2011 may be Australia's last chance to adopt carbon economy
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Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Wednesday urged Australians to have the faith to implement "momentous" change by putting a price on carbon, saying that this year may be the nation's last chance to strike a deal on a carbon price.
Earlier, the federal government announced its plan to introduce a fixed price on carbon from July 2012. The carbon tax will then morph into an emissions trading scheme in three or five years time.
While the details of the carbon tax and the amount of compensation are yet to be determined, the plan has received heavy criticisms.
Newspoll survey published last week showed Labor's primary vote has fallen six percentage points to 30 percent, its lowest ever result, after the announcement on carbon tax.
On Wednesday, Gillard said a carbon price would kick-start Australia's "journey of transformation" towards a low carbon economy, where new technologies and job opportunities awaited.
"If Australia does not adopt a carbon price in 2011, we probably never will," she told Australia Associated Press in Adelaide, while addressing the Don Dunstan Foundation on Wednesday.
"This is the year of decision - setting Australia on the path to a high skill, low carbon future, or leaving our economy to decay into a rusting industrial museum," she said.
She promised she will not allow jobs in heavily polluting trade- exposed industries to go overseas under her emissions pricing regime.
Despite facing a knock in the polls, Gillard was defiant and said that she put Australia "first every time, no matter what the personal price", and that the carbon tax will be a change that would allow the nation to move with the rest of the world.
"I don't want us to wake up in ten years' time lumbered with a high carbon economy, when the rest of the world has moved on, and then scramble to catch up," she said.
Last year, the prime minister made an election promise not to implement a carbon tax. The carbon tax had been heavily condemned by the opposition, saying that Gillard has broken her election promise, and the tax is an assault on the Australian people's standard of living.
Gillard defended having gone back on her promise that she would never introduce a carbon tax, arguing she had always said Australia needed to act on climate change and that she wanted to see an emissions trading scheme.
