Australia plans to scrap its carbon tax and bring forward an emissions trading scheme, Australian Treasurer Chris Bowen said, a policy shift certain to be a focal point in the forthcoming election.
Under current plans, Australia would move from the current fixed price on carbon — essentially a tax assessed on larger companies entitling them to produce carbon emissions — to a floating price in July 2015. However, since Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd regained the leadership of the governing Labor party last month, there has been mounting pressure to ditch the unpopular tax sooner.
Bowen said in a television interview that the tax would be axed and a planned emissions trading scheme, under which assessments for emissions are subject to market forces, brought forward.
He gave no details and said Rudd would announce the full plan in the coming days.
“It is no secret that we have been looking at this, that we are heading in this direction,” Bowen told Channel Ten.
“We have believed in an emissions trading scheme for some time. What we are seeing is an emissions trading scheme being implemented earlier than was envisaged,” he said.
The carbon tax, set at A$24.15 (US$22) a tonne, applies to about 300 of Australia’s biggest polluters, including mining giant BHP Billiton, Qantas Airways and BlueScope Steel.
The emissions trading scheme would replace that with a floating price, based on current EU carbon futures and is expected to be cheaper for big business.
Any new carbon plan cannot be legislated until after the elections, due to take place between late next month and November. The conservative opposition has promised to scrap the carbon price if it wins office.
The planned change could undermine the government’s budget strategy, as the carbon tax was due to raise A$8.14 billion in this year to next year, and A$8.6 billion in 2014-2015. The shift could see revenue cut by about A$5.8 billion in 2014-2015.
Bowen would not be drawn on the impact on the budget, but said that it would be “substantial” and would run to “several billion” Australian dollars.
The carbon tax was introduced last year under former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard, ousted by Rudd in an internal party vote last month. He reclaimed the job she took from him in a similar fashion in 2010, shortly before the last election.
Rudd’s reinstatement as prime minister has given Labor a boost from poor ratings in opinion polls. Surveys show Rudd is preferred by voters to opposition leader Tony Abbott, but Labor still trails the opposition narrowly.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last