by Viv Forbes, winner of the 1986 Australian Adam Smith Award for “outstanding services to the free society”

The carbon tax is the Big New Tax pushing up Australian electricity prices. But there is also a Big Old Tax, the insidious Renewable Energy Target (RET) Tax, introduced by the Howard government.

The RET Tax forces electricity retailers to buy a rising proportion of their power from expensive “renewables” such as wind and solar. It has already caused massive increases in the price of electricity. Surely we can learn from Europe — wind and solar energy will escalate our power costs, destroy other industries, waste scarce capital, destabilise the power network, uglify the countryside with mirrors, towers and pylons and, when everything is counted, may not reduce the use of carbon fuels, and certainly will not improve the climate.

Tony Abbott is right to promise abolition of the ALP’s carbon tax, and he must also abolish that other devious climate tax, the RET tax.

Both are unnecessary, unjustified, costly and pernicious.

It is not wicked power companies who have caused electricity prices to soar — it is wicked politicians with Two Big Climate Taxes.

Further reading:

  1. http://us4.campaign-archive1.com/?u=c920274f2a364603849bbb505&id=4d6acc1b55&e=e1638e04a2
  2. http://news.consumerreports.org/home/2012/08/results-of-consumer-reports-wind-turbine-tests.html