Garnaut report "an assault on democracy"

1 June, 2011 by

Undemocratic

So says Tony Abbott. I think he may be right, since giving the power to levy taxes or change tax rates to an unelected body sounds pretty dangerous to me:

TONY Abbott has rejected the latest climate change report from economist Ross Garnaut as an assault on democracy, warning that it proposes to give a committee of unelected appointees the power to set tax rates.

“There is a developing democratic deficit here,” he said. “First of all the Prime Minister wasn’t upfront with the Australian public before the election. Now the idea that taxes in this country should effectively be set by people who are outside the parliament, and who are not accountable to the people, I think, is just odd.

“This just goes to show how out of control the government is on this whole climate change question.”

Later, the Opposition Leader continued his attack in question time, noting that the report said: “Australian households will ultimately bear the full cost of a carbon price”.

“So how can (the Prime Minister) continue to maintain that her tax only makes big polluters pay?” Mr Abbott asked parliament.

“Who pays? Big polluters or households? The truth is: households.” (source)

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The Aussie Carbon (tax) Cycle

31 May, 2011 by

Not the usual carbon cycle we’re used to, but a variation, for us down in Aus-shire at the forefront of “tackling climate change”.

Strangling the economy

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Labor's twisted logic on "go it alone" carbon tax

31 May, 2011 by

WTF?

Australia’s plan to put a price on carbon [dioxide] and reduce emissions by 5% by 2020 will remove 160 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

But last year alone, global emissions rose by 1.6  BILLION tonnes, which is TEN TIMES Australia’s total reduction over the next 8 years, or EIGHTY TIMES Australia’s planned reduction in a single year.

But, according to Labor’s logic, Australia’s carbon tax will “tackle climate change” and is “in the national interest.”

Julia, Greg, Penny: please explain.

Climate Madness.

(h/t Bolta)

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Carbon tax will "strangle manufacturing" – Abbott

28 May, 2011 by

Carbon strangulation

A carbon tax will strangle Australia’s manufacturing industry, Tony Abbott has said this afternoon:

OPPOSITION Leader Tony Abbott has warned that Australia’s manufacturing sector would be slowly strangled by Labor’s planned carbon tax amid rising concern in business about the impact of the policy.

Mr Abbott made a direct appeal to manufacturing employers and workers today to take notice of the Coalition’s anti-carbon tax campaign at the same time as launching his latest personal attack against Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

He told the Victorian Liberal Party’s State Council that Melbourne would suffer badly if Australia followed the Labor course.

“Over time, a go-it-alone carbon tax means the slow strangulation of manufacturing in Australia,” the Opposition Leader said.

“Let the message go out to our country from here in Melbourne — the manufacturing heart of our country — that we must be a country that continues to make things. We must be a country with a first world economy.

“But we can’t be a first world economy if our manufacturing industry has been killed by Labor’s carbon tax.”

Read the rest here.

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Labor and Greens in disarray on carbon price

18 May, 2011 by

More spin

Hands up who didn’t see this coming. As every political commentator in Australia is correctly stating, Labor is wedged between alienating their core vote by setting a carbon price too high, and the Greens by setting a carbon price too low.

Too high, and Labor will lose in a landslide at the next election. Too low, and the Greens will abandon their cosy little deal with Labor and force an election sooner – which they will lose anyway. I think that popcorn moment is approaching:

DEEP divisions have emerged between the government and the Greens over the starting price of Julia Gillard’s carbon tax as negotiations enter their final weeks.

After a meeting of the Prime Minister’s multi-party climate change committee, Greens leader Bob Brown seized on a report to be released today suggesting a carbon price of $40 a tonne may be needed to force electricity generators to switch from coal to gas.

But Climate Change Minister Greg Combet declared after the meeting that “from the government’s standpoint, it’s going to be well south of $40 a tonne and no matter what the starting price, there will be generous household assistance”.

With the committee expected to finalise its position on the carbon pricing mechanism ahead of an announcement late next month or in early July, Mr Combet conceded the government and the Greens continued to have “policy differences”, but they were “in good faith endeavouring to negotiate on those issues”.

Hilarious. More spin than a launderette. At least Tony Abbott can see through the fog:

As the MPCCC met in Canberra, Tony Abbott toured the Geelong Ford plant, saying a carbon tax of $30 a tonne would increase the cost of a car by $412. He dismissed Mr Combet’s assurances that the starting price for the carbon tax would be less than $40, saying the tax would rise every year.

“The point of this tax is that whatever level it starts at, it’s going to go up and up and up, and I say to the Australian people: you trust this Prime Minister at your peril,” the Opposition Leader said.

“Never forget the Prime Minister said six days before the election there ‘will be no carbon tax under the government I lead’, (and) within a couple of months ‘yes there will be a carbon tax’. So this is a government which is both incompetent and untrustworthy.” (source)

True. So true.

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Pachauri slaps down Aussie Greens

17 May, 2011 by

Pachi cloud

I don’t often agree with Rajendra Pachauri, but in this case I’m prepared to make a limited exception:

SPECIFIC natural disasters such as Cyclone Yasi and the Brisbane floods could not be directly linked to man-made climate change, the world’s leading climate change authority said yesterday.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change chairman Rajendra Pachauri said the general observation that climate change was bringing about an increase in extreme weather events was valid [what increase? – Ed] but scientists needed to provide much finer detail.

“Frankly, it is difficult to take a season or two and come up with any conclusions on those on a scientific basis,” Dr Pachauri said.

“What we can say very clearly is the aggregate impact of climate change on all these events, which are taking place at much higher frequency and intensity all over the world. [Really? – Ed]

“On that there is very little doubt; the scientific evidence is very, very strong. But what happens in Queensland or what happens in Russia or for that matter the floods in the Mississippi River right now, whether there is a link between those and climate change is very difficult to establish. So I don’t think anyone can make a categorical statement on that.”

Dr Pachauri’s comments contradict assertions by Greens leader Bob Brown in the wake of the floods that the coal industry was to blame because the sector’s contribution to global warming was responsible for the extreme weather conditions. (source)

But on the other hand, the Greens might end up as our saviours. They may vote against the carbon tax because it isn’t tough enough. Gillard, on the other hand, wants to make sure the carbon tax has as little impact as possible in order for it to sneak through, unnoticed.

A CARBON price of $40 a tonne is needed to force a switch from coal to new, gas-fired electricity generation and reduce Australia’s emissions, the federal government has been advised as it prepares for a meeting to run all weekend with the independents and Greens to begin crunching a final climate deal.

The carbon price has been widely expected to start at between $20 and $30 a tonne, but confidential research by Deloittes for the Resources Minister, Martin Ferguson, says that with east coast gas prices rising, black coal will remain the cheapest way to generate power unless the price on emissions rises relatively quickly to $40 a tonne. (source)

There’s no way you can sneak $40 a tonne past the electorate, Julia. Doesn’t get any easier, does it?

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Coal industry talks on carbon tax end in "deadlock"

13 May, 2011 by

Open cast mines in the Hunter Valley

Should we have expected anything else? The carbon tax is a direct attack on the coal industry, and no amount of “compensation” will change that. The government is sinking yet further into the mire.

TALKS between the coal industry and the government have ended in deadlock, with key coal representatives telling the government they cannot accept the industry compensation package on the table and Climate Change Minister Greg Combet sticking to his position.

In the meeting in Canberra yesterday, the coal industry argued for a phased-in approach to the auctioning of emissions permits and the staged inclusion of so-called fugitive emissions (the release of greenhouse gasses during the mining process).

In a submission to the government, the Australian Coal Association argued: “It is perplexing that the government has arrived at variations on its old proposals previously shown to deter investment, reduce Australian competitiveness and destroy Australian jobs in favour of enhanced opportunities for overseas competitors for no environmental gain.” (source)

How many of Australia’s key industry sectors does this government intend to alienate in its attempts to appease Bob Brown, I wonder?

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"We will oppose the carbon tax in opposition, and repeal it in government"

12 May, 2011 by

PM in waiting

Tony Abbott’s fighting talk in his Budget reply. Those few words should be all the Australian public needs to hear to vote out this illegitimate government at the next election. Gillard had no mandate for a carbon tax, expressly ruled it out on the eve of the 2010 election, and cynically backflipped to appease the Greens in February. If it hadn’t been for those hopeless, grovelling, sycophantic, lily-livered, pathetic excuses for MPs, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott, we would never be in this right royal mess.

Here are some key (climate-related) extracts from his reply:

Then there’s the carbon tax that the Prime Minister said would never happen that will just make cost of living pressures so much worse.

A $26 a tonne carbon tax would add 25 per cent more to electricity bills and 6.5 cents a litre more to fuel bills that are already skyrocketing – and that’s before it starts automatically increasing by at least four per cent every single year.

A $26 a tonne carbon tax means 16 coal mines closed, 23,000 mining jobs lost, and 45,000 jobs lost in industries like steel, aluminium, cement, glass, chemicals and motor cars. The Prime Minister talks about compensation but there’s no compensation for people who have lost their jobs.

So let me make this crystal clear: the Coalition will oppose the carbon tax in opposition and repeal it in government. The Coalition will oppose the mining tax in opposition and repeal it in government.

…

The Prime Minister can leave the carbon tax out of the budget but she can’t hide the damage it will do to struggling families’ cost of living, the havoc it will wreak on jobs in manufacturing industry exposed to cut-throat competition, and the fact that it will make no real difference to the environment in the absence of comparable action overseas.

The Prime Minister can’t hide the truth: that this is a tax for which she has no mandate. In fact, she has a mandate not to introduce it. The declaration, “there will be no carbon tax under the government I lead”, will haunt this government every day until it faces up to this betrayal.

Does anyone think that the Prime Minister would now be in the Lodge had she admitted truthfully, six days out from last year’s election that, yes, “there will be a carbon tax under a government I lead”? This is the cancer that’s eroding the Prime Minister’s standing and sapping the government’s authority.

As things stand, we have a parliament that can’t make decisions people respect, a Prime Minister who looks like she’s not up to the job and a minority government that’s increasingly seen as an experiment that’s failed. If Australia goes on like this for another two and a half years, what is currently a great country with a lousy government could slide into a morass of indecision and paralysis.

Read it all here.

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Labor denies carbon tax ad blitz

12 May, 2011 by

Carbon tax advertising

Which means we can expect it to start next week.

THE federal government has rejected Coalition claims it ”squirrelled away” $13.7 million in the budget to fund an advertising campaign to promote its proposed carbon tax.

The budget papers make clear that Labor set aside money for a ”climate change foundation campaign” in this financial year and 2011-12.

But the Finance Minister, Penny Wong, told Parliament yesterday the $13.7 million was not new but rather a ”transfer of already announced funds between years”.

The money was only to be used to increase understanding of climate change, she said. [Let’s hope Penny isn’t writing it – Ed]

”It does not include, on my advice, paid advertising. No decision has been taken by the government on any climate change advertising campaign.”

The Climate Change Minister, Greg Combet, said yesterday the money for 2011-12 would be used for activities such as website development and the printing of information brochures. [That’s OK then – Ed]

The opposition climate action spokesman, Greg Hunt, said the government was preparing to begin a multimillion-dollar advertising blitz. ”It will mean taxpayers paying for carbon tax ads on the TV, radio and newspapers.” (source)

Given Labor’s track record with telling the truth, I think we’d all better be prepared for a bombardment of climate nonsense to prop up the ailing the carbon tax.

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BHP confused on carbon price

10 May, 2011 by

Confusion

BHP is tying itself in knots. Back in September 2010, it’s chief executive, Marius Kloppers, signed BHP’s own death warrant in Australia by backing a carbon price. Now, however, when a carbon tax is just around the corner, surprise surprise, they’re having second thoughts. Relying on the usual weasel words, its chairman thinks that Australia should take action on climate, as long as it doesn’t include BHP. In other words, I’m alright Jack, the rest of the country can go down the pan. How thoughtful.

But at least he makes the obvious point (obvious to everyone except the Gillard government, that is), that the rest of the world won’t follow Australia’s suicidal example:

BHP Billiton chairman Jacques Nasser has turned up the pressure on Julia Gillard to abandon plans for a carbon tax, calling for a “go-slow” approach to tackling climate change and warning that the rest of the world is unlikely to follow Australia’s lead.

Speaking in Melbourne yesterday, the chairman of Australia’s biggest company and the world’s biggest miner added to recent calls by his chief executive, Marius Kloppers, for a sector-specific approach to dealing with carbon pollution [harmless trace gas carbon dioxide – Ed] that did not hurt businesses that had global competitors.

…

Mr Nasser yesterday told a Melbourne Mining Club lunch that BHP Billiton still supported Australia moving early on climate change, but questioned the government’s plans and stressed the nation needed to remain competitive with other countries.

“In terms of a carbon tax, most countries around the world have decided to go in some other direction,” the BHP chairman said.

“Particularly in the larger economies, there’s been a trend towards regulation, rather than changing behaviour through taxation or policy changes.

“We’ve got to be careful we don’t get into the trap of really believing our behaviour is going to influence other countries; I don’t think that will be the case.” (source)

Will the government listen? Of course not. Their eyes and ears have been closed for years.

And a bonus item for you: the Greens, in the form of Bob Brown, have shown themselves once again to be utterly unfit to take part in a modern democratic government, by describing skilled migrants, skilled migrants, to Australia as “queue jumpers“. What does that make the illegal boat arrivals, Bob? Clearly rather than migrants who will add to Australia’s economy and prosperity, Brown and his idiot colleagues would rather have a bunch of unskilled Afghans arriving on a rickety fishing boat, who think they don’t have to go through the proper migration process like everyone else, and who will drain our economy by spongeing off taxpayer-funded benefits for the rest of their lives… but nothing the Greens say, no matter how ridiculous, surprises me anymore. What is surprising is that anyone takes them seriously.

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