As I was predicting

Carbon tax going, but don't expect big savings

From Peter Martin's column today -

But they are unlikely to save anything like the $550 claimed by Prime Minister Tony Abbott at the Queensland Liberal National Party
convention at the weekend.

"It's adding 9 per cent to your power bills, it's a $9 billion handbrake on our economy and it's costing average Australian families $550 a year," Mr Abbott said, referring to the carbon tax. "So it must go."

The $550 figure comes from Treasury modelling ahead of the introduction of the tax in 2012. But only $250 of it came from electricity and gas prices. The rest came from much smaller imposts on items such as food ($46)  clothing ($29) and rent ($23). Many of the items modelled by the Treasury had price impacts described as "less than 10 cents per week".

The latest iteration of the legislation will include no penalties for businesses who don't pass their energy savings on, making a one-off saving of $250 per household more likely.

"I think that's an overestimate,” Climate Institute chief executive John Connor said on Sunday. "Gas prices are climbing sharply for reasons unconnected with the carbon tax, so it's unlikely there will be any cut in the gas price".

Australia's largest supermarket chain, Woolworths, has said that because it avoided price rises when the carbon tax was introduced there would be little room to remove them when it came off.

Coles says it is "working with suppliers to understand the implications of the change and if we identify any savings attributable to the tax changes we will pass them back to our customers".

Qantas has removed the carbon surcharge on domestic flights but says market conditions do not allow it reduce its standard fares.

So, credit for removing it is unlikely to be all that significant.  In fact, today's Newspoll showing that 53% of voters want it repealed*, yet who are still giving Labor a significant TPP lead, already indicates that this policy doesn't have the electoral magic that the Coalition thinks it does.


*  Of course, people are being asked during a cold winter snap of a few week duration across the nation, and according to Peter Brent, this might be the first time Newspoll has called it a carbon "tax".  Had they been asked in the middle of a heat wave, I reckon the figure would drop to somewhere in the 40% range.  Brent argues that most voters are not that invested in the issue - although there is little doubt that the most rabidly Right wing voters have tied up (in their minds) a huge amount of "culture war" significance to it, as they are wont to do with anything to do with climate change.