Tomorrow the federal parliament may debate the one-year anniversary of Julia Gillard's haunting broken promise that ''there will be no carbon tax under the government I lead'' but they shouldn't ignore the misinformation the government has knowingly promoted since.
Last August the Department of Climate Change partially funded London-based consultancy Vivid Economics to research the implicit carbon tax impact of regulations and government programs on the Australian, US, British, Chinese, Japanese and South Korean electricity sectors.
In particular the report highlighted that China's implicit carbon tax rate was $8.08 per tonne of emissions. And the major contribution was the $7.58 per tonne from the Large Substitute for Small, or LSS, program that closed small inefficient coal-fired power stations and replaced them with larger, more efficient ones.
By comparison Australia's effective carbon tax was only $2.34.
When the report was released it was promoted by Climate Change Minister Greg Combet as demonstrating ''China [has] effective carbon prices well in excess of Australia's so the myth that Australia is acting ahead of the world is just that -- a myth''.
What the government didn't disclose at the time is that they knew their argument was bunk.
Documents released under Freedom of Information show that departmental feedback on a draft to the report's commissioners, the Climate Institute, queried if the method for calculating China's carbon tax rate was the ''the correct approach''.
In the note the department twice recalculated the LSS policies' carbon tax effect with different methodologies that would be ''consistent with that used to calculated (sic) measures such as the NSW GGAS scheme in the Australian chapter''.
In doing so they concluded the LSS policy imposed a comparable effective tax of $1.28 not the $7.58 in the final report.
If this comparable number was included in the final report Australia's implicit carbon tax rate would still be $2.34, but China's would be $1.78, showing Australia already had a much higher implicit carbon tax rate on the electricity sector.
After that note the available FoI paper trail ends for why the data was not corrected and whether the department briefed the Climate Change Minister about the correction. And if not, why not?
Vivid Economics didn't include the departmental feedback in its final report and went ahead with the higher Chinese number while acknowledging discreetly the non-comparability of the implicit carbon tax rates in a way that is only obvious with the released FoI documents and hindsight.
Even without the correction it was clear there were other issues. Former Keating government minister Gary Johns wrote on these pages ''the Chinese must think Gillard a fool, [Vivid] wildly overstate China's and wildly understate Australia's implicit carbon price''.
But it wasn't until the Productivity Commission published its carbon emissions in key economies report showing China lagged Australia's emissions reduction efforts and that ''no country currently imposes an economy-wide tax'' that the government's case was punctured.
But the government knew it all along, stayed mum and perpetuated the idea it was otherwise.
Sadly, it's part of a pattern of questionable honesty the government has indulged to justify its carbon tax.
The Treasury modelling of the economic impact of the carbon tax is based on a rate of $20 per tonne of emissions and not the actual $23 imposed, as is the compensation package.
But the $3 per tonne difference is enough to eliminate the government's overcompensation of $10.40 annually, when a household's emissions profile reaches just 4 tonnes ($3 x 4 tonnes = $12).
To put it into perspective multiplying the size of the average Australian household by the average emissions produced per Australian amounts to approximately 52 tonnes a year, easily wiping out any overcompensation even when half of the largest emitters aren't being directly taxed.
Similarly the modelling is based on the wildly implausible assumption that the rest of the developed world is imposing the equivalent of Australia's carbon tax price by the middle of this decade. In isolation the assumption is spectacular, combined with the December 2012 expiration of the Kyoto Protocol, it's absurd.
Before voting on this legislation the parliament needs to properly investigate the carbon tax facts and foster an honest public debate. Not rely on the government's ongoing preparedness to trade on the information advantage it has over the public.
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