Carbon tax, business closures link: Libs The federal coalition says reports that business insolvencies are at a record high in Australia are worrying and show the carbon tax is doing damage. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has recorded more than 10,500 company collapses for the year to March, News Limited reports. Opposition industry spokeswoman Sophie Mirabella says businesses have been warning the federal government for two years that introducing a carbon tax on top of a high Australian dollar would prove the final straw for many firms competing with importers. "This has been ignored and at times ridiculed," she told reporters in Canberra on Monday. We now have the evidence in black and white. About 900 firms were being placed in administration every month - more than during the global financial crisis, she said. Opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt said major firms had specifically cited the carbon tax and electricity prices as a factor in job losses. "The impact is real, it comes at the worst possible time and it's Australian workers, blue-collar workers in many cases, who are actually paying the price of the carbon tax through their own jobs," he said. The unemployment rate remains steady at 5.4 per cent, while Australia last week posted its strongest monthly employment growth in 13 years with more than 71,000 jobs created in February.