PM dashes any hopes industry had that the Federal Government would rethink plan to apply carbon price to trucking
By Brad Gardner | June 18, 2013
The trucking lobby may continue to plea for the industry to be spared from the carbon price, but Prime Minister Julia Gillard has shown she is not for turning.
Only days after the Australian Trucking Association (ATA) argued it was not too late for the Federal Government to change its mind, Gillard stood up in Parliament yesterday to reiterate the scheme would apply to trucks from July 1 next year.
The industry was granted a two-year reprieve when the carbon price began in 2012 but the ATA, which once supported a carbon price, wants the exemption to remain permanent.
“It has always been the subject of the scheme that, from July 1, 2014, there would be carbon pricing for heavy on-road vehicles, and that is of course because we wanted to see a situation of consistent treatment for modes of transport,” Gillard says.
“We have always believed that the most effective way of reducing carbon pollution and the cheapest way of reducing carbon was to put a price on carbon.”
Trucking will pay an extra 6.85 cents per litre under the carbon price. The Coalition claims it will, if elected, axe the scheme.
“The Coalition will begin the process of removing the carbon tax on day one of a new government,” Opposition spokesman on transport Warren Truss says.
The Opposition’s climate change approach involves paying businesses to reduce their emissions.
