Thank you very much. My question is for Mr. Stratton with the Chamber of Commerce.
The government has increased a number of input taxes on businesses, most notably the carbon and payroll tax increases. Let's start with the carbon tax. The government is fond of saying that the tax won't drive industry out of the country because there is an output-based pricing system, which was meant to largely exempt price-taking internationally competitive industries from the carbon tax and replace it with a regulatory regime.
The problem with that is that there are many businesses that do not qualify for the output-based pricing system; in other words, they have to pay the tax. Many of those same businesses cannot pass the price on to their customers because the price is internationally set.
I think, for example, of our farmers. They have to pay the tax on drying their grains. They don't pay it on their tractors and other on-farm equipment, which is exempt through purple fuels, but for example, drying and off-farm transportation is taxed. Now the commodities that they are delivering are internationally priced, so they can't simply pass the price of a higher commodity on to the consumer. There are countless other industries that are in the same position: no exemption, no ability to pass the price on to customers and therefore a competitive disadvantage.
There has been no compensating tax relief for those businesses. Can you comment on the impact of the tax on those specific industries and businesses that can neither get an exemption nor pass the extra costs on to their consumers?