THE HON
Mark Dreyfus QC MP
Parliamentary Secretary for Climate
Change and ENERGY EFFICIENCY
Parliamentary Secretary for INDUSTRY
AND INNOVATION
transcript
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16 May
2012
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TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW WITH AMELIA ADAMS – CHANNEL 9 NEWS
SUBJECT: Carbon Price and Household
Assistance
E & O E – PROOF ONLY
AMELIA ADAMS: The carbon tax comes into effect on the first of July, but
the compensation to households began today. Around
three-hundred-and-twenty-five million dollars will go to more than one-point-six
million families around the country. Support payments for pensioners, students
and other eligible recipients will flow through before the end of June.
And for all the details on who
benefits, let’s cross to Mark Dreyfus, the Parliamentary Secretary for Climate
Change and Energy Efficiency. Mr Dreyfus, good afternoon. Thank you for
joining us.
MARK DREYFUS: Good afternoon, Amelia.
AMELIA ADAMS: Give us the breakdown. Who’s receiving these payments from
today and how much will they be getting?
MARK DREYFUS: From today, one-point-six million families are going to
receive straight into their bank accounts these payments. For families on
Family Tax Benefit Part A, they are going to receive one-hundred-and-ten dollars
per child and for families on Family Tax Benefit Part B, they’re going to
receive sixty-nine dollars per family.
AMELIA ADAMS: And some of the other benefits will flow through a little
later in June. Who will get those payments and how much will they be
receiving?
MARK DREYFUS: Actually, in late May, Amelia, we’re going to have
payments to pensioners - pensioner couples will be receiving
five-hundred-and-ten dollars and single pensioners will be receiving
three-hundred-and-thirty-eight dollars.
What you might be referring to in
June is the payment of the school kids bonus, which will start twentieth of June
and of course, that’s four-hundred-and-nine dollars for every primary school
child and eight-hundred-and-eighteen dollars for every secondary school child.
And of course, from 1 July, everyone earning up to eighty thousand dollars is
going to be receiving a tax cut.
AMELIA ADAMS: That’s news that people love to hear, Mr Dreyfus, but
there is still a lot of resistance to the carbon tax, despite the big campaign
and Julia Gillard really pulling out all the stops to sell it. How do you
counteract the community opposition to this tax?
MARK DREYFUS: Look, Amelia, we’ve had a massive and irresponsible scare
campaign. Unfortunately, I’d be expecting that campaign to continue, but once
Australian households start receiving the assistance, which is coming - and
that’s nine in ten Australian households are going to be receiving that
assistance - I think that the fear will start to die down.
And they’ll see that heavy
industry is starting to cut pollution, that we’re starting to tackle the really
serious problem of climate change, which of course is what this is all
about.
AMELIA ADAMS: The Opposition leader says if you don’t have the tax, you
won’t need compensation. That’s according to Mr Abbott. How important is this
carbon tax really for Australia’s future?
MARK DREYFUS: This is really important. We have to act now on this
serious problem, which is not going to go away. If we don’t act now, it’s only
going to get more expensive and more damaging. And most people probably don’t
realise that by 2015, Australia will have to join a global legally binding
agreement to cut our pollution. We can’t get out of it, and the carbon price is
the cheapest way to do it.
AMELIA ADAMS: All right, Mark Dreyfus, we’ll have to leave it there for
now. Thank you so much for your time this afternoon.
ENDS
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