UPDATED THURSDAY 17 JULY, 11:20am: Australia’s “carbon tax” has been axed – so what does it mean for you and for Australia? We asked Conversation readers to tell us on Facebook and Twitter what questions…
Ross Garnaut was the architect of the Labor government’s carbon pricing scheme, which looks likely to be scrapped this week despite last week’s brinkmanship in the Senate. The Conversation asked Professor…
The government has adjusted, in consultation with PUP, Clive Palmer’s amendment to the carbon tax repeal legislation as it tries again to expedite terminating the tax. The amendment, to ensure power companies…
If you heard Clive Palmer and his Palmer United senators say today that they will only scrap the carbon tax with stronger rules to protect consumers, you might have thought they sounded quite fair and…
In a surprising announcement last night Clive Palmer promised to abolish Australia’s current carbon price, and block the coalition’s Direct Action policy. But Palmer has said he will vote to retain the…
What on earth was Al Gore, a zealot on climate change, doing celebrating a Palmer carbon policy that’s worse than what Australia has in place, although not as bad as it could have been? That remains a…
Budgets are often framed as give and take. But in the case of the environment, the government is taking large amounts of money in cuts, while giving little back beyond funding the Direct Action climate…
The long-awaited White Paper on the A$2.55 billion Emissions Reduction Fund answers some questions about how the Abbott government’s Direct Action climate plan will work. But it looks like the policy will…
A Labor-dominated Senate committee has set the stage for the post-July tussle over carbon policy, recommending that Australia commit to much deeper emissions cuts than the current 5% target, and advising…
Qantas has done a backflip over the role of the carbon tax in the problems it faces. After declaring on Monday that “the major issues Qantas faces are not related to carbon pricing”, it now says this cost…
The federal government has begun the process of unwinding the carbon price, moving to cancel further auctions of carbon permits, ahead of its hoped-for repeal of all carbon-pricing legislation after the…
The idea of the “green economy” goes in and out of fashion, not least because it is rarely defined and frequently misunderstood. Partly this is because different groups find ways to exaggerate the aspects…
Alcoa’s decision to close the Point Henry smelter, at a cost of almost 1000 jobs in Geelong and elsewhere, comes amid a perfect storm buffeting Australia’s aluminium industry. Point Henry will be the second…
You could be forgiven for missing it, but on the Friday afternoon before Christmas, federal environment minister Greg Hunt released the draft details of the Emissions Reduction Fund – the centrepiece of…
Carbon (emissions) taxes have proved unpalatable world-wide, compared to (carbon) emissions trading schemes. But taxes give stable carbon prices while prices in emissions trading schemes yo-yo, plunge…
With the government introducing legislation to repeal the carbon price today, people might be wondering how much they will benefit from reduced cost of living. The government has continued to claim that…
We should not be debating a choice between direct action and carbon pricing: we need both, but with credible, well-designed mechanisms. Why we need both We need a carbon price based on certificate trading…
Tony Abbott must be thinking: thank goodness for the “honeymoon”. It is helping lessen the public impact of some quite serious early problems his government is having. Abbott is assisted not just by the…