Andrew Bolt: Gillard is finished

9 March, 2011 by

Andrew Bolt

Andrew’s column summarises the disastrous position Gillard finds herself in after her “carbon tax lie”. But I particularly liked the Seven Steps for Destroying Credibility:

STEP ONE: pretend you haven’t broken your word.

In Gillard’s initial announcement she did not even mention she’d ditched her promise.

Later, as public anger started to build, she pretended she was actually honouring it: “Before the last election I consistently said we needed to price carbon . . . What are we doing? We’re pricing carbon.”

STEP TWO: use lying language.

Gillard still calls her tax a “price on carbon” when it’s no such thing. She says “price” to avoid using the nasty “tax” word, and says “carbon” to make you think it’s imposed on sooty black stuff and not carbon dioxide.

STEP THREE: pretend your tax will make us richer, not poorer.

Gillard first presented her tax as the kind of invention that made computer pioneer Bill Gates a multi-billionaire.

“Bill Gates understood the need to be in on the change. The same is true now. This is the time to be pricing carbon.”

STEP FOUR: smear those who disagree.

Under attack in Parliament over her lie, Gillard resorted to abuse, accusing the Opposition of “race-baiting” and later warning it could even inspire dangerous extremists.

STEP FIVE: deny your tax is a tax.

Gillard at first did admit her “carbon price” was a tax, but by last Sunday Swan was so rattled that he pretended it wasn’t: “But it doesn’t operate like a traditional tax . . . It is not the case that the Government is going to take the carbon price out of your pay packet.”

Which must mean the goods and services tax isn’t a real tax, either, since it’s just a tax on everything you buy, just like this carbon dioxide tax.

STEP SIX: deny your tax is going to hurt like you once said.

At first Gillard conceded her tax would hurt (by making coal-fired electricity and petrol more expensive).

“It has price impacts. It’s meant to. That’s the whole point.”

Even two weeks ago, Climate Change Minister Greg Combet suggested ways to avoid this pain. “The main way to do that is by saving energy, to turn things off at the wall. Maybe think about how often you use the airconditioner. Using a cheaper-to-run hot water system.”

But now? With this tax turning into a debacle, Combet is denouncing what he himself once confessed:

ABC interviewer: Tony Abbott is . . . pointing out the carbon tax in his words would transform Australia’s way of life by making it harder for Australians to drive or turn on the airconditioner.

Combet: . . . What garbage . . . I mean, this guy, he really is nothing but a mobile scare campaign.

STEP SEVEN: don’t ever admit your tax won’t do a thing to stop global warming.

Here’s Swan with Oakes.

Oakes: I’m getting this question from a lot of people . . . ‘Tell me just how much the temperature is going to drop by if this stupid tax comes into effect?’

Swan: Well, Laurie, this is a long-term problem, and the longer we delay . . .

And blah blah. Honest answer? Zero.

Read it all.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

Excellent: Gillard to "push ahead with carbon price"

8 March, 2011 by

The socialist and the Marxist, or is it the other way round? Whatever…

Great news. I think we can reasonably confidently say: RIP Julia. You will go the way of Rudd, and Labor will be consigned to electoral oblivion for a generation:

Prime Minister Julia Gillard is determined to fight on with her controversial carbon tax, despite a new poll showing Labor’s primary vote has hit rock-bottom.

Labor’s primary vote plunged to 30 per cent in the latest Newspoll, with the Coalition leading 54 to 46 per cent in two-party terms.

Ms Gillard told reporters in Washington she had always understood arguing for a tough economic reform such as pricing carbon was “going to be a big debate”.

“It’s going to be a hard debate – but it’s one that I am determined to win,” she said.

Not a chance now, I’m afraid. You’re sunk. And then another big misrepresentation:

“We shouldn’t try to lead the world, but neither can we afford to limp behind. We have a high emissions economy.”

What she means (but cleverly doesn’t say to fool those listening) is that we have a high per capita emissions, because we have so many emissions-intensive industries in our economy and a relatively small population – inevitably therefore, our emissions are high per capita. But we only produce less than 1.5% of the total, which is not enough for the climate to even notice. So a carbon tax and any reduction in emissions that we make here in Australia, are <shouts>UTTERLY POINTLESS GESTURES</shouts>.

And don’t, DON’T, whatever you do click the link. It’s a nauseous arse-lick piece by Fairfax’s Michelle Grattan full of sick-making photos of Julia with Obama, and a frankly horrific video which plays whether you want it to or not – highlight is Julia blaming Abbott (or Mr Rabbit, as she calls him – elocution was never her strong point) for her poll slide – priceless.

LINK – you have been warned.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , , ,

Newspoll: Labor plummets

8 March, 2011 by

Disaster for Labor (Blue: Coalition/Abbott, Red: Labor/Gillard, Grey: uncommitted

In the first NewsPoll since the announcement of the carbon tax, Labor’s standing in the polls, and that of leader Julia Gillard, has dropped like a stone:

JULIA Gillard’s carbon tax plan has reversed public support for action on global warming, damaged her leadership and delivered Labor its lowest primary support on record.

Tony Abbott is now the closest he has been to Ms Gillard as preferred prime minister.

And, as satisfaction with the Prime Minister slumps just nine months after she agreed to challenge Kevin Rudd, she remains behind the Foreign Minister as the preferred Labor leader.

In just two weeks, Ms Gillard’s personal support has gone from its best since she became Prime Minister in June last year to her worst. It is now the same as Mr Rudd’s failing personal support when he began campaigning for the mining tax in May last year.

Since Ms Gillard announced her intention to introduce a carbon tax from July next year, overall positive public support for action on global warming, even if it meant rising prices for electricity and petrol, has turned negative. A majority of people, or 53 per cent, are now against Labor’s plan, with 42 per cent in favour.

According to the latest Newspoll survey, taken exclusively for The Australian last weekend, Labor’s primary vote crashed six percentage points to just 30 per cent, the lowest primary vote in Newspoll survey history. Previously, the lowest primary vote was 31 per cent, in 1993, when Paul Keating was prime minister and Australia was in recession.

The Coalition’s primary vote, after falling sharply two weeks ago because of internal divisions, bounced back to 45 per cent. This is the Coalition’s highest primary vote since March 2006, when John Howard was prime minister and nine months before Kim Beazley was replaced by Mr Rudd as opposition leader. (source)

The Australian people do not like being lied to. Whether you support action on climate or not, Gillards backflip, breaking her promise not to implement a carbon tax under “any government I lead”, has irked the electorate and could spell disaster for Labor. Dennis Shanahan:

JULIA Gillard’s decision to announce her plan for a carbon tax from July 1 next year could be the political game-changer for her leadership, the Labor government and, most importantly, the future of climate change action in Australia.

Every possible element to drive down the standing of the Prime Minister, her government and the climate change debate has combined in such a way that the political and social divisions in Australia that have been evolving for years have become palpable and public.

Labor has lost its licence to campaign on climate change, a hard-won goodwill it had towards fighting global warming and a preparedness of consumers to pay, which was the fundamental underpinning of any political campaign to sell a new tax and raise prices.

The extent to which all the fault lines within Labor become entrenched – between the stereotypical inner-city lefties and the suburban conservatives, between young and old and those prepared or able to pay the cost of trying to arrest global warming – will decide the government’s fate. (source)

And also worth a read is Tony Abbott’s comments on climate in Adelaide:

TONY Abbott has declared Julia Gillard wants to change Australia’s way of life by introducing a price on carbon that would make it harder for people to turn on their airconditioners or to drive their cars.

In a speech in Adelaide last night, the Opposition Leader said the carbon tax would be the “big issue” of the next election campaign, regardless of when it was held.

Seizing the opportunity to intensify his attack while the Prime Minister is on her trip to the US, Mr Abbott said: “If this is to be more than just a hit on people’s cost of living, it must utterly transform the way we live and how we work.”

Mr Abbott said, given people’s propensity to use their airconditioners and to drive their cars, “if a carbon tax is to reduce electricity use and car use it will have to raise the price of daily life very considerably indeed”. (source)

Interesting times.

UPDATE: Hilarious to see ABC and Fairfax try to avoid this completely, both leading with “Obama ♥ Gillard” stories… pass the sick bag. On second thoughts, shouldn’t it be Bob Brown visiting the US? He is the PM after all…

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , , , ,

Ackerman and Devine on the carbon tax woes

6 March, 2011 by

Backroom deals

Two great reads for a Sunday morning. Firstly, Piers Ackerman in the Telegraph:

IT would be easy to dismiss New England independent Tony Windsor as a whining, whinging wimp and a rat, but he has now assumed national importance in the carbon tax debate.

He has had undeserved relevance thrust upon him.

Last week, Windsor earned the opprobrium of all sensible MPs and public figures around the nation when he connived with Channel 7’s Mark Riley to publicise a purported threat he claimed to have received.

In what was one of the more disgraceful media moments in a year already marred just two months in by Riley’s attempt to smear Opposition leader Tony Abbott with a false and innuendo-laden report on the death of a young Australian soldier, Windsor said on Tuesday he had received his first-ever death threat.

It didn’t help that Riley’s report added false claims about the shooting of a US congresswoman, dishonestly implying that the accused in that horror had been influenced by so-called shock-jocks and right-wing political commentators.

“You’re a f****** liar, a dog, a rat … I hope you die, you bastard,” a caller said, apparently in relation to Windsor’s role in assisting the Gillard Government develop its global-warming strategy as a member of its Multi Party Climate Change Committee. (source)

And then Miranda Devine in the Herald Sun:

YOU have to feel for Julia Gillard, the grand negotiator.

Saddled with a minority Government, she has to appease the Greens and accommodate the silky Bob Brown, while throwing a few bones to Nick Xenophon and Andrew Wilkie and buttering up the turncoat independents Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott, mopping their brows when the heat gets too much.

All the while she has to make sure she doesn’t venture so far into Left-loony land that her own MPs revolt.

Can you imagine what a nightmare for the Prime Minister those daily cups of tea with the Greens and independents have become? She must just feel like picking up the Earl Grey and smashing it against a wall.

No wonder Bob Brown looks pleased with himself, striding around Canberra like the Deadly Mantis, dispensing his wisdom to all and sundry. He can’t believe his luck, as Gillard cedes her power and authority. He smells total capitulation to his world view, with the shadowy shock troops of GetUp at his disposal.

It was his carbon tax that opened up the fault line Gillard is struggling to straddle now, as angry voters bombard Labor MPs’ offices with emails complaining about the Green colonisation of Labor’s soul.

They’re the people who really count — Labor’s authentic base, the working families in suburban seats, the aspirational classes for whom soaring electricity and fuel costs aren’t some theoretical exercise but a painful daily reality. Working people employed by BlueScope Steel are Labor’s base, not inner-city greenies with protected salaries.

And nothing will alienate them quicker than Green demands that petrol be included in the carbon tax, no matter how Brown tries to sugarcoat it. As Graham Richardson told Gillard: include petrol and you’re dead (memo to Tony Windsor: that’s not a death threat). (source)

 

 

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

Grab the popcorn: Labor meltdown approaches

4 March, 2011 by

Enjoy the show!

This would be the best result of all – Labor tears itself apart down the Left/Right factional axis, and by all accounts, it’s on the cards. So pull up a chair, grab the popcorn, put your feet up, and enjoy the show!

THE Labor Left has accused the Right of “political bastardry”, saying it is undermining Julia Gillard’s climate change plan by opening up a debate on gay marriage and the influence of the Greens.

Three senior Left figures urged the Prime Minister last night to take a stand against the Right, saying it was undermining a caucus decision to back the Greens’ territories’ rights bill, which has been linked to a push for same-sex unions and euthanasia.

The Left said the growing factional brawl was damaging the party and should not have been inflamed by the Right.

“People are worried this could develop into a problem for the government,” a Left source said.

“There is concern this could open up sensitive areas that are not needed to be debated at this point in time because there are other more pressing issues.”

The Labor caucus this week backed the Greens’ territories’ bill, which would prevent the commonwealth from rescinding territories’ laws without the approval of both houses of parliament. (source)

Nothing like a good internecine punch-up to cause chaos in the Labor ranks. Bring it on!

 

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Australia is run by the Greens #2

4 March, 2011 by

Worth a thousand words, Julia

I predict this will be a recurring theme. A few days ago, I wrote that the Greens were running the country. Now it seems that this suspicion is spreading through government, industry and the public, and the consequences for the Gillard government will be disastrous.

The photo opportunity at the launch of the carbon price policy, with Gillard and Combet outnumbered and outflanked by eco-Nazis Brown and Milne, hapless “independents” Whining Windsor and weirdy-beardy Oaf-shott, and Gillard literally looking up to Brown with a look of admiration (see image), was a classic PR disaster. It was also the perfect illustration of who is really in charge – and for the avoidance of doubt, it ain’t Julia…

Dennis Shanahan in The Australian:

THE perception that Julia Gillard is giving too much to the Greens, that she’s ceding her authority to Bob Brown and giving precedence to briefing independent and Greens MPs ahead of her ALP colleagues, is taking hold among her vital constituencies: the public, business and her own parliamentary party.

From specific issues to broader concepts and fundamental policy, Labor’s pact with the Greens for their support in a minority government is having an increasingly corrosive effect on the Prime Minister’s authority and confidence that the government can deliver its own agenda.

There is evidence the public’s general confidence is being shaken by sudden policy shifts and uncertainty about a minority government; there is growing disquiet, even dismay, among business leaders that dealing with the government on the basis of compromise with a commercially viable outcome is being overtaken by ideological demands. Labor MPs are concerned they are being treated as second-rate representatives and the government is being outsmarted by Brown as the Australian Greens’ leader. (source)

The possibility of a split in the Labor government isn’t insignificant, with the right wing faction, sick of kowtowing to Bob Brown and his environmental Marxists, finally decides enough is enough. And that’s before we’ve even reached the substantive policy issues associated with the carbon tax: Labor wants 5% emissions reductions, Greens want 25%; Greens want petrol included, Labor doesn’t etc etc…

When those thorny issues are on the table, it will only get worse. And it’s not just climate policy, either:

JULIA Gillard has restated her absolute rejection of gay marriage and hotly disputed opposition claims the Australian Greens have hijacked Labor’s political agenda.

But her comments come amid division within Labor’s powerful Right faction, with Australian Workers Union national secretary Paul Howes yesterday backing gay marriage, putting himself at odds with other key right-wing powerbrokers.

On Wednesday, the Prime Minister said she could overturn an earlier Labor decision, to back a bill put forward by Greens leader Bob Brown that would remove the ability of ministers to overturn territories’ laws.

Her comments followed anger from the Labor Right after Greens MPs in the ACT said that if the Brown bill were passed they would renew a push to legalise same-sex marriage.

Tony Abbott yesterday cited the gay marriage push as evidence that the Greens were running her government. But Ms Gillard last night stood by her view that “marriage is between a man and a woman”. (source)

So what happens when Julia doesn’t play ball and give the Greens what they want? Answers on a postcard.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

Shut down Australia and save 0.01 degrees

2 March, 2011 by

Closed for business…

The Science and Public Policy Institute undertakes the cost/benefit analysis of Australian climate mitigation policies that the Gillard government strangely doesn’t want to do.

Gillard and Combet are always banging on about a carbon tax being in the “national interest”, but the reality is that a tax with no benefit couldn’t be less in the national interest.

So, ladies and gentlemen, if we shut down Australia’s economy completely tomorrow, then by 2100, we would have slowed any man-made warming by:

0.01 degrees

So Julia, please explain why we are bothering with any kind of carbon price?

Read it here (PDF).

Thanks to Jo Nova, who did the wonderful graphic!

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Andrew Bolt on media bias

2 March, 2011 by

Andrew Bolt

Essential reading. The Left-wing media (read: the media) have been strangely silent on Julia’s “lie” about a carbon tax, and some have even attempted to portray it as the brave act of a strong leader! Compare and contrast that muted whisper with the cacophony of outrage that would have erupted had Tony Abbott been elected PM in August 2010, and then promptly introduced Work Choices again.

REMEMBER how so many journalists hated John Howard, who nevertheless won four elections in a row?

Remember how almost all the media backed a plan for a republic, only to have it rejected at the 1999 referendum?

How often have we seen this gulf in opinion between the mainstream media and the public they report to?

I suspect Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s lie may be the latest example.

It’s rare to see such overwhelming fury from a public at having been so brazenly deceived by a politician.

Before the election, as everyone now knows, Gillard repeatedly promised she would not introduce a tax on carbon dioxide emissions—in effect, a great green tax on electricity and petrol.

“There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead,” she said.

But six months later Gillard says she will indeed give us that carbon tax, and from next year, without even going to another election for a mandate.

The reason? Just one of the 150 members of the House of Representatives, the Greens’ Adam Bandt, demanded this tax, as did his leader, Bob Brown, holding the balance of power in the Senate.

Everyone knows Gillard broke her solemn word. And a great many people hate politicians lying to them so flagrantly, which is why the talkback lines are smoking, protest rallies are planned, and Essential Research, in a poll this week, detected a huge and election-losing drop in Labor’s support.

But in one part of Australia, that anger is not felt. No zephyr of protest wafts. No objection is raised to Gillard stealing an election with a lie.

That part of Australia is where some of our most influential political reporters and commentators work. To them, it seems, Gillard did no worse than make a compromise, and, indeed, she may have even risen to glory.

Read it all.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Bob Carter lashes Labor

28 February, 2011 by

Climate sense

A joy to read. Professor Bob Carter (who, let’s face it, is a proper scientist) teaches the warmist scaremongers Garnaut, Flannery, Combet and Gillard a lesson in basic science:

Do you understand the meaning of the phrases “empirical science” and “hypothesis testing”? [I can answer that one: “no” – Ed]

Do you understand that the correct null hypothesis is that gentle warmings, such as that which occurred between 1979 and 1998, and equivalent coolings, are to be viewed as due to natural causes unless and until evidence indicates otherwise. [Ditto, “no” – Ed] Gentlemen, where is that evidence, and why is it not presented in the voluminous reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that you and the government so often refer to?

Despite this lack of evidence for dangerous, or potentially dangerous, warming, and despite the lack of efficacy of cutting carbon dioxide emissions as a means of preventing the trivial warming that is likely to occur (cutting all of Australia’s emissions would theoretically prevent, perhaps, around one-thousandth of a degree of warming), the political course in Canberra is now set on carbon tax autopilot, and the plane is flying squarely into the eye of a storm that is labelled “let’s spin a regressive new tax as a virtuous environmental measure”.

For instance, the Prime Minister says:

I also want to be very clear with Australians about what pricing carbon does. It has price impacts. It’s meant to. That’s the whole point.

No, Prime Minister, that is not the point at all. The point is supposed to be attaining a meaningful reduction in future warming, which a carbon dioxide taxation policy will not achieve – even were it to successfully close down the entire industrial economy of Australia

Climate Minister Mr Combet believes that reducing “carbon pollution” to “drive investment in clean energy …. is fundamentally what a carbon price is about”.

No, Greg, the matter has nothing to do with either carbon or pollution, for the alleged dangerous warming is supposed to be produced by the atmospheric trace gas carbon dioxide. To call carbon dioxide a pollutant is an abuse of logic, language and science, given its pivotal role in the photosynthetic processes that underpin most of our planetary ecosystems. In essence, carbon dioxide is the very staff of life, and increasing it in the atmosphere helps most plants to grow better and to use water more efficiently.

…

Never has an important national policy issue been so surrounded with public dishonesty and deliberate ambiguity of language as is the issue of dangerous, human-caused global warming.

Choreographed over the years by green lobby groups, politicians and commentators alike now participate like puppets-on-strings in an entirely faux public gigue involving words or phrases like “carbon” (when they mean carbon dioxide), “pollution” (when they are referring to an environmentally beneficial trace gas), “settled science” (when the science is hotly contested, and the onus of proof of danger still rests, unattained, with the climate alarmists of a discredited IPCC), “climate change” (when they mean dangerous global warming), “energy efficiency” (in the same breath that they rule out the environmentally friendly baseload energy source represented by nuclear power) and “international good citizen” (at a time when international action on climate policy has never been less certain).

It is therefore entirely unsurprising that there has been a swing in public opinion against alarmism on global warming, though nervous Labor politicians are doubtless already sucking in deep breaths of surprise at the apparent strength of the swing. One recent online poll, in The Age of all places, received an 89% NO answer to the question “Would you support a climate tax?”; and another, in the Herald-Sun and with more than 30,000 respondents, received an 85% NO to the question “Do you support a price on carbon (sic)?”.

Wonderful stuff. Read it all.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , , , ,

Greens and Labor already fighting over carbon tax

28 February, 2011 by

Hated by the Greens

Excellent. The first of many disagreements between Labor and the Greens which will, hopefully, see this pointless and dangerous tax never make it into law. The Greens, thinking they now run the country [they do – Ed], are getting pushy about including petrol in the carbon tax, to get your evil SUV off the road for good. Even Labor, who would sell their own grandmother to stay in power, is worried by this, as they see their core vote starting to desert them:

Petrol prices are already causing political tension for the federal government as it moves to introduce a carbon tax.

On a day when Prime Minister Julia Gillard finally admitted she had promised there would be no carbon tax a week before the August 21 poll, she sternly rebuked the Australian Greens for speculating how far the tax would be extended when it is introduced next year.

A carbon price regime is scheduled to begin in July 2012 but decisions are yet to be made on what sectors are included.

Agriculture will be exempt but a tax could still apply to the transport and energy sectors.

The Greens want petrol included so funds can be directed towards greener public transport.

But Ms Gillard is having none of that and had stern words for a key member of her multi-party climate change committee on Sunday.

“I understand that the deputy leader of the Greens, Christine Milne, made some statements about this matter,” she told the Nine Network.

“Those statements, in my view, were not appropriate in the sense these discussions are still to come and discussions are to be taken.” (source)

With luck, Labor will eventually learn a very unpalatable lesson about signing tawdry deals with a bunch of hysterical environmental extremists masquerading as a political party…

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,
«Previous Page
Next Page»