GREG Kachel told Inverell Times online the response to Senator John Williams’ survey on the proposed carbon tax had been quite staggering.

Mr Kachel, Senator Williams’ chief of staff, said the surveys had been sent out last week in the electorates of New England and Lyne.

As counting continued yesterday, more than 2500 New England voters were against the carbon tax and only 245 in favour.

In Lyne the figure was 1248 against and only 147 in favour.

“The numbers far outweigh what we were thinking,” Mr Kachel said.

“(Although) as a conser-vative electorate we thought more would be against it.”

Mr Kachel said 119,000 surveys had been sent out to both electorates, which are held by independent MPs Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott.

Meanwhile, Senator Williams last week denied the survey was politically biased and said it was based on facts.

When asked what value the survey had, considering there was no scientific nature to the survey, Senator Williams told The Northern Daily Leader the carbon tax proposal had been in the public domain for months and people were aware of the emissions statistics.

“People are aware that Australia only contributes 1.4 per cent of the world’s emissions,” he said.

“They are aware if we aim to further reduce those emissions by 10 per cent, to 1.2 per cent, it won’t alter our situation at all, considering China burns 51 per cent of all the coal produced in the world.

“It’s crazy policy.”

Senator Williams said he planned to publish the results of the survey.

“So that people in the in the New England and Lyne electorates and around Australia have an unders-tanding of what the people in these two vital seats think,” he said.

When asked by The Leader if he believed the survey was one-sided because it didn’t include questions about climate change, Senator Williams said he was “limited in the amount of space”.

“The flyer was designed so it was not biased one way or the other,” he said.

Senator Williams said he did not plan to poll the electorate on any other issues.

“Senators don’t have a big enough budget to poll everything,” he said.

When asked if the responses to the surveys thus far had been what he wanted, Senator Williams said “it has given me the response I thought it would”.

A further 1800 surveys arrived in the mail at Senator Williams’ office yesterday.

Mr Kachel said the final figures from the carbon tax survey would be released next week then tabled in parliament once sitting resumes next month.

Parliament resumes in Canberra on October 11.

© 2011 Inverell Times

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