GOVERNMENT MUST SCRAP ‘PINK BATTS ON WHEELS’

08-October-2010

Friday October 8th

The Federal Opposition has renewed its calls for Labor to dump its much-derided Cash for Clunkers scheme.

Following yesterday’s first meeting of her Electricity Tax Committee, an indignant Julia Gillard is stubbornly clinging on to the $394 million program.

But Ms Gillard has no good reason to stick with this ludicrously expensive scheme that will send jobs offshore.

Even on environmental grounds alone, it’s a fraud – with one tonne of carbon abatement costing $394, compared to the price in the Government’s once-vaunted ETS of less than $30 per tonne.

The Gillard team has been incapable of delivering home insulation and BER programs without billions of dollars being wasted, and Cash for Clunkers is the next fiasco ripe for abuse.

Cash for Clunkers was an election campaign stunt and, as with her Citizens’ Assembly, it should be consigned to the scrapheap.

If Ms Gillard is using the excuse of a minority government to break all other promises, she should use the new paradigm as the reason to junk this dog of a policy.

Her own Industry Minister Kim Carr already gave the game away when he rejected this idea last year.

He is now trying to handpass policy responsibility for the scheme to another Minister in Labor’s backrooms.