‘Carbon tax in disguise’
Tony Abbott has labelled Malcolm Turnbull’s signature energy policy as a “carbon tax in disguise” and accused the government of trying to reintroduce the policies of Julia Gillard.
The former prime minister said he could only be in favour of the national energy guarantee if it allowed for the construction of a new coal-fired power station, declaring heavy industry would be doomed without reliable power.
“We will lose all our heavy industry if we keep going down this path and my worry is my partyroom might be asked to back something which is effectively a carbon tax in disguise, now there is no way that this government can support anything which is a carbon tax in disguise,” Mr Abbott told 2GB radio.
“We went to the 2013 election, we got elected saying ‘let’s end Labor’s emissions obsessions, and let’s in particular get rid of the carbon tax’, now to bring it back, it would be a travesty, an absolute travesty.
“I’m all in favour of a national energy guarantee with this fundamental proviso: it is to make it economically possible to build new coal-fired power stations, because without new coal-fired power stations in this country our heavy industry is dead and consumers are doomed to ever rising power prices.”
Mr Abbott said the government was peddling falsehoods by claiming the NEG was technology neutral. He said the Prime Minister’s favourable treatment to renewables was evident by the potential $12 billion cost of the Snowy 2.0 scheme.
“The government says it is technology neutral but plainly that is not true, plainly when the government goes out to spend maybe $12bn by the time you have bought out the states to build (Snowy 2.0),” Mr Abbott said.
“When the government goes out and spends $12bn on a pumped hydro scheme that is a massive intervention in the market, it is a sign of support for a particular technology, and this idea that we have got to let the market work, well the market was corrupted a long time ago here.”
