LEON BYNER: We’re talking today about this proposed carbon tax, its impact on South Australia … let’s talk to Simon Birmingham, Senator in South Australia for the Opposition. Good morning.
SIMON BIRMINGHAM: Good morning, Leon, and good morning to your listeners. Leon, you and Haydon Manning [Department of Politics and Public Policy, Flinders University] this morning have highlighted the utter and total uncertainty that surrounds this carbon tax. There’s only one certainty about it and that is it will pass through higher costs of living to every Australian household, every Australian business and that will flow right through. Now, Julia Gillard and her bedfellows in the Greens, less than two weeks after backflipping on her solemn promise that ‘there will be no carbon tax under a government I lead’, is clearly panicking and she’s panicking… you can see it by the fact that neither she nor the Greens are ruling out running a multi-million dollar advertising campaign in favour of this carbon tax taking taxpayer dollars and throwing it at an advertising campaign to convince people that somehow they’ll be better off under a carbon tax regime when everybody knows they will be worse off. Now …
LEON BYNER: Alright, so what’s your… Your point you’re making is?
SIMON BIRMINGHAM: Well, Leon, let me quite frank here. I think if they do this, they will be doomed to the same fate as happened with the WorkChoices advertising campaign. That was a multi-million dollar campaign. It was ill fated, it was wrong and people saw through it. If they do this with the carbon tax, Julia Gillard will be doomed to the same fate, people will see that it’s not an effective measure, it won’t work without overall global action which clearly is not happening, it will not reduce carbon emissions, there’s no guarantee of it, the only guarantee is it will push up electricity prices, push up petrol prices and as a result push up the cost of living for everybody.
LEON BYNER: Alright…
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