Neil Breen: It’s about the safeguard mechanism. This is all about emissions from Australia’s 215 biggest polluters. It piggybacks off a policy that was actually brought in by the coalition in 2016. Labor wants to set pollution caps on the companies which tighten with time. The Greens wanted to be sure that they couldn’t just buy carbon credits they had to reduce emissions and buy carbon credits. Ted O’Brien is The Shadow Minister for Climate change and energy. He’s been in and out of divisions all day. Thanks so much for your time shadow minister. Thanks, Breeny. Okay, you’re not happy about this policy or how it stands at the moment. The floor is yours. Tell us why.
Ted O’Brien: Well, the main reason is we’re in the midst of a cost of living crisis. And this is going to be driving prices up for for everyday Australians. This is the main immediate problem. So basically, you know, with all the tooing and froing and argy bargy, people arguing about this policy, the one thing that nobody is denying, is that it’s going to put an enormous amount of cost on industry, industry is going to pass that onto consumers. So it doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about putting fuel in your car, buying your groceries, or building materials for your home. Prices are going to go up because what’s happened is Labor’s introduced a tax a carbon tax and the companies who are going to cop it? Those that survive are just going to pass it right through.
Yeah, because we’re talking about this just so people understand the 215 biggest polluters in Australia are coal mines. They’re big aluminium smelters, they’re energy providers. They’re the big emitters and they all have to make significant reductions. Some of them have committed to it already. We’re venturing into the unknown here with sort of green energy no one knows where we’re going. And Ted O’Brien We had a Labor party elected on a promise of what was it $275 buck reduction in your annual power bill. We’re nowhere near that. We’re looking at two and $2,750 increase.
Ted O’Brien: Breeny. It’s ridiculous. This time last year you had Labor candidate, the now Prime Minister Albanese promising everyone you vote Labor, your power prices are going to come down $275. But we all know what’s happened. They’ve gone up hundreds of bucks since. And we found out only a few weeks ago that as of July one, they’re gonna go up even further. So you know in Queensland, you’ve already..
Neil Breen: 40 percent they’ve gone up 40%.
Ted O’Brien: Add another 20 plus percent on that for for this winter. It’s out of control. And this is the thing, right? No one’s saying we shouldn’t reduce emissions in the country. But you’ve got to get the balance right. You can’t hurt people in the process. You botch the economy while trying to decarbonize, but you end up decapitating the whole economy rather than decarbonizing and this is the problem. They have totally throwen the idea of balance out the window and Australia’s going to pay the price. Unfortunately,
Neil Breen: Yeah, there’s that much going on at the moment. And all of these big ideas and we’re going to do is we’re going to do that but none of its coherent. It’s all a mess. Hey, Ted O’Brien. I got to keep moving with the show. I want to have a longer talk with you about the Olympic games because you were on the bocog committee. You were very much a part of the bid to get the games. I’m hosting Ray’s slot next week nine to 12. So I was hoping I could book in for a nice long chat to cut through a lot of issues that. That okay?
Ted O’Brien: I’d love to have a chat to you then, we’ll talk, then.
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