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E & OE
LYNDAL CURTIS
If we can start, Ed, with Julia Gillard’s trip to the United States. There’s certainly a lot of bells and whistles being put on for her. She’s staying at the official residence, Blair House, she’ll see Barack Obama in the Oval Office, address a joint sitting of the US Congress. Is this all just style over substance?
ED HUSIC
No, it’s a very special occasion. It’s the 60th anniversary of us entering into the ANZUS alliance and gives us an opportunity to reinforce the strength of the relationship between the US and Australia and the PM gets an opportunity, one of only a few – I think Sir Robert Menzies, Bob Hawke, John Howard – who got to address a joint sitting of Congress. So it’s a pretty special occasion with an opportunity for us to cover other issues off including trade and climate change.
LYNDAL CURTIS
Scott Ryan, will you be looking for specific outcomes from this, or is it good enough that Julia Gillard’s getting a hearing where she needs to be heard?
SCOTT RYAN
There’s no contest between the two major sides of Australian politics about the importance of the US alliance, so it’s entirely appropriate for a Prime Minister to visit – and that’s something the Coalition supports. Ed just then mentioned that she could raise the issue of climate change. One of the issues that she could raise is why Barack Obama and the US are not going to unilaterally impose a tax on American exporters who compete with Australian exporters all around the world.
LYNDAL CURTIS
But doesn’t Barack Obama have the same problem that Julia Gillard has that he does not control the Congress?
SCOTT RYAN
Well I don’t know if an election result is what you can call a ‘problem’. In the US, it wasn’t just Republicans that opposed a carbon tax, it was many, many Democrats. In the US, Barack Obama has taken it off the agenda. US exporters – particularly agricultural exporters – are not going to be faced with this unilateral tax that Australian exporters are going to be faced with.
LYNDAL CURTIS
Ed Husic, do you think she should raise the issue of climate change and carbon taxes?
ED HUSIC
Well it is important for us to start getting in there. A lot of countries, thirty-two countries, that are working on this front, including China and India that in some form or other have a carbon-related taxation measure in place. Ten states within the US also focussed on this issue. People know what’s got to get done, but just like the ideological soul mates of the Coalition over there in the United States, the Republicans are doing their best – including some of those people that don’t believe in climate change – in stalling our ability to act on this. Frankly, I think I couldn’t look future generations of Australians and others in the eye and say we couldn’t do what was required because we were too gutless or too scared or spooked by a scare campaign to get the job done.
SCOTT RYAN
Well Ed, if you want to talk about future generations, you tell me what brochure you put out in last year’s election that talked about a carbon tax. You tell me where you told your own electors that you would be introducing a carbon tax. Your government, your leader made an explicit promise that there would not be one and now you are trying to obfuscate that broken promise. Yesterday we had the absurd situation where the Treasurer was trying to argue that this wasn’t a tax after the Prime Minister had admitted it was a tax.
ED HUSIC
Yeah…
LYNDAL CURTIS
Scott Ryan, Greg Combet’s made the point today that what the federal government is doing is little change from the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, although it was a shorter fixed price, that scheme had a fixed price in the early stages and at one time the Coalition supported that.
SCOTT RYAN
No, the Coalition never supported the CPRS. The Coalition debated and came to a final position on the CPRS in December 2009 where we decided that we would oppose that legislation because it imposed an unnecessary burden on Australian exporters and jobs, would not achieve environmental benefit, and would lead to massive rises in the cost of living for Australian families.
LYNDAL CURTIS
Ed Husic, is the game over semantics over whether this is a tax, or effectively like a tax, or not quite a tax, helpful to your cause?
ED HUSIC
Look, I think frankly there’ll be people and particularly the Opposition will be focussed on any type of name it can as part of its broader scare campaign. The fact of the matter is, we’re trying to send a price signal here. We’re doing it through an interim measure for the next few years while we lead in to setting up an ETS, and we’re trying to ensure that we get the work done – start the work going – on this. Now the important thing is, and the distinction is, this isn’t just some sort of tax that is supposed to aid government revenue. Every single cent of the revenue raised by this will assist in the compensation package for families, will assist business adjust, and will help us find alternative sources…
SCOTT RYAN
There is nothing in this. The government has not laid out any framework to that at all…
ED HUSIC
Rubbish…
SCOTT RYAN
… it’s merely a promise. And if it’s anything like the promise that there’d be no carbon tax, it is worthless. Under the CPRS and under this, there is no compensation for small business. There is no compensation for the dry cleaner, the baker, the person in the corner store. They have to pay the increased electricity costs and you are offering nothing to people that employ Australians, particularly those exposed in export industries. Australian farmers are going to have to pay this on fuel, on fertiliser, on transport, and they’re not going to get an increased price in the world market.
ED HUSIC
Where you’re right, Scott, is – you’re right, there’s no detail – where you’re wrong is your statement that there’s no framework. That’s just patently wrong. The framework was released. It was a detailed framework designed to start the process of consultation and developing this system. The fact that there is no detail, your side of politics is using to whip up the mother of all scare campaigns, when in fact we need to be able to work through this process for the next few months.
SCOTT RYAN
You promised…
LYNDAL CURTIS
Ed Husic, the Climate Change Minister, Greg Combet, has said that this is a diabolically complex international problem. Isn’t it also a diabolically complex thing to try and explain to the electorate and isn’t it much easier for Tony Abbott to say the words ‘great big new tax’?
ED HUSIC
Well, I mean, it’s the easiest gig at the moment, of whipping up a scare campaign and lining up a squad of bogey men to fight this policy initiative by us. But the fact of the matter is we are going to need to take the time over the next few months to start developing the detail. We’ve set out the framework, we’re calling for the input, we’re getting that input now, but ultimately the bottom line on this is that we have to make headway on this issue because, for example, in the electricity sector, investment in generation is stalling and that – failure to be able to keep up with demand – is one of the biggest reasons why we are having electricity price rises in this country.
LYNDAL CURTIS
Scott Ryan, there are two competing schemes in this. Your side is proposing direct action, and Tony Abbott today said that there’ll be no increases in taxes, no increases in prices, and no additional burden on the taxpayer. Is that all possible to do, and still achieve the sort of targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions that you want?
SCOTT RYAN
It’s entirely possible, Lyndal, because what we’ve got is a fully costed plan. We had that out before the last election, and it’s a reputable, costed plan that shows exactly how we’re going to meet these emissions targets. What Ed is trying to do here, just like the Labor Government, is to try to avoid, firstly the broken promise, and secondly the legitimate comparison with when the GST was introduced. The Coalition abolished a dozen taxes and cut income tax. This government is just trying to whack this on top of every other increase in the cost of living. All the uncertainty in the electricity sector is a product of the campaign by Labor and the Greens to introduce a carbon tax. You could end the uncertainty now, Ed.
LYNDAL CURTIS
Ed…
ED HUSIC
I love getting lectured. At what point are you going to tell us about that great consultation process you did on WorkChoices? I’m going to have Libs lecture us on this element…
SCOTT RYAN
WorkChoices is the go-to for Labor in trouble…
ED HUSIC
Hang on, I had the respect to listen to you in silence. Like I don’t think listeners or viewers need to go to us yammering over the top of each other. The other point I was going to make is that that is total rubbery calculation by the Liberals as to direct action, which, it’s estimated will only be 25 percent effective, you still need to make up the other 75 percent of the bi-partisan target set in terms of emission reduction. You went to an election with a $10.5bn budget-funded promise instead of getting a market-based solution – and on top of that, you’re going to have to spend another $20bn to make up for the fact that the 25 percent that may work under direct action has to be sorted out somehow to reach the target.
SCOTT RYAN
That’s simply untrue.
LYNDAL CURTIS
Scott Ryan, is the only way to control costs under your scheme to actually put a cap on how much you’re willing to spend, even if it doesn’t reduce emissions as much as you want?
SCOTT RYAN
No, what we’ve done is we’ve committed to the target and we’ve got a fully costed and developed policy that can actually achieve that target by taking a market-based solution, which is actually running a tender system, finding where we can achieve the lowest cost abatement. Just like other important issues in Australia, this is actually a transparent cost done off the budget. What Labor is proposing is to reinstate a tariff across the entire economy and charge every family more in the hope that it leads to emissions reduction. Ours is actually measurable and costed transparently – Labor’s is not.
LYNDAL CURTIS
Gentlemen, if I can finish on the issue of women’s superannuation, a group of high profile women has urged the government to increase compulsory superannuation to 12 percent, even if the mining tax doesn’t go through, making the point that women tend to earn a lot less in superannuation than men. Ed Husic, is it a good idea to do something specific for women’s superannuation?
ED HUSIC
We recognise the need to lift the levy and go to 12 percent. We know that we need to be able to do this to ensure that future retirement incomes are sustainable and deliver for Australians as they leave the workforce. We, at the same time, believe we need to go through and generate the revenue through the mining tax. Basically this is the big reason why we’ve fought to get the tax through and the issues raised today by the range of prominent Australian women from a variety of different sectors has been critical to shape the debate on this important issue.
LYNDAL CURTIS
Scott Ryan, in discussions about superannuation, it’s not often mentioned, particularly in the political arguments, that women’s superannuation does tend at the end of women’s working lives to be lower than men’s. Should it be something that needs a bit more attention?
SCOTT RYAN
The issue of superannuation is very important, and you’re quite right to highlight that women with broken working patterns in particular have lower superannuation balances. But you don’t fix that by making it more expensive to employ people. This is not Labor spending money to increase superannuation. It’s Labor saying that every business in Australia has to increase superannuation. So for every small business, every medium business, it’s going to cost more to employ people. Particularly when you find women at the vulnerable end of the labour market in low-wage occupations – that is going to make it harder for them to get a job, and that is going to mean they have less superannuation. You don’t solve this problem by making it more expensive for business to employ people.
ED HUSIC
I love it. If there’s any way to go, go retro. We just rewound to the debates that came about when we were trying to bring superannuation in in the first place, which provided a massive savings pool, huge economic benefit for the country, helped people sustain themselves after retirement and Scott just played out the same arguments that we probably had when we were both in high school that Libs were throwing out when Labor tried to bring this in.
LYNDAL CURTIS
You finish up, Scott.
SCOTT RYAN
Ed, you don’t make it better to get increased superannuation balances by stopping people getting jobs. This makes every small business – in particular – pay more to employ a person. That is only going to make it more difficult for people to get jobs in the first place.
LYNDAL CURTIS
Scott Ryan and Ed Husic, we’ll have to leave it there for today. Thank you very much for your time.