Carbon tax: Heat rises as voters reject Julia Gillard's plan

ANGRY Australians have vowed to vote Julia Gillard from office at the next election after yesterday's controversial carbon tax announcement.

Scores of voters rejected the plan soon after details of the $24.5 billion package to tackle climate change were revealed, with more than 80 per cent who voted in a national News Limited online poll saying Australia shouldn't have a carbon tax.

Almost 100,000 people voted across four polls in the national plebiscite by 5pm yesterday, with 87.1 per cent saying they planned to change their vote at the next election in light of the tax.

More than 70 per cent of voters, or 15,866 people, said they now planned to vote for the Coalition at the next election while just 8.51 per cent said they would support a Labor government.

Just 13 per cent of voters said they wouldn't change their vote at the next election.

Despite government claims that 90 per cent of Australians would receive compensation, and that 40 per cent of households would be overcompensated, voters said Julia Gillard had signer her fate at the polls.

"They're calling it 'Carbon Sunday' but I like to refer to today as 'Suicide Sunday' for a PM and three independents,'' one reader wrote.

"I cannot wait until the next election. The Labor Party the Greens and the Independants will answer to the Australian people for what they are inflicting upon us. Revenge is a dish best served cold,'' wrote another.

Eighty per cent of voters described the tax as "disgraceful'' while others said it was "inadequate''.

Just eight per cent of voters said they were confident it wouldn't affect their hip pocket.

An anti-carbon tax group said its website crashed after being overwhelmed with people trying to sign up to a campaign rejecting the tax.

The organisers of the site, no-carbon-tax.org, said the site crashed because of the "sheer numbers of people signing up.''

Andrew Wilkie Says Julia Gillard Must Improve Carbon Tax Sales Job to Regain Public Confidence

TASMANIAN independent Andrew Wilkie has told Julia Gillard to improve her carbon tax sales job amid plummeting public support for the measure.

As fellow crossbencher Rob Oakeshott played down the latest Newspoll - showing only 30 per cent support for the tax - Mr Wilkie said the government had to do something to restore public confidence in the measure.

“Clearly the government does need to do a better job at selling a price on carbon if it is to regain the broad-based support it enjoyed last year,” he told The Australian Online.

Today's Newspoll survey reveals 78 per cent of Australians believe in climate change but 60 per cent oppose Labor's proposed carbon tax.

Mr Oakeshott urged voters to recognise the “economic opportunity and economic importance” of the carbon tax.

“No-one in this business is trying to do anyone any harm,” he said.

“We are trying to do public good in the long term and sometimes that requires some difficult decisions along the way. Everyone is trying to do a public good here.”

Mr Wilkie also offered conditional support for the tax.

“I continue to support a price on carbon so long as the settings are right,” he told The Australian Online.

“Most relevant to me is that Tasmania's overwhelming reliance on renewable energy, and capacity to lock up carbon through forestry, be properly factored into the settings being developed.”

The government will need the support of both MPs, plus independent Tony Windor and Green Adam Bandt, if its carbon tax is to get through the House of Representatives.

As the government seeks business support for the plan, Nationals Leader Warren Truss today accused it of leaving families and small businesses out in the cold.

Mr Truss said the Prime Minister's dinner invitation to big polluters at Kirribilli House tonight showed she was increasingly out of touch with the needs of everyday Australians.

“While Julia Gillard cosies up to the big end of town tonight, wining and dining big business to woo carbon tax support, small business and families are on the outside looking in,” he said.

“Ordinary Australians are already struggling with rising household costs and now they face the prospect of a double whammy from the carbon tax and looming interest rate rises.”

Responding to a Newspoll survey in The Australian yesterday, which showed Labor's primary vote at 33 per cent and her own satisfaction rating at a new low of 38 per cent, Ms Gillard conceded she had “a lot of hard work to do as Prime Minister”.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, whose satisfaction rose six percentage points to 42 per cent in the past month, said the poll was “field evidence” of people's carbon tax concerns.

“I think it's the good sense, the common sense, of the worker which is coming to the fore here,” Mr Abbott said.

The Prime Minister seized on Newspoll's finding that 78 per cent of respondents believed climate change was real.

“What today's poll shows - and I don't normally comment on polls - but I'll say this if you look at today's poll it shows clearly that Australians believe climate change is real,” Ms Gillard said in Sydney.

“That's a pretty big contrast with Mr Abbott, who has said in the past it is absolute crap.”

She said she understood major reform made people anxious, but the public would soon have better information upon which to judge the plan.

“In the middle of this year we will be able to give everyone full details of how the carbon pricing system will work,” she said.

“They will be able to sit at their kitchen table and work out all of the dollars and cents for them.”

Treasury spokesman Joe Hockey said plummeting support for the carbon tax was “Labor's own handiwork”.

“The Australian people are smart,” he said.

“They look at a carbon tax and they say, yes, that means higher costs for me and everyday life. And the Australian people can see through the Labor Party. This is all of the Labor Party's making.”

theAustralian.com.au

Carbon Price Announcement on Sunday

AUSTRALIANS will learn how the proposed carbon tax will hit their back pockets when the federal government unveils its policy on pricing pollution on Sunday.

The announcement comes 136 days after Labor, the Australian Greens and two independent MPs first formed the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee (MPCCC) to investigate carbon pricing.

"This weekend the Gillard Government plans to announce a price on pollution as the central element of a comprehensive policy to tackle climate change, cut pollution and drive the transformation of the Australian economy to a clean energy future," Prime Minister Julia Gillard said in a statement on Monday.

"After hearing a report on the discussions of the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee, Cabinet agreed tonight that sufficient progress had been made to allow an announcement date to be set for Sunday 10 July 2011."

Ms Gillard said talks between MPCCC members during recent weeks had been fruitful.

The committee comprises Ms Gillard, Treasurer Wayne Swan, Climate Change Minister Greg Combet, Greens senators Bob Brown and Christine Milne, and independents Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott.

"While there will be additional discussions with the MPCCC this week, followed by further Cabinet consideration, it is expected that the remaining details will be finalised in these discussions ahead of Sunday's announcement," Ms Gillard said.

The scheme will start with a fixed price on carbon emissions on July 1, 2012, followed by an emissions trading scheme with a flexible price and an emissions target starting three years later.

The news comes after Ms Gillard revealed on Sunday that the carbon tax would not be placed on fuel for cars and light industrial vehicles.

The prime minister said Mr Windsor had been influential in that development, which blunts Opposition Leader Tony Abbott's argument that a carbon tax would increase petrol prices for motorists.

But Mr Abbott and other coalition MPs questioned the government in parliament on whether trucks, buses and boats would be exempt from the carbon tax, and how long the exemption would exist.

The impending announcement of the carbon policy was a great relief, Ms Milne said.

"Now at least we are in a position to be able to go out there and deliver on what we said we'd deliver at the time we signed the agreement with the Prime Minister Julia Gillard, saying we would have a multi-party climate committee, that it would deliver a carbon price mechanism and that the emissions trading scheme would begin on July 1, 2012," Ms Milne said.

But the Greens senator would not reveal any details about the carbon price.

Ms Gillard said last week nine out of 10 households would receive tax cuts or rises in benefits, and the three million lowest paid households would be over-compensated for increases in their cost of living due to the carbon tax.

Opposition Environment spokesman Greg Hunt said the government's announcement of its carbon price policy at the start of the five week winter break from parliament was a "cynical move".

"It is deliberately running away from the parliament and it is deliberately running away from scrutiny," he told AAP.

Mr Hunt said the government would not give the full impact on the costs of living up to 2020 on Sunday.

"The only thing that matters is the full impact on electricity prices, gas prices, on grocery prices, on general cost of living between now and 2020 because each year, every year the carbon tax is going to go up and up and up."

Commenting before Ms Gillard's announcement, Mr Abbott said a coalition government would finance its $10.5 billion carbon emission reduction scheme from Budget savings and not from an imposed tax.

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