Extract from The Guardian website:
Tony Abbott’s plans now in the hands of new Senate that sits from July
- Lenore Taylor, political editor
- theguardian.com,
The government’s carbon tax repeal laws have been voted down by the
Senate, leaving the fate of Australia’s carbon pricing scheme up to the
new Senate that sits from July.
It appears very likely the carbon price will then be repealed – and the government says its repeal laws will make the end date of the tax retrospective to 1 July, 2014 – even if they have not passed the parliament by then.
The Coalition linked the vote, which had been expected next week, to next weekend’s West Australian election campaign, claiming Labor was voting to keep the carbon tax while “deceiving” voters in Western Australia by saying they would terminate it.
Labor’s lead West Australian Senate candidate has said Labor was “scrapping the carbon tax” – distinguishing between the tax, or fixed price, and the floating price which Labor wants to bring forward. Prime minister Tony Abbott said this was “a deception” of West Australian voters.
Labor and the Greens will continue to oppose the repeal of the scheme they created when Julia Gillard was prime minister, but from July the government will have the support of the Liberal Democratic party’s David Leyonhjelm, who after the election told Guardian Australia he was “agnostic” about the science of global warming but “even if it is eventually confirmed, government spending in Australia will not make the slightest bit of difference”.
He said he would vote for the carbon tax repeal. So would Family First’s Bob Day. Continuing senators – independent Nick Xenophon and the DLP’s John Madigan – also support repeal.
The repeal is also likely to be supported by the two Palmer United party senators, Glenn Lazarus and Jacqui Lambie, and the Motoring Enthusiast Ricky Muir, who has entered a voting alliance with PUP.
But there is some uncertainty surrounding the PUP position.
Palmer has been boasting, ahead of the 5 April Senate poll, that “only the Palmer United party can remove the carbon and mining taxes”. But he told Guardian Australia he had not changed his view that the carbon tax repeal needed to be retrospective, instead of taking effect from July.
“We’ll make up our mind how we will vote when our senators take their seats,” he said.
Labor’s climate change spokesman said the party could not support the abolition of existing clean energy policies without a “credible alternative”.
“Along with the rest of the world, Labor knows the best alternative is an ETS [emission trading scheme],” Mark Butler said.
In an interview with Guardian Australia last week opposition leader Bill Shorten said Labor would take a “market-based system” to reduce greenhouse emissions to the 2016 election.
Greens leader Christine Milne said the Senate had rejected “Tony Abbott’s do-nothing approach on global warming”.
“No one should give up on the current law. It has the support of leading economists like Ken Henry, Ross Garnaut and Bernie Fraser whilst Tony Abbott’s phoney alternative is friendless,” the greens leader said.
“Momentum for emissions trading is building around the world ahead of the 2015 global climate negotiations. If Australia is left behind it will be our jobs, industry and innovation that will suffer.”
Before the election Abbott promised to call a double-dissolution election to achieve the repeal of the carbon tax.
But to achieve the trigger for a double dissolution under section 57 of the constitution, a bill must be blocked twice, with three months in between. That would require a second rejection just a few weeks before the new Senate is due to sit anyway.
And should the new Senate not pass the repeal, the government would probably have to start the whole double-dissolution procedure again.
Constitutional law expert George Williams told Guardian Australia there was “no clear answer” as to whether a trigger could be formed through one rejection from the existing Senate and one from the new Senate.
“A trigger formed that way would almost certainly be challenged in the High Court and for that reason alone I think a government would be unlikely to try it,” he said.
But the government is on track to get its first double-dissolution trigger through separate legislation to scrap the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.
The Senate rejected the CEFC abolition bill for the first time on 10 December last year, meaning the requisite three months have passed for a second rejection to create a double-dissolution election trigger.
The bill is listed to be reintroduced into the House of Representatives again on Thursday.
The $10bn so-called green bank was set up as part of Labor’s carbon price package to support renewable energy projects through loans, guarantees and equity investments.
It appears very likely the carbon price will then be repealed – and the government says its repeal laws will make the end date of the tax retrospective to 1 July, 2014 – even if they have not passed the parliament by then.
The Coalition linked the vote, which had been expected next week, to next weekend’s West Australian election campaign, claiming Labor was voting to keep the carbon tax while “deceiving” voters in Western Australia by saying they would terminate it.
Labor’s lead West Australian Senate candidate has said Labor was “scrapping the carbon tax” – distinguishing between the tax, or fixed price, and the floating price which Labor wants to bring forward. Prime minister Tony Abbott said this was “a deception” of West Australian voters.
Labor and the Greens will continue to oppose the repeal of the scheme they created when Julia Gillard was prime minister, but from July the government will have the support of the Liberal Democratic party’s David Leyonhjelm, who after the election told Guardian Australia he was “agnostic” about the science of global warming but “even if it is eventually confirmed, government spending in Australia will not make the slightest bit of difference”.
He said he would vote for the carbon tax repeal. So would Family First’s Bob Day. Continuing senators – independent Nick Xenophon and the DLP’s John Madigan – also support repeal.
The repeal is also likely to be supported by the two Palmer United party senators, Glenn Lazarus and Jacqui Lambie, and the Motoring Enthusiast Ricky Muir, who has entered a voting alliance with PUP.
But there is some uncertainty surrounding the PUP position.
Palmer has been boasting, ahead of the 5 April Senate poll, that “only the Palmer United party can remove the carbon and mining taxes”. But he told Guardian Australia he had not changed his view that the carbon tax repeal needed to be retrospective, instead of taking effect from July.
“We’ll make up our mind how we will vote when our senators take their seats,” he said.
Labor’s climate change spokesman said the party could not support the abolition of existing clean energy policies without a “credible alternative”.
“Along with the rest of the world, Labor knows the best alternative is an ETS [emission trading scheme],” Mark Butler said.
In an interview with Guardian Australia last week opposition leader Bill Shorten said Labor would take a “market-based system” to reduce greenhouse emissions to the 2016 election.
Greens leader Christine Milne said the Senate had rejected “Tony Abbott’s do-nothing approach on global warming”.
“No one should give up on the current law. It has the support of leading economists like Ken Henry, Ross Garnaut and Bernie Fraser whilst Tony Abbott’s phoney alternative is friendless,” the greens leader said.
“Momentum for emissions trading is building around the world ahead of the 2015 global climate negotiations. If Australia is left behind it will be our jobs, industry and innovation that will suffer.”
Before the election Abbott promised to call a double-dissolution election to achieve the repeal of the carbon tax.
But to achieve the trigger for a double dissolution under section 57 of the constitution, a bill must be blocked twice, with three months in between. That would require a second rejection just a few weeks before the new Senate is due to sit anyway.
And should the new Senate not pass the repeal, the government would probably have to start the whole double-dissolution procedure again.
Constitutional law expert George Williams told Guardian Australia there was “no clear answer” as to whether a trigger could be formed through one rejection from the existing Senate and one from the new Senate.
“A trigger formed that way would almost certainly be challenged in the High Court and for that reason alone I think a government would be unlikely to try it,” he said.
But the government is on track to get its first double-dissolution trigger through separate legislation to scrap the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.
The Senate rejected the CEFC abolition bill for the first time on 10 December last year, meaning the requisite three months have passed for a second rejection to create a double-dissolution election trigger.
The bill is listed to be reintroduced into the House of Representatives again on Thursday.
The $10bn so-called green bank was set up as part of Labor’s carbon price package to support renewable energy projects through loans, guarantees and equity investments.
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