Labor refuses to budge on repealing carbon and mining taxes Treasurer Joe Hockey says the best thing Labor can do for the car industry is repeal the carbon tax. THE Labor Party won't budge on its opposition to repealing the carbon and mining taxes, as the final sitting day of Parliament for the year looms. The Senate stand-off over the taxes looks set to thwart Mr Abbott's plans to have them dismantled by Christmas. It comes as the Opposition yesterday lost its first major battle with the Abbott Government as the debt ceiling was abolished in a Coalition deal with the Greens. The PM has threatened to extend parliamentary sittings beyond this week if the tax repeal bills are not passed, but it is unlikely the Senate will support the move. Along with the Mineral Resource Rent Tax, the Coalition is also moving to scrap Labor's SchoolKids Bonus, which was to be paid from January 1. In a rare bipartisan display, the PM invited Opposition Leader Bill Shorten to join him in South Africa to pay tribute to Nelson Mandela. Both were absent at the start of the year's final sitting week, with their respective deputies Warren Truss and Tanya Plibersek leading the chamber. The Coalition's deal with the Greens - whom it has previously slammed as "economic fringe dwellers" - led to the successful removal of the debt ceiling yesterday, ahead of the December 12 deadline. The Government had initially proposed lifting the ceiling from $300 billion to $500 billion, with Labor demanding it be limited to $400 billion. But the Coalition will have no such luck with the Greens in the Senate, where the minor party is also opposed to the removal of both taxes. Queensland Liberal Senator Ian Macdonald yesterday likened the threat of global warming to the Y2K panic that swept the world in the lead-up to the new millennium. "I'm sure in years to come people will look back on history and say, yep, remember global warming ... we're still going," he told the chamber. Labor has said it does not support scrapping the carbon tax without an emissions trading scheme in place. A Senate committee chaired by Tasmanian Liberal Senator David Bushby recommended the mining tax bills be passed, but Labor's dissenting report indicated ALP Senators had no plans to abandon their stance. The report said while repealing the MRRT would reduce the tax burden on mining companies, changes to other measures "would have a detrimental effect on some of Australia's poorest workers and on small businesses operating in a difficult economic environment." The report also said the SchoolKids Bonus was only "partially linked to the MRRT."