Australia and the European Union will be linked in what will become the world's largest carbon market under a deal announced by Climate Change Minister Greg Combet today.
Mr Combet said Australia was ditching its earlier plans to impose a floor price on carbon when the current fixed-price carbon tax moves to a floating market mechanism in July 2015.
Instead, he said the Australian market would be linked to that which operates in Europe, where more than 500 million people are covered by carbon trading schemes, meaning the two blocs' carbon price would be "effectively the same".
A tonne of carbon in Europe currently only costs about $10, while Australia's carbon tax is set at $23 a tonne.
Some business analysts say $10 a tonne is not high enough to force big polluters to curb emissions, but Mr Combet says he is confident the price will rise.
"It's moved as high as $53 a tonne in recent years, in fact its long-term average over the previous four years has been $23 a tonne."
This just gets sillier and sillier.
Later in the article he is quoted as saying "... there would be no change to the Government's carbon tax household assistance packages."
