“The carbon tax is bad for the economy and it doesn’t do any good for the environment,” Abbott told The Washington Post. “Despite a carbon tax of $37 a ton by 2020, Australia’s domestic emissions were going up, not down. The carbon tax was basically socialism masquerading as environmentalism, and that’s why it’s going to get abolished.”

“If the Labor Party wants to give the people of Australia a Christmas present, they will vote to abolish the carbon tax. It was damaging the economy without helping the environment. It was a stupid tax. A misconceived tax,” Abbott added.

Australia’s liberal Labor Party received a crippling blow in the recent elections, as Abbott’s conservative coalition garnered enough votes to create the largest ruling coalition in the country since 2004. Conservatives rode in on a wave of widespread disapproval of the previous government’s handling of the economy, including the imposition of a carbon tax in the summer of 2012.