Time to end Carbon Stealth Taxes

For Immediate Media Release

18th June 2011

Time to end Carbon Stealth Taxes.

The Carbon Sense Coalition today called on the ALP/Green Coalition to remove all the existing stealthy carbon taxes before adding one more carbon tax.

The Chairman of "Carbon Sense", Mr Viv Forbes, said that Australia already had a mess of overlapping taxes, royalties, rents, levies, duties and charges on all aspects of the production and use of coal, oil and motor fuels as well as all sorts of tax breaks and subsidies for competitive non-carbon energy sources.

"This mess is so complex and burdensome that no one really knows the full effect of it all except to raise costs for producers and consumers.

"Thoughtlessly adding another carbon tax without cleaning up the current mess is reckless and irresponsible. They should focus first on the clutter of existing climate taxes and subsidies.

"Costs are rising, especially for electricity.

"Naturally, politicians blame everyone else, but most of the blame rests with them and their covert climate taxes.

"These Green Stealth Taxes do nothing to reduce real pollution, have no effect on the climate, but do inflate costs.

"Sly climate taxes are everywhere, like weeds in the garden.

"For example, Queensland has a "Climate Smart" law mandating that 15% of electricity must be generated by gas rather than by low cost coal. In addition the feds have a target to generate 20% of electricity from renewables, which are far more expensive than gas. And they dictate propped up prices for solar feed-in tariffs, which push up costs for all electricity consumers.

"Then we have the Climate Change "Industry", a multitude of make-believe businesses creating pretend jobs supported by sneaky tax breaks, mandates and subsidies. These parasitical "industries" include ethanol, wind/solar power and carbon sequestration.

"Taxpayers also pay for wasteful spending by governments on climate junkets, carbon tax propaganda, carbon accounting, one-sided climate research, the Carbon Bank, deceptive advertising and carping climate commissioners. All of this money could be reducing taxes or providing infrastructure or services that people really want.

"The government's own "Productivity Commission" identifies 230 carbon stealth taxes and subsidies with an estimated cost of $44 per tonne of emissions reduced.

"It is not sufficient to stop The Big Carbon Tax – we must also smoke out the Stealthy Carbon Taxes."

Viv Forbes

Chairman Carbon Sense Coalition

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