Clive Palmer and Ross Garnaut debate carbon tax ahead of WA Senate election re-run

Updated

Federal MP Clive Palmer and economist Ross Garnaut have gone head to head in a debate over the carbon tax, with the mining magnate saying the tax will "definitely" go when the new Senate takes over in July.

The pair debated the issue on Lateline ahead of Saturday's WA Senate election re-run, after the Prime Minister put the carbon tax front and centre as he campaigned in the west this week.

The Senate election will determine how many votes the Coalition will require from a diverse cross-bench of independents, micro parties and the Palmer United Party (PUP) to push legislation through the Upper House.

Professor Garnaut, the man who designed Labor's climate change laws, weighed into the election debate on Tuesday when he said the Abbott Government had been saved a "costly mistake" when the Senate voted down its repeal of the carbon tax.

But Mr Palmer told Lateline the carbon tax would be repealed when the new Senate was sworn in, irrespective of the vote on Saturday.

Mr Palmer had previously indicated he wanted the repeal legislation to apply retrospectively, something the Government had ruled out.

But he has now indicated that getting rid of the policy is a priority, describing it as "fait accompli".

"As a matter of principle, we favour the repeal of the carbon tax, as does the Government," he said.

"And our party has the balance of power in the Senate right now, even if we're unsuccessful in the election in WA, which we won't be. So the carbon tax is definitely going. It's a fait accompli."

Palmer dismisses latest report from IPCC, calls for cut in nature's carbon emissions

Mr Palmer also rejected the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report (IPCC), which singled out the threat of climate change to the Great Barrier Reef and Australia's alpine region.

Lateline presenter Tony Jones: Clive Palmer, can I ask you a very basic question? Do you believe the consensus scientific view set out in the latest IPCC report that climate change impacts due to global warming will have especially serious impacts on Australia? Clive Palmer: No, I don't believe that's so. There's been global warming for a long time. I mean, all of Ireland was covered by ice at one time. There were no human inhabitants in Ireland. That's how the world has been going over millions and billions of years and Ross Garnaut knows that's true, so I think that's part of the natural cycle.

When asked who he would take advice from in the field of climate change, Mr Palmer deflected the issue.

"Well, I can get a group of scientists together, Tony, and pay them whatever I want to and come up with any solution. That's what's been happening all over the world on a whole range of things," he said.

Mr Palmer said scientists should be focusing on the "97 per cent" of carbon dioxide emissions that come from nature.

"It's not logical. If we say 97 per cent comes from nature and we don't even bother examining how we can reduce carbon in nature, just in industry, it's not a proper balance," he said.

"I mean, if we say we want to reduce it by 1 per cent, which I think is the target globally, to do that, why can't we take some from nature, some from industry, or maybe all from nature?"

Mr Garnaut said the IPCC report, which warned of serious threats to the planet's ecosystems, infrastructure and agricultural production, reflected the overwhelming view of scientists from all over the world.

"The academies of science of all of the great countries of science - including Australia, Britain, the United States, China, India, Germany, the Netherlands, France - all are of this view," he said.

"And so if you stand outside that you're really taking a strange position in the world of knowledge."

Market-based system needed to tackle climate change: Garnaut

In his speech to a Perth business function on Tuesday, Professor Garnaut estimated the repeal of the carbon tax would cost the budget $7 billion and said "true Australian conservatives would be barracking" against the repeal.

He told Lateline the $7 billion figure came from the loss of carbon tax revenue next year, plus the cost of the Coalition's direct action policy.

Coalition Direct Action policy

Keep the 5 per cent emission reduction target

Scrap the price on carbon and associated corporations

Establish a $2.55 billion fund to pay businesses for emission reduction projects

Create a 15,000 strong Green Army to conduct conservation work

Read more about the policy in our explainer



Photo: AAP Photo: AAP

"Elsewhere I've said that looking ahead, beyond the forward estimates, the very minimum loss of budget revenue is $4-5 billion a year," he said.

"But it could be several times that, comparing direct action with the current policies. Now that's a lot of revenue."

Professor Garnaut said climate change would be "deeply disruptive to society and economic activity".

"If we don't put in place market-oriented ways of dealing with it, like the Emissions Trading Scheme ... if we don't have a market-based scheme, we'll end up with trying to address this issue with multiple interventions, which will make a mess of our market economy," he said.

"True Australian conservatives want this problem to be dealt with. It will be disruptive of everything we value.

"It will be disruptive of established ways of life in Australia as a whole, but especially in the south-west of WA, from Geraldton to Albany, if we leave it unmitigated.

"If we don't deal with it in a market-oriented way with an emissions trading scheme or some broad-based carbon pricing, the alternative is regulatory intervention, which will make a mess of the market economy."

Topics: clive-palmer, person, climate-change, environment, tax, government-and-politics, elections, wa, australia

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