By ABC's Sara Phillips Posted Fri 18 Oct 2013
Photo: Greg Hunt could make some political mileage from his legislation release. But then so could the opposition. (AAP: Alan Porritt)
The propose legislation to repeal the carbon tax has been released. It gives one of the parties a free kick, but the question is which one, writes Sara Phillips.
Environment minister Greg Hunt has made good on an election promise: he has released the draft legislation for the abolition of the carbon tax. It's the first legislation the Liberals have put on the table since their election, and you could detect just a little bit of the chuffed in Greg Hunt as he announced its release.
This legislation gives one of the parties a free kick, but the question is which one.
At the moment, Labor and the Greens combined hold the power in the senate. They will do so until July 1, 2014. The legislation posted on the web this week needs to pass the senate before it becomes law, and both those parties have indicated they have no intention of allowing the bills to pass.
Unless something changes within Labor (or less likely, the Greens), the carbon tax repeal will have to wait until July 1 to get through. On that day, the senate changes, with the new line-up looking likely to pass the bills.
Both Greg Hunt and Prime Minister Tony Abbott have insisted there is no time to waste and that they'll be hammering this legislation through before then. They have not ruled out the prospect of forcing another federal election to be called if they can't manage to pass the legislation through the senate before July 1.
Greg Hunt seems optimistic that Labor will have a sudden change of heart and allow the legislation to pass. "Let's watch what Labor does rather than what it says," he said to the AM program on ABC Radio National on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, business is worried. Should it pay the carbon tax for this year? What about the businesses that already have? Will they get their money back? What about contracts that have been signed that factored the expected carbon tax into the bottom line? Should companies change their prices again? What happens if the legislation doesn't make it through before July and it goes back to the senate in a new financial year? How much will business owe then?
When posed these logical questions, Greg Hunt replied, "Well let's not get ahead of ourselves."
There are a lot of question marks here, and not very many answers.
If the Liberal party is somehow successful in persuading Labor to pass the repeal laws, an accounting nightmare will ensue. Businesses and householders will be left in limbo as the price of anything affected by the carbon tax remains uncertain.
But if Labor chooses to stand firm against the repeal bills, uncertainty will still be inherent. Agencies set up by Labor, such as the Clean Energy Finance Corporation have already suspended their activity, waiting for instruction from the new minister. Carbon taxes into the new financial year will be affected and at this stage it's not clear how that will be addressed.
And this is where politics comes in. A clever party in opposition could make this the government's fault. Lay the blame for the uncertainty and administrative tangles at the feet of the minister behind the bills. Accuse the government of impeding business because of their dogged insistence that something that is complete and functioning be dismantled and replaced with the inchoate Direct Action Plan.
But Labor has not shown itself to be a clever party when it comes to carbon pricing. Having cut a deal with independents and Greens to introduce the carbon tax/ETS, they were then forced onto the back foot for three years by relentless politicking from Tony Abbott.
As I have blogged previously, when Kevin Rudd made his way back to the Prime Ministership, the first thing he did was indicate just how scared he was about Abbott's attacks by announcing the carbon tax had been "terminated".
It was tantamount to endorsing Abbott's policy position. But in a complicated feat of internally inconsistent reasoning, Labor then took the bothersome policy to the election anyway.
If Labor's track record on climate policy is any indication, we'll be seeing eight and a half months of the Liberals' popularity rising off the back of the uncertainty brought about by the carbon tax repeal bills.
The Liberals will continue to wipe the floor with the Labor party, insisting that the uncertainty for businesses and householders is all the fault of an opposition too wedded to an unpopular idea. If we go to a double dissolution, they'll blame the ALP for wasting millions of taxpayer dollars to run yet another election.
If Labor capitulates and passes the legislation, the ensuing accountancy nightmare will be Labor's fault too. This time for introducing the unpopular thing in the first place.
But a smarter opposition would take the carbon tax uncertainty as a free kick and use it to score some goals. It's the kind of strategy the Liberals used so effectively in the last three years in opposition. They filled the void of uncertainty between the announcement of the carbon tax and its actual details with the frightening rhetoric of 'great big new tax on everything'.
Like the Liberals did so effectively, Labor doesn't have to actually convince Australians that their policy is good, it simply has to convince us that the Direct Action Plan is bad.
The question for either party is whether they can use the uncertainty that comes with this proposed carbon tax legislation for their own good, or for their own undoing.
Sara Phillips is the editor of the ABC's environmental portal, where this article was originally published. View her full profile here.
Carbon tax repeal is a free kick - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
