Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

The carbon tax is pushing up the cost of electricity and pushing up the cost of doing business, without doing anything to help reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, because all it is doing is shifting economic activity and shifting emissions to other parts of the world, where, for the same amount of economic output, those emissions are actually higher than they would have been here in Australia. Scrapping the carbon tax will help Australian manufacturing businesses become more competitive internationally again. It will help create jobs here in Australia based on a genuine improvement in our competitive position.

A number of regulators of electricity prices have already come out to say that lower electricity prices would be the result of scrapping the carbon tax: the Queensland Competition Authority, the New South Wales Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal, the independent Tasmanian Economic Regulator and the ACT Independent Competition and Regulatory Commission. And AGL, as a big electricity generator, has confirmed that if the carbon tax is repealed the price reductions will flow through to residential and small business customers. (Time expired)