Australia’s former Labor prime minister Julia Gillard has used a keynote speech at a conference in the Victorian state capital, Melbourne, to urge federal parliament to keep the price on carbon.
The recently elected conservative Liberal-National government has said it will introduce legislation to repeal the carbon price laws introduced under Ms Gillard’s government when parliament resumes this week.
Liberal-National Prime Minister Tony Abbott has said he is confident that Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions can be cut by five per cent by 2020, in line with the minimum target set by Labor, with his alternative Direct Action plan.
Ms Gillard, who introduced the price on carbon in 2010 despite a pre-election promise to not introduce a carbon tax, says she wants to see evidence that the Liberal-National proposal can work.
“If it is to be replaced by any other system then it is incumbent on those advocating the new approach to show it will cut emissions by at least five per cent by 2020 and it will do so by a lesser cost per tonne of carbon abated,” she said.
Ms Gillard explained during the speech that she did say she would not introduce a carbon tax but the scheme she did introduce was not a tax.
Ms Gillard, who was speaking at an event called Credit Where Credit Is Due, said she made a political mistake in allowing Labor’s carbon pricing mechanism to be called a tax.
“It’s an emissions trading scheme (ETS) that begins with a fixed price before moving to a market based price and I should have clearly said so,” she said.
Australia’s current carbon price legislation mandates a fixed price for carbon pollution until July 2015 when the it reverts to a market based ETS linked to the European Union’s ETS.
Ms Gillard urged her former Labor colleagues to stand by carbon pricing ahead of the coalition’s plans to have it scrapped during federal parliament this week.
Climate change will be the key battleground when the 44th parliament sits for the first time, with the Abbott government expected to introduce its carbon price repeal bills first thing on Wednesday morning.
The Australian Greens Party oppose the bills while Labor says it’s open to scrapping the fixed price if the government replaces it with an ETS, something the coalition is not going to do.
Ms Gillard encouraged her colleagues to continue “staring down the most reckless of fear campaigns”.
“I always want our nation to be brave enough to shape the future, not to be passive and overwhelmed by it,” she told the Victorian Women’s Trust event.
“And be gutsy enough to do the hard things that are right, like pricing carbon.”
She said the nation’s renewable energy output was up almost 25 per cent, while emissions in the national electricity market were down more than 12 million tonnes.
“That’s the equivalent of taking 3.5 million cars off the road for a year,” she said.
“Carbon pricing is here and it is working.”
The former prime minister also acknowledged regret at her handling of the asylum seeker issue, adding that “sloganeering” from the government could not solve the problem.
Her wide ranging speech canvassed a number of aspects of her three years as Prime Minister.
