Dear oh dear, another Labor MP caught on Carbon? How can we...

Dear oh dear, another Labor MP caught on Carbon? How can we trust this government when they again give us false figures from a report funded by Labor?

Shame on Labor once again.


http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/greg-combet-caught-out-on-carbon/story-fn59niix-1226114834599

THE Gillard government's claims that Australia lags behind China in the effective price on carbon have been discredited by its Climate Change Department.

The revelations, in documents obtained through a Freedom of Information application, show that rather than trailing China's implicit carbon price by more than $12 per tonne, Australia's effective price could already be higher.
This undermines the government's argument for Australia to introduce a carbon tax now at an additional cost of $23 per tonne.

The documents, obtained by the Institute of Public Affairs, show the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency warned that a crucial draft report on comparative implicit carbon prices overestimated China's figure more than sixfold.

Despite that warning, the higher figure remained in the report and has been quoted by Climate Change Minister Greg Combet.

"Well, according to this report by Vivid Economics," Mr Combet told the ABC in March, the effective carbon price in sectors of the Chinese economy was $14 a tonne compared to $1.68 in Australia."

But a crucial email from the department to the Climate Institute in October provided final revisions to the draft report and argued the China figures were wrong.

It said the figure for the dominant Chinese scheme was overestimated at $7.58 per tonne when, if it had been costed on the same basis as a comparable Australian scheme, the price would have been $1.28 per tonne.

The report the minister referred to was not as independent as it sounds?it was funded by government through a $70,000 payment that went via the "non-partisan" Climate Institute.