The Labor party announced a $4 billion tax on Central Queensland last week.
No wonder they made the announcement in the holidays so they hoped no one would notice.
Labor’s safeguard mechanism targets regional industries like a laser.
The safeguard mechanism requires a business that emits more than 100,000 tonnes of carbon emissions a year to pay to reduce those emissions.
The Labor party says that its policies will make these businesses reduce their emissions by a total of 205 million tonnes over the next 7 years.
The price to reduce each tonne is capped at $75 a tonne, which is three times the cost of Gillard’s carbon tax. (It is likely that businesses will end up paying the $75 price because in Europe carbon credits trade at over $100 per tonne and in New Zealand the price is already at $70 a tonne.)
So at $75 per tonne, 205 million tonnes of carbon emissions would cost $15.3 billion.
Just 26 of the 215 businesses that have to pay this tax are located in capital cities.
Labor’s new carbon tax will be paid by those that live in the regions.
Over 84 per cent of the carbon emissions covered by Labor’s carbon tax come from businesses in the regions even though only 30 per cent of Australians live in the regions.
So Labor has just whacked regional Australia with a $13 billion tax.
In Central Queensland, there are 58 businesses that will be subject to this tax.
They include the magnesia plant in Rockhampton, the aluminium smelter in Gladstone, the LNG plants on Curtis Island and 34 coal mines in the Bowen Basin.
All up these businesses employ 18,000 people across Central Queensland directly and support thousands more jobs indirectly.
These CQ businesses account for 25 per cent of the emissions covered by Labor’s tax, so we are up for a $3.8 billion tax hit to our economy.
This tax puts at risk the future of those 18,000 jobs and all the other jobs that rely on them across Central Queensland.
The Labor party claim that everything will be fine because some woke companies like Rio Tinto want a carbon tax.
Labor’s policy document trumpets the fact that Rio Tinto has developed the world’s first carbon free aluminium smelter in Canada. Labor fails to mention that Rio makes aluminium in Canada from hydroelectricity.
There is no hydroelectricity in Central Queensland.
Rio Tinto is happy to make the world buy its green aluminium because it will make more money in Canada.
Does anyone believe that Rio Tinto would lose a wink of sleep if they shut their Australian aluminium factories to make more money from Canadian aluminium?
The absolute state of the modern Labor party is revealed when they believe the lip service of a multinational behemoth over the interests of Australias workers.
Labor themselves acknowledge that their new carbon tax risks jobs because, by their own definition, 80 per cent of the businesses that pay this tax are trade exposed, Labor is now considering a tariff on overseas products to level the playing field with Australian produced goods.
If Labor’s safeguard mechanism is not a tax why would we need a countervailing tariff to protect Australian jobs?
However, even if they apply a tariff it won’t help because Australias market is not big enough.
We export a lot of manufactured goods and tariffs applied in Australia will not protect our product that is sold in other countries.
The real beneficiary of Labor’s new tax is China, who will take more of our manufacturing jobs thanks to this tax on Australian business.
No wonder Anthony Albanese is Xi Jinping’s new best friend.
