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Here's some golden words displaying complete understanding of the Australian economy from one of the prime architects of the Oz carbon tax...
CHRIS UHLMANN: A lot of that money is circulating in the economy. It's creating job, Senator, it's bouncing through to our cities.
BOB BROWN: Yes, Chris, and what we would do is take the advice of the Treasury of this nation and recoup the $145 billion over the next 10 years through a super profits tax. Tony Abbott says...
CHRIS UHLMANN: But you can't recoup it if you shut the industry down.
BOB BROWN: Treasury...
CHRIS UHLMANN: If you shut the coal industry down there won't be that money...
BOB BROWN: I'm sorry...
CHRIS UHLMANN: ..available to you.
BOB BROWN: I'm sorry, Chris, Treasury has no intention to shut the industry down. it tends to- it tends...
CHRIS UHLMANN: No, but you do.
BOB BROWN: No, I'm not.
CHRIS UHLMANN: Didn't you say back in 2007 that we had to kick the coal habit?
BOB BROWN: No, I did not. You're looking at the Murdoch press, where I said back in 2007 we should look at coal exports with a view to phasing them out down the line.
CHRIS UHLMANN: It wasn't the Murdoch press, it was a comment piece that you wrote. So you want to phase out the coal industry?
BOB BROWN: The world is going to do that because it is causing massive economic damage down the line through the impact of climate change.
CHRIS UHLMANN: But the question-
BOB BROWN: No, let me...
CHRIS UHLMANN: The simple question is how do you replace $50 billion worth of export income?
BOB BROWN: You go to renewables over the coming decades and you do that by exporting... Look, Germany did this. It's closed its coal mine. It's closing its nuclear power stations. It's gone into exporting renewables - including using Australian technology...
CHRIS UHLMANN: And those jobs...
BOB BROWN: It's created 350,000 jobs and a multibillion dollar export industry and Australia- China's going to have as many solar panels by 2020 as the whole world has now, using, again, a mission of technologies, including those from Australia while this country is captivated by the old polluting industries which are making climate change worse.
Now, we can do much better than that. This is a resource rich country. We should follow 37 other countries, take some of the money from those resource riches, put it into a sovereign fund and make sure this country can be educated, wealthy and wise into the future.
CHRIS UHLMANN: We're going to have to leave it there, thank you.
7.30 - ABC
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