Twenty five years ago, on this day, August 10th, 2001,
CANBERRA, Aug 9 AAP – An OECD call for Australia to introduce environment taxes was today ruled out by the government and opposition despite support from rural backbenchers.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s latest report showed that Australia’s economy was faring well, and that a carbon tax would be a cost-effective way to benefit the environment.
“Setting up a trading scheme or a carbon tax of broad sectoral coverage is the most cost-effective way to achieve emissions reductions,” the OECD report said.
Environment Minister Robert Hill branded the call Eurocentric, saying the government was instead focused on building economic growth with a low-tax environment.
“We’re not going to impose another tax,” Senator Hill said.
The government wanted strong economic growth built on a low tax environment, low interest rates and low inflation, he said.
A business/environmental roundtable comprising the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), Southcorp, Elders Ltd, ABN Amro, Berri Ltd and CSIRO today called for tax breaks to encourage investment in the environment.
McSweeny, L. 2001. Fed – Major parties reject OECD call for environment tax. Australian Associated Press, 10 August
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 371ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that Australia had very briefly in 1988 to say 1990 professed to take a positive proactive position as a middle power on environmental issues, including climate. But that was never deep seated, and by 1991 the tune coming out of Canberra and state capitals was changing, because well, Who pays the piper calls the tune, and who pays the piper are the extractive industries.
The specific context was that in 1997 the Australian federal government had extorted a very generous deal at the climate conference in Kyoto. And it was looking like they would still not ratify it, and it was looking like they still wouldn’t have anything approaching an emissions trading scheme or any price on carbon dioxide. There had already been one cabinet proposal in 2000 defeated thanks to the machinations of South Australian Senator Nick Minchin. So the OECD had said, “look, you guys really need a carbon tax to incentivise energy efficiency and technological innovation and so forth” and both the major political parties turned around and said the OECD and future generations can get fucked. In essence that’s what they said, and they meant it, and they still mean it.
What I think we can learn from this is that democracy only works if you have an educated population that is capable of forming its own groups, which cannot be co-opted, repressed, and exhausted by the state and the corporate sector. And in the absence of an educated populace that can do that, in the absence of a genuinely independent and inexhaustible civil society, you end up with “demonstration elections” and a more or less rapid descent into the maelstrom in the Edgar Allan Poe sense of it, but without the happy ending.
What happened next – Australia got a carbon tax – after astonishingly bloody political battles – for a year and a bit (2012-2013) until the next government that came along axed it.
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
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Also on this day:
August 10, 1974 – Stockholm conference on climate modelling ends
August 10, 1978 – Ford Pinto deaths spark class action lawsuit
August 10, 1980 – “Energy, Climate and the Future” seminar in Melbourne
August 10, 2000 – States’ greenhouse gas failure