It said because Victorian “gassy” brown coal-fired power generators would receive almost all the subsidy, NSW residents and businesses would be paying more through their power bills.
“The Labor/Greens carbon tax which hits today represents a significant threat to economic growth and investment and puts thousands of NSW jobs at risk,” it said.
“By introducing this tax, the federal government is ignoring the fact that our mining states compete for investment with each other and with more attractive investment locations in our region and around the globe.”
NSW’s coal mining regions will bear the brunt of the carbon tax, with the state Treasury predicting that by 2020 approximately 18,500 new jobs will be sacrificed in the Hunter region alone with another 7000 jobs foregone in the Illawarra.
Overall, the carbon tax will cost the mining industry $25 billion to 2020, including an $18 billion hit to the coal industry.
Coal is NSW’s biggest export commodity and the impact will be felt across the state’s economy, according to the NSW Minerals Council.
It said most of NSW’s key mining competitors had no plans to introduce a comparable carbon price and no other country taxed the mining of coal under a carbon pricing scheme.
A whole new system of additional compliance and paperwork related to the carbon tax will also see business input costs increase which will necessarily be passed onto consumers through higher prices.
