Australian taxpayers are footing an even bigger bill for Labor’s ballooning carbon tax bureaucracy as a result of a steep hike in building rent, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Environment Simon Birmingham said today.
Rent for the Canberra building to accommodate the Clean Energy Regulator or ‘carbon cop’ has jumped $1.3 million a year under a newly signed $25.2 million five-year lease, it has been revealed today.
The building at 5 Farrell Place will house the Regulator’s 300-plus bureaucrats, with current occupants the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency who signed the lease moving to the ‘Nishi’ building in the NewActon precinct.
“It seems extraordinary that office accommodation rent should jump by $1.3 million a year to $5 million a year, even allowing for car parking, electricity and the other incidentals departmental officials have cited,” Senator Birmingham said today.
“Whether or not electricity costs have been built into the rental contract, which seems unusual, clearly the ‘carbon cop’ itself faces its own higher electricity costs as a result of the Government’s toxic carbon tax.
“Labor’s $256 million Clean Energy Regulator or ‘Carbon Cop’ will soon be joined by the $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the $3.2 billion Australian Renewable Energy Agency and the $25 million Climate Change Authority.
“This huge bureaucracy is an enormous dead weight on the Australian economy, administering the world’s largest carbon tax that fails to stop our own emissions rising.
“Multi-million-dollar office rent increases only add to the pain of Labor’s carbon tax that will see a 10% increase in electricity bills in the first year alone.”