No carbon tax

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title: "No carbon tax" claim: "There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead." caption: "The sentence was no. Then she said the fixed price worked like a tax." status: published example: false published: 2026-08-15T20:05:00+10:00 person: Julia Gillard claimType: climate year: 2010 loudness: 9 tags: [gillard, carbon-tax, climate, labor, "2010"] source: url: https://www.smh.com.au/national/pm-says-no-carbon-tax-under-her-govt-20100816-126ru.html date: "2010-08-16" publisher: The Sydney Morning Herald title: "PM says no carbon tax under her govt" quote: "There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead." evidence: path: 2010/no-carbon-tax/source.md kind: html captured: "2026-08-15"

Julia Gillard, 16 August 2010, Network Ten, five days before the poll: “There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.” The next day she told The Australian she ruled one out. The clip is on the official PM transcripts. She does not deny saying it.

This card files that sentence. It does not file “Gillard is a liar” and it does not file “a price on carbon cannot work.”

What did have a receipt:

• 25 February 2011, 2GB, the day after she announced the mechanism: the first few years “would work effectively like a tax.” Later in the same interview: “There will a fixed price in the meantime. That is effectively like a tax.”
• 8 November 2011, after the Senate passed the Clean Energy package: “A fixed carbon price of $23 a tonne will apply from 1 July 2012, moving to a flexible price after three years.” Combet, in the same release: “a charge on pollution, not a tax on households.” The charge was $23. The name was price.
• Parliament later repealed the package under its own title: Clean Energy Legislation (Carbon Tax Repeal) Act 2014. The repeal named the thing she had ruled out.

Grammar: no carbon tax. Logic: a fixed $23 charge is the noun she banned. Rhetoric: price, not a tax.