Are these the words of an environment minister?

Ian Campbell shares his thoughts on a carbon tax:

SENATOR IAN CAMPBELL, FEDERAL ENVIRONMENT MINISTER: You don't want to wipe out the jobs of thousands of Australians. What we want to do is invest in the technologies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and this is just a tax.
...

SENATOR IAN CAMPBELL: This is simply a new tax and there can be no getting away from it. It is a massive impost on Australian industry. It will drive jobs offshore, put up prices for energy in Australian households and not fix the greenhouse gas challenge that's so serious that governments should be investing in it.

Citizens of the civilised world may be excused for thinking these cannot possibly be the words of an environment minister. An industry minister perhaps, but surely not an environment minister.

Campbell is repeat offender on this issue. In June he described carbon taxes as 'stupid' prompting this hilarious response from Big Gav at Peak Energy:

The Minister for blocking wind farm development, Ian Campbell, has announced that "carbon taxes are stupid". As he is a master of the dark art of stupidity, perhaps he could be considered an expert on stupid things, but I still think he's several beers short of a sixpack, as usual.

Personally I'd say a well implemented global carbon tax would solve (1) global warming (2) peak oil and (3) resource wars over oil and the terrorism that results from these - so perhaps they wouldn't be such a bad thing.

Its amazing to think that more than a decade ago Australia had an environment minister who actually proposed a carbon tax. His name was John Faulkner.