Heavy-hitter urges return of ‘world’s best’ carbon tax
Kat Wong |
Australia needs to bring back a carbon tax and should never have dumped the measure, an economic heavyweight says.
Ex-Treasury secretary Ken Henry, now a leading environmental advocate, derided the Abbott-led coalition government’s decision to repeal the carbon price, which came into effect under Labor prime minister Julia Gillard in 2012.
When AAP asked if the current Labor government should reconsider the measure amid calls for tax reform and greater action to address climate change, the Australian Climate and Biodiversity Foundation chair said the scheme should never have been quashed.
“Why the hell did we ever drop it?” Dr Henry told the National Press Club on Wednesday.
“It still boggles the mind that we had the world’s best carbon policy and then, for purely political reasons, decided that we could afford to do without it.
“Of course we need a carbon tax, but in the meantime, we’ve got something else and we’ve got to make something else work.”
Dr Henry has also urged the federal government to overhaul Australia’s decades-old environment laws.
Labor is currently pursuing a litany of economic goals, including plans to build 1.2 million houses by 2029, boost renewable energy and develop the critical minerals industry.
But it controversially shelved the bulk of its planned overhaul of national environmental laws in the last term of parliament after pushback over so-called “nature positive” reforms.
Dr Henry said Labor should “stop dreaming” about more challenging reforms if it couldn’t even change the outdated environmental provisions.
“To put it bluntly, there is no chance of Australia meeting stated targets for net zero, renewable energy, critical minerals development, housing and transport infrastructure without very high quality national laws,” he said.
Dr Henry said economics had, for the most part, ignored the most important constraints on human choices.
“Our failure to recognise that the laws of nature affect the set of feasible choices available to us is now having a discernible impact on productivity – and things are getting worse with accelerating speed,” he said.
“We need to break the deadlock.”
Reforms to the environment laws would need to ensure federal, state and territory governments could co-operate for a shared purpose, finalise effective national standards and establish an expert, independent decision maker in the form of a national environmental protection agency.
The existing legislation has remained largely unchanged for more than two decades despite a landmark review, released in 2021, finding the act was not fit to address current or future challenges.
AAP
