A tax to make you richer!

13 April, 2011 by

Greg's carbon tax fudges kept crashing Excel…

It’s a miracle! If you’re a “low or middle income” earner, you’ll be better off under a carbon tax, says Greg Combet. It’s just the gift that keeps on giving!

Such is the laughable level to which the government’s rhetoric has sunk, Combet is depserately trying to bribe a section of the Australian population into supporting it. And of course, it’s the rest of us that will be hit hardest. Sounds like a simple redistribution of wealth to me. Take from the rich and give back to the poor – it’s that ‘S-word’ again, isn’t it?

But why do families need compensation anyway? I thought the government told us that the tax would only “hit big polluters” and that they wouldn’t even think of passing on costs to consumers.

And quite how this ties in with changing people’s behaviour to reduce emissions is yet to be announced. If the poorest are compensated, then they are unlikely to consume less energy, and the well-off will just pay more for it.  Gee, Greg, you’ve really worked this through!

THE Federal Government has promised that millions of low and middle income families will be better off financially under its plans for a carbon tax.

More than half the funds raised by the Gillard government’s carbon tax will be used to pay for permanent tax cuts and pension hikes under a plan to be outlined on Wednesday.

In a bid to turn around widespread concern that the tax will hit family budgets, Climate Change Minister Greg Combet pledged that more than two million households will be better off under the related tax and welfare changes.

Compensation for families will be in place permanently, even after the carbon tax is replaced by an emissions trading scheme in three to five years, Mr Combet said.

The pledge comes as Treasury models revealed average family bills could jump $860 a year based on a $30 a tonne carbon tax.

The Government plan has not been signed off on by the multi-party climate change committee including the Greens and independent MPs Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor.

Mr Combet will use a National Press Club speech in Canberra on Wednesday to outline the Government’s plans to win over voters. In an excerpt from his speech, Mr Combet vowed “we will put households first”.

“There will be generous assistance for households to meet costs that may be passed on by the companies that are paying for their pollution,” he said. (source)

Oh, so companies may pass on their costs to consumers now, will they? It’s a different line every week.

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Carbon tax pressures mount

11 April, 2011 by

That's not the kind of "rocky road" I meant!

The road will get very rocky for the Labor/Green alliance in the next few months:

THE carbon tax becomes a more intractable problem for the Gillard government every day.

Negotiations and campaigns with business leaders, households and the Greens become more complex and more contradictory with every meeting and every compromise or concession to any of the groups involved.

Against a background of a weakened minority government, forced to appease its Greens partners to have any chance of meeting Julia Gillard’s deadline of a carbon tax by July 1 next year, industry has become emboldened and is beginning to speak out.

There have been warnings of job losses in the coal and steel industries, oil refining is a threatened species under a carbon tax, marginal manufacturing ventures face a final cost hit and now liquefied natural gas is declaring its objections.

LNG’s objections are also raising the fundamental issues of whether Australia needs to or can afford to “go it alone” on a carbon tax and whether such a tax is designed to cut global greenhouse gas emissions or just redistribute and recycle wealth through tax. (source)

So we will have the Greens pulling one way, and industry (and common sense) pulling the other, with Labor stuck in the middle. There are so many contradictions in Labor’s argument for this tax that I have lost count. “It will help the climate”: no it won’t. “It needs to change behaviour”: but it won’t if there’s compensation. “It’s in the ‘national interest'”: if ‘national interest’ means flushing our economy down the pan for no purpose whatsoever while our competitors surge ahead unrestrained. Odd definition of ‘national interest’, that one…

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UPDATED: Grassroots versus AstroTurf

9 April, 2011 by

GetUp? Grassroots? Like hell…

On the one hand we have GetUp!, the union-bankrolled (to the tune of $1.2m from just one donation) Labor cheer-machine, a motley collection of Lefty lemmings who simply do as they’re told, and turn up whenever Simon Sheikh sends them an email or a text message instructing them to go and plug some Labor/Union/Green cause or another.

On the other we have the real grassroots, ordinary Australians, many of whom are protesting for the first time in their lives against the pointless but hugely damaging environmental posturing of the Gillard carbon tax.

First the lemmings, the ABC’s favourite climate warriors (note the uncritical tone of admiration from our national broadcaster):

Hundreds of people have rallied in Brisbane’s CBD to show their support for the Federal Government’s plan to price carbon.

Over 1,000 people packed Brisbane’s King George square to support the Federal Government’s proposed carbon tax.

Signs calling for cuts to pollution and more spending on clean energy were littered through the crowd. [because they’d all been downloaded from the GetUp! web site – Ed]

Some people rallying say the Government is not doing enough to sell its plan to tackle climate change while others say they are glad it is trying. (source)

And then there are the real Australians, who as expected, get the ABC smear treatment. Note how the ABC manages to skew the report to make them all sound like a bunch of extremists who need to be kept under tight control (smears marked “*” for reference):

The anti-carbon lobby is continuing its pressure on the Federal Government with over 1,000 people attending a protest at Blacktown in Sydney’s west.

It has been a smaller than expected* turn out for the rally opposing, where once again there was a strong focus on the Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

Some controversial signs from recent rallies at Hyde Park and Federal Parliament House made an appearance*, but the rally’s co-ordinator Chris Johnson says the tone today was still angry, but much cleaner than at previous events.*

“Today we’ve asked a few people to leave* and we’ve had no trouble,” he said.

The rally at Blacktown Showgrounds is the third major protest against a price on carbon in as many weeks. (source)

Ah, gotta love the ABC, where pro-Labor bias is in its genes.

UPDATE: The Sydney Morning Herald has a fawning, sycophantic piece about the wonderful GetUp! demonstration, all uncritically reported as would be expected for the pro-Labor/Green/Union Fairfax:

Organised by activist group GetUp!, the rally featured face painting and music for children – a deliberate move to show the positive message behind climate change action, national director Simon Sheikh said. [More like indoctrination – Ed]

GetUp! did not want ”to have a louder, angrier rally but to show the difference in both our numbers and message, the difference between fear and hope“, he said.

“We can answer their angry slogans and misinformation with a positive, family friendly gathering to stand up for our vision for clean energy and preserving a safe climate for our kids.”

He cited a recent anti-climate action rally in Melbourne at which participants claimed that Australians did not want action against climate change and said that “real grassroots community action” could make a difference.

“Let history record that when they tried to engineer a dangerous and angry Tea Party-like movement in Australia, ordinary families neutralised it with a larger and peaceful positive movement.” (source)

Pass the sick bag.

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Idiotic Comment of the Day: GetUp's Simon Sheikh

2 April, 2011 by

Hubris personified

Gotta hand it to GetUp – they breed an altogether different class of moonbat. Speaking at the Let’s Have a Carbon Tax Which Will Do Nothing For The Climate But Will Flush Our Economy Down The Drain rally today, Sheikh proclaimed, without a hint of irony:

“We are the last line of defence for Mother Nature.”

Yep. Planet’s been here 4.5 billion years, but only we (i.e. GetUp) can possibly save it. Other idiotic placards at the rent-a-crowd demo included:

“Price on pollution [sic]. Our kids are worth it.”

Actually the kids 30 generations away are worth it, if you believe Tim Flannery.

Read it here.

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Labor "at war" with Garnaut

2 April, 2011 by

Slapped down Garnaut

Add poor old Ross Garnaut to the list of who Labor is at war with: Greens, independents, the Opposition, the Australian people… It’s all shaping up for an epic battle.

ENERGY Minister Martin Ferguson has slapped down the government’s chief climate change adviser, Ross Garnaut, flatly rejecting calls for more regulation on electricity markets and warning that mandatory renewable energy targets are pushing up power prices.

Mr Ferguson rejected Professor Garnaut’s claims that electricity price rises were a result of “gouging” by electricity generators.

The senior cabinet minister said electricity prices had risen because of costs in replacing ageing plants and he warned that prices would rise by 30 per cent in the next three years because of investment costs, a carbon price and the mandatory target for renewable energy generation.

Mr Ferguson and the Australian Energy Market Commission both warned that the government’s compulsory target of 20 per cent electricity generation from renewable sources by 2020 was coming at a “cost to the community” and could “challenge” the national electricity grid.

Professor Garnaut this week recommended coal-fired power electricity generators not be compensated for a carbon tax and that a new energy regulator be formed.

At an energy conference in Melbourne yesterday, Mr Ferguson said Professor Garnaut had a role in advising the multi-party climate change committee, which includes the Greens, but he “does not speak for the government, nor for the Ministerial Council on Energy”, which represents every government.

Mr Ferguson’s comments come as the Labor government fights with the Greens over “extreme” policies. (source)

And in another piece of breathtaking hypocrisy, as news leaks that the carbon tax could cost families over $600 a year, Labor has warned against a “scare campaign” on the cost to families, whilst at the exact same time conducting its own “scare campaign” on climate change:

In a joint statement, Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan and Climate Change Minister Greg Combet said the Government had not made final decisions on the starting price or how much people will be compensated.

“No final decisions on the starting price or assistance have been taken and therefore it is far too early to speculate on any potential price impacts,” the statement said.

“Until the final design and modelling have been settled, anyone who uses these figures to scare families about prices is engaging in a dishonest, misleading scare campaign. (source)

They should know. After all, Combet and Swan are the experts on dishonest, misleading scare campaigns.

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Official: Fremantle the dumbest place in Australia

31 March, 2011 by

OMG

Why, you may ask? Because they thanked Julia Gillard for the carbon tax:

Fremantle thanks Gillard for carbon tax

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has been showered with praise by Fremantle residents for her government’s proposed carbon tax during a community cabinet meeting in the West Australian port city. But that was to be expected at Australia’s only carbon neutral high school in a state electorate held by a green independent MP. On Wednesday night Ms Gillard chatted with people wearing T-shirts calling for action on climate change and posed for photos in front of a banner which read: ‘Thank you for the carbon tax’. (source)

Stupidity knows no bounds where the Greens are concerned.

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Garnaut: superficial, simplistic and naïve

31 March, 2011 by

Disconnected from reality

Ross Garnaut is pilloried again today from a number of quarters. After Tuesday’s nonsensical and frankly ludicrous claim that we should emulate China in our emissions reduction efforts, his grasp of the realities of a carbon tax on the economy seems non-existent. Miranda Devine:

WHEN the Gillard Government’s climate change adviser, Ross Garnaut, isn’t busy having dinners with independents Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott, he has been releasing umpteen papers on how to remake our economy.

His work has been damned by the energy industry as “undergraduate”, “simplistic”, “superficial” and “full of high-level principles that assume away” real-world problems.

The criticism doesn’t seem to have dimmed the professor’s enthusiasm for a carbon tax, even as polling this week shows public appetite ebbing with each passing day, with just 34 per cent of people declaring they support the tax.

But this week Garnaut slapped back at the power generators, claiming electricity price hikes higher than any on the planet are all their fault. He did not mention the role of rapacious state governments who have clawed out dividends for years and demanded expensive and inefficient green alternative energy sources.

And he ruled out compensation for energy companies who make sure our lights switch on and are complaining they will go belly-up under a carbon tax.

The boss of two small Latrobe Valley coal-fired power stations, which employ 140 people directly and 1000 people indirectly, told The Australian: “We have survived bushfires and floods, but we may not be able to survive Garnaut.” (source)

And The Australian weighs in as well:

JULIA Gillard’s chief climate change adviser has been lashed by the $120 billion energy sector, which says his latest advice is a risk to investment and could lead to a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit against the government if followed.

As the opposition seized on Ross Garnaut’s latest report as evidence that Labor’s carbon policy would lead to brownouts and insufficient electricity production, the sector slammed it as “naive”, “commercially unsophisticated” and “undergraduate”.

The nation’s biggest private power producer, International Power Australia, urged the government to recognise the “shortcomings and dangers” of Professor Garnaut’s update on how the electricity sector should be treated under a carbon price.

The criticism comes as a confidential report to the former Keneally NSW government, obtained by The Australian, warns that consumers in the state face electricity bill increases of up to 27 per cent from July 1, in part because of the federal renewable energy target. (source)

That’s going to go down well in NSW… It is truly frightening that someone who is so clearly disconnected from economic reality is in charge of advising the Australian government on the effects of carbon pricing.

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Abbott pounces on Flannery's flannel

29 March, 2011 by

The ultimate Millennium Bug

Tim Flannery’s recent announcement that any cuts we make to emissions won’t have any effect for a thousand years is already coming back to haunt him, as Tony Abbott makes hay:

TONY Abbott has leapt on a declaration by Tim Flannery – Julia Gillard’s hand-picked salesman for action on climate change – that emissions abatement is a 1000-year proposition to renew his attacks on Labor’s proposed carbon tax.

And Climate Change Minister Greg Combet has distanced himself from Professor Flannery’s concession last week that even if all carbon emissions stopped today, it would take 1000 years for the atmosphere’s average temperatures to drop. While Professor Flannery, a paleontologist who is also the Prime Minister’s chief climate change commissioner, has expanded on his comments to insist the need for action in climate is urgent, his admission in a radio interview on Friday has compromised Labor’s sales pitch on its carbon tax.

In the radio interview, Professor Flannery said: “If the world as a whole cut all emissions tomorrow, the average temperature of the planet’s not going to drop for several hundred years, perhaps over 1000 years.”

In a letter to the editor of The Australian, submitted on Sunday, he expanded on the comments, saying his observation was not “an argument for complacency”. But yesterday, as the role of the carbon tax in Labor’s massive loss in the NSW election dominated federal political exchanges, Mr Abbott quoted Professor Flannery as he ridiculed the tax as “the ultimate millenium bug”.

“It will not make a difference for 1000 years,” the Opposition Leader told parliament. “So this is a government which is proposing to put at risk our manufacturing industry, to penalise struggling families, to make a tough situation worse for millions of households right around Australia. And for what? To make not a scrap of difference to the environment any time in the next 1000 years.”

And what is the government’s response? As usual, ignore the point and blurt out a robotic sound-bite:

Mr Combet said through a spokeswoman that the Gillard government believed in the science of climate change and was determined to act. (source)

Gee, the sheer power of that argument has convinced me, Greg. But you have to feel a bit sorry for poor old Greg and Julia, they brought Flannery in as Climate Commissioner because they thought he’d give them what they wanted, and already he’s become an embarrassment. Oops.

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NSW result sends strong message to Canberra

28 March, 2011 by

NSW has sent Canberra a message

There really are Federal Labor MPs who are delusional enough to believe that Saturday’s election result in New South Wales had nothing to do with them.  Admittedly, NSW Labor was a total shambles, and had lost all credibility with the electorate. But despite this, some of the swings were nothing short of astonishing. Barry O’Farrell made the carbon tax an issue in NSW, and the electorate responded. Gillard et al will ignore this signal at their peril:

ANY Federal Labor MP who doesn’t think the thumping NSW election result has implications for Julia Gillard is kidding themselves.

Gillard’s strategy of demonising the Liberal Party as a bunch of loonies who don’t believe in climate change has been hit for six.

Barry O’Farrell is a moderate Liberal who has just given the anti-carbon tax campaign credibility.

People in NSW will look to their new Premier and realise that being concerned about the carbon tax does not put them in the wing-nut membership of the Far Right.

It has just become harder, not easier, for Gillard to run the line that the Liberal Party has been taken over by extremists.

At a more basic level, the destruction of the NSW ALP presents significant structural problems for Gillard.

And the independents in Canberra are also waking up to a new paradigm this morning:

The most significant and more immediate issue that Gillard faces, however, is the future of the federal NSW independents.

The independents have been delivered a body blow.

Rob Oakeshott is already erratic and is likely to become more so in light of what was a resounding rejection of both his and Tony Windsor’s deal to support Labor federally.

The impact on the psychology of the independents will be critical to the future of the Gillard Government.

Windsor may be unmoved by the result but Oakeshott must now know he is facing his own political oblivion.

Labor MPs today are now pondering not just if but when Oakeshott realises that sticking to the current deal will be the end of his political future. (source)

Fun times. Also read Tim Blair here.

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"Thousand years" for CO2 cuts to take effect

26 March, 2011 by

Josh skewers Flannery

Thus spake Tim Flannery, on Melbourne Talk Radio with Andrew Bolt yesterday. Here’s a transcript:

Bolt: […] But we’re just trying to get basic facts, without worrying about the consequences – about what those facts may lead people to think. On our own, by cutting our emissions, because it’s a heavy price to pay, by 5 per cent by 2020, what will the world’s temperatures fall by as a consequence?

Flannery: Look, it will be a very, very small increment.

Bolt: Have you got a number? I mean, there must be some numbers.

Flannery:  I just need to clarfy in terms of the climate context for you. If we cut emissions today, global temperatures are not likely to drop for about a thousand years.

So the pain we will endure today by wrecking our economy to make an insignificant change to global emissions may make a difference to Australians 30 generations away. Which means the bleeding heart arguments about “children and grandchildren” are, like most of the AGW scam, complete bulldust. And there’s more:

Yesterday we tried to get precisely the same answer (listen here) from Professor John Daley, CEO of the Grattan Institute, which is releasing a report which finds that our state and federal governments tipped $12 billion into emissions-cutting schemes that were close to useless, and which argues we should go for emissions trading instead:

Bolt: […] I’m very familiar with that argument, that if we don’t move, no one else will, and nothing’s done and it all goes to hell in a handbasket. What I’m trying to do is just get to the bottom-line facts: if we spend these umpteen billions on cutting emissions further, to the five per cent by 2020, how much will Australia’s action alone cut the world’s temperature by? That must be measured somewhere. That must be part of your report.

Daley: Well, I think it’s not been measured anywhere because it’s not seen as being the right way to think about this.

Bolt: Well it would be. People want to know the gain for the pain.  Have a guess then.

Daley: The reality is that no country in the world is cutting their emissions alone…So to what extent are we doing our fair share?…

Bolt: Look, we’ve got that argument….  I’ll ask just one last time… If you don’t know just say so, but if you do know, I know it’s got all those caveats, but just tell us how much the world’s temperature will fall if we do what you recommend and what Julia Gillard plans.

Daley: As I said, we haven’t run the numbers on how much it will make a difference if Australia acts completely alone.

Bolt: You should have.

Daley: The reason we haven’t done that is because Australia is not acting alone. Therefore it’s not a very helpful thing to analyse.

“Not helpful” means you’d realise the pain is not worth the gain. Whever we do – whatevery anyone does – hardly seems worth it, really.

And by “not helpful”, the people pushing the schemes say they’d rather not tell you the truth. You might ask too many awkward questions.

That is why no one yet pushing an ETS or a carbon tax will answer our question. And why we drew exactly the same blank a fortnight ago with Jill Duggan, from the European Commission’s emissions trading scheme.

It’s all smoke and mirrors, as we’ve known all along.

Read it here.

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