No Carbon Apology Needed, says PM

JULIA Gillard has declined to apologise for her pre-election declaration that "there will be no carbon tax under the government I lead" and has warned that it may take "months and months and months" to convince voters on the merits of the policy.

Asked yesterday why she didn't just apologise, the Prime Minister said: "I've explained, of course, to the Australian people that I never meant to mislead anybody during the last election campaign about carbon pricing".

She told the ABC that carbon would be priced "through a path I didn't expect during the election campaign".

The Prime Minister's comments came as the multi-party climate change committee prepared to meet again on Tuesday as the government and the Greens continued to try to reach a deal on the carbon pricing package.

The Weekend Australian understands that the government is considering whether to release Treasury modelling with the carbon pricing package.

Ms Gillard moved to play down expectations that the announcement would quickly restore Labor's poor rating with voters. She said it could take many months of explanation.

"This is a big reform. It is not something that people will digest in the first five minutes of seeing the press conference when it is announced," she said.

Asked if there might be a "huge disconnect" between what she said and what she did, Ms Gillard said: "What I'm saying is what I'm doing . . . I understand it's causing anxiety, but to be the kind of country we want to be in the future with the environment we want and the strong economy we want, we have got to get on with the job and price carbon".

But opposition climate action spokesman Greg Hunt demanded the government release a complete package in announcing the carbon pricing scheme details. "We want the full modelling on the impacts on electricity, gas, petrol and groceries for Australians between now and 2020," he said.

Mr Hunt seized on a report in The Australian on Thursday that the government was negotiating with individual power generators to close or curtail high emissions plants. He said this was a key element of the Coalition's direct-action policy.

"The Coalition has had it right all along. They want to put a tax on electricity but it won't necessarily cause anything to change."