Business gives carbon tax dinner approval

The Business Council of Australia says it is okay with Prime Minister Julia Gillard's efforts to wine and dine chief stakeholders on the carbon tax.

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The Business Council of Australia says it is okay with Prime Minister Julia Gillard's efforts to wine and dine chief stakeholders on the carbon tax.

On Wednesday night, Ms Gillard hosted some of the country's big corporate chiefs at her official Sydney residence, Kirribilli House, to discuss the scheme.

Amid coalition claims that the fancy dinner sends the wrong message to taxpayers, the Business Council of Australia's Graham Bradley said he approved.

"It's a very good thing that the prime minister is reaching out to the chief executives of companies that are going to be most affected," he told ABC Television.

"Getting from the horse's mouth, the real impact that that will have on their companies, their jobs, their employees."

The council and the government have not always seen eye to eye on the carbon tax, and recently engaged in a public tit-for-tat exchange of letters questioning each other's positions.

Although the council once backed the government's emissions trading scheme, Ms Gillard questioned its reluctance with the carbon tax.

"What is it, to start with, that's our problem at the moment," Mr Bradley said.

"The government has announced a general direction but none of the detail.

"We can't even assess whether it's going to have the kind of impact on carbon emissions that the government says it might."

Mr Bradley said the council still supported a market-based mechanism, but there were still too many open questions with the government's latest approach.


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Source: AAP


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