TONY Abbott says he will put the public service on notice on the day the election is called that he wants them to have all the paperwork ready to scrap the carbon tax if he becomes Prime Minister.
It comes as the Herald Sun can reveal that South Korea’s former ambassador Woosang Kim took the extraordinary step for a diplomat of actively lobbying Coalition MPs to support the carbon tax.
“I tried to persuade them how important the carbon tax legislation was,” he said.
He predicted Julia Gillard would one day be seen to be “on the right side of history” despite the political pain she was now facing.
Ahead of the carbon tax starting on Sunday, Mr Abbott will today outline the “concrete steps” he will take to remove it in a bid to hit back at Government claims that he really won’t dump the tax.
“Unlike the Prime Minister, I mean what I say: there will be no carbon tax under a government I lead,” he told the Herald Sun.
“On the day the election is called, I will write to the secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet to make it clear that, if elected, the first priority of a Coalition Government will be the repeal of the carbon tax.”
Mr Abbott said under caretaker provisions he would also ask public servants to freeze the Government’s $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation from making any grants.
If he won the poll, Mr Abbott said he would ask on day one to have legislation ready within a month to scrap the carbon tax and implement the Coalition’s direct action plan to cut emissions.
Mr Abbott said if Labor and the Greens blocked his plans in the Senate he would force another election.
Sounds good, but Julia Gillard said the same thing. Not an Aussie, but Abbott would get my vote.