense.
In any case, in 2026, Europe will tax all fossil fuels imported from Australia that haven’t already been taxed. So Australia may as well retain the proceeds and reap the benefits from such a tax.
But Labor remains traumatised by Tony Abbott’s successful campaign against the carbon tax, and while the Albanese Government makes all the right noises about climate change and the shift to renewables, actual policy is pretty timid.
No doubt the argument is that the preservation of a Labor Government must take priority if the nation is to make progress, albeit slow, on getting to net zero.
The problem is all the scientific evidence points to time not being on our side and that the continued ad infinitum extraction and burning of fossil fuels is a death wish.
Garnaut and Sims make an elegant case but acknowledge that politics will get ugly if it is taken up.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton, in need of an alternative path to net zero, has thrown his lot in with nuclear power – specifically small, modular reactors – despite the unproven technology, unresolved issue of waste, the exorbitant cost and the time lag needed to build a network of power stations.
Accompanying this are ongoing orchestrated attacks on renewables, fear campaigns about the lights going out, and the cost to our resources-based economy and living standards, amplified by their media mates.
The Dutton fantasy appears to be nothing less than a ploy designed for business as usual in the fossil fuel sector. Especially given the continuing denialism that still seems to drive the Coalition.
It is a sad reflection on the state of politics in this country that we neither have the leaders capable of levelling with the nation and articulating what will be in our best long-term interests nor the political will to take us forward.
A carbon levy or tax, whatever it is called, is coming – but Australians should be the ones to be the beneficiaries.
Garnaut and Sims have offered a way forward. Is Anthony Albanese up to the challenge?
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