THE federal Minister for Climate Change, Greg Combet, has accused the O’Farrell government of exaggerating the impact of the carbon tax on public transport and ”sexing up” documents, after the release of Treasury modelling and a heavily edited brief.

The modelling showed fare increases of less than 0.4 per cent by 2013 and 0.5 per cent by 2020. The Premier, Barry O’Farrell, warned in July via a press release that transport fares would rise up to 3.6 per cent, despite advice the real impact was likely to only be 1 per cent if the existing IPART methodology was used. Mr Combet accused the Premier of a blatant disregard for the truth.

”The documents show disgraceful efforts by the Premier’s political advisers to cover up the results of the Transport Department’s advice through selective quoting and ‘sexing-it-up style’ reworking of the material,” he said.
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Mr O’Farrell stood by his original comments yesterday.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/dispute-over-carbon-claims-20110913-1k7wh.html#ixzz…