There seems to be a lot of amatuer economic theorists here, the like Garnuat seems to think that there's a substitute for everything and transferrence comes at no cost.
Fact 1 : There is no substitute for coal or gas fired power stations in Australia. Building anything different is decades in the making.
Fact 2 : There is no alternative power supply that provides reliable power as cheap as coal and gas fired power stations. The costs of these token plants WITHOUT subsidy are hugely more on a mega watt basis (not theoretical).
Fact 3 : Retrofitting organisations to achieve efficiencies comes with a large up front cost. In many instances there just is no alternative to the status quo. All these costs need to be passed on.
Fact 4 : We are dealing in an international market. Only the brain dead, economic peanuts of Europe seem to care about economic self immobilation. Our major trading partners in Asia do not. Not only will our exports be more expensive but imports made without a carbon tax will be cheaper.
I started reading Garnauts report. What a pompous, self important loony he is. He makes some absurd assuptions that have no link to anything plausable and certainly likes to cherry pick his facts.
The man got the mining tax spectacularly wrong as his acamdemic modelling in no way corresponded with reality. Three pages into his report and it's clear he's away with the fairies.
