Greens "want higher carbon price"

15 April, 2011 by

Bunch of cynical ecotards

Of course they do. They don’t care about people not being able to pay their electricity bills, or living in excessive cold (or heat), or not being able to afford to buy groceries to feed their families. They don’t care about humanity full stop. They only care about “saving the planet”, so naturally, they want a carbon price as high as possible in order to shut down our economy to please Gaia. More evidence (should any be needed) that the Greens, being an extremist environmental advocacy group rather than a reputable political party, should never be trusted to ever hold any sway in the government of Australia.

THE Greens are pushing for a carbon tax starting price well above $20 as multiparty negotiations on climate change are set to restart on Tuesday.

The government is believed to be settling on a starting price of $20 a tonne of carbon emitted as its preferred position for its proposed carbon tax, which it hopes will start in July next year.

But The Age believes that the Greens, whose support Labor needs to establish the tax, are advocating a starting price well above that.

Greens senator Christine Milne said yesterday: “There has been no decision in the Multi-Party Climate Committee about the starting level for the pollution price, and any numbers in the public arena are nothing more than speculation.”

But in a glimmer of good news, Tony Windsor has stated that his support is not guaranteed:

Mr Windsor again cautioned the government yesterday that his support for a carbon tax was not a foregone conclusion.

“I have a vote, others do as well, so you can never guarantee something until it gets through a minority Parliament,” he said.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard sought to play down Mr Windsor’s comments [of course she did – Ed], saying “he does believe that pricing carbon is the best way, an important way, of tackling climate change. But for an individual legislative package, he’s going to look at the package and wait until the end and then judge.” (source)

I’m not holding my breath. Windsor has already betrayed his electorate by handing power to Labor after the last election, and I can see him folding like a house of cards on the carbon tax as well. More worrying for Labor is the possible threat of a union going feral:

Australia’s biggest manufacturing union has called on the government to urgently release details of its protection for industry and householders under a carbon tax, in the face of a growing workers’ revolt on the workshop floor, where union officials are being challenged and jeered for supporting Julia Gillard’s plan.

As Australian Workers Union national secretary Paul Howes prepared for a crisis meeting of union officials today to discuss the impact of the carbon tax, he said his union wanted to ensure that “this carbon price won’t cost a single job”.

Mr Howes, who went on television the night Kevin Rudd was removed as prime minister to declare his union’s support for Ms Gillard as the coup was unfolding, told The Australian last night: “If one job is gone, our support is gone.” (source)

Well I can tell you right now, Paul Howes: there won’t be just one job gone, there will be tens of thousands, maybe more, as our economy grinds to a halt, our industries move offshore and our competitors rub their hands with glee.

Also highly recommended is Jeff Kennett’s article in the Herald Sun: Gillard government has failed us

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , , ,

Carbon tax is a disaster

10 March, 2011 by

Pointless and ineffective, and so is the tax

Another great read by Miranda Devine, who points out that it is Malcolm Turnbull, the only significant supporter of an ETS in the Coalition and “Labor’s best asset” who is secretly plotting with the independents to try and regain some relevance:

The Government has missed the point. Instead of slugging us for fossil fuels, it should provide green energy that is cheap to use.

IF you ever wondered who is advising Tony Windsor to support a carbon tax, well, now you know: moles within the Coalition, the kamikaze ever-shrinking pro-carbon tax faction, aka Team Turnbull.

Windsor is keeping their identities secret, but he says, “A lot of people within the Coalition would like to engage in that work (pricing carbon). They’ve been ruled out by the opportunism of Tony Abbott, but that doesn’t mean they can’t speak to others,” he told ABC radio yesterday.

Ah ha! So that’s why Malcolm Turnbull was having a deep and meaningful conversation over dinner in Canberra with that other ruminating country independent, Rob Oakeshott, last week.

Colleagues describe Turnbull as “Labor’s best asset”, sourly noting the flurry of meetings he has been conducting in an effort to revive his leadership prospects. They wonder whether he will again cross the floor to vote with Labor on its carbon tax.

Yet the self-destructing futility of his bid is laid bare in this week’s Newspoll, which shows Labor’s carbon plans are electoral poison, opposed by the majority of voters but most particularly by Coalition voters, whose aversion has grown to 72 per cent.

Windsor, whose conservative electorate is seething with anger over his role in bringing Labor to power and his apparent complicity in the carbon tax announcement, may have had his spine stiffened by Coalition rats.

But he still has been backpedalling at a million miles an hour since Labor recorded its lowest ever primary support in Newspoll, showing what a blunder the carbon tax is.

Now he’s trying to distance himself from Prime Minister Julia Gillard by saying she had “sort of jumped the gun” and should have given more “detail” about the tax before announcing it.

But it is not the missing detail that is the problem; it is the tax itself, as Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg points out. On Tuesday night, Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, outlined the flaws with the Government’s approach.

The least effective, most expensive solution to climate change is any sort of tax on carbon dioxide, he says. “For every dollar you spend, you save a couple of cents in climate damage.” And that money wasted today means you are less well placed to deal with any potential ill-effects of climate change in the future.

Read it here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

Tony Windsor: stooge for environmental activists

28 February, 2011 by

Keep an eye out, Tony, your electorate are after you…

Independent? Independent, my foot. Eco-fruitcake, more like. Tony Windsor is showing his true colours today by launching a report by the Climate Institute, an environmental advocacy group (see here for an example), which owes its entire existence to the current climate scare:

A new report says a price on carbon could create 34,000 new jobs in the renewable energy sector in regional Australia over the next two decades.

The report, by the Climate Institute, was launched this morning by independent MP Tony Windsor, just days after he helped the Prime Minister announce plans for a price on carbon by July next year.

Last week, Mr Windsor would not commit to backing a tax, but he says he is keen to generate a discussion on renewable energy.

“For many years now I have sort of been preaching a gospel I guess that there are enormous opportunities, particularly for country people, but for the nation generally, in terms of renewable energy,” Mr Windsor said. (source)

What on earth is Windsor doing spruiking this kind of nonsense from the Climate Institute anyway? What the report doesn’t mention, of course, is that for all those 34,000 subsidised, taxpayer-funded, propped-up, fake “green jobs”, you will lose several times as many real, proper, genuine jobs, as our competitiveness sinks beneath the waves and industry moves offshore. But don’t expect the Climate Institute to look to closely at that, they’re on the climate bandwagon, feeding at the trough of alarmism that we’re all paying for through our taxes.

And if that isn’t nauseating enough, Windsor then goes on to smear Tony Abbott in the Fairfax press, spilling his guts about the confidential post-election negotiations:

Tony Abbott was so hungry for power he was willing to do anything to form government after the election, one of the men who blocked his dream says.

Independent MP Tony Windsor says his discussions with Mr Abbott did deal with what do about climate change.

“Tony Abbott did say during those discussions that he would do anything to gain power,” Mr Windsor told reporters on Tuesday.

The NSW MP said he presumed that applied to climate policy.

Asked for specifics, Mr Windsor was not keen to discuss confidential discussions.

“He made the point that he would do anything to gain power.” (source)

Ah, right, so it’s OK to breach confidences when it suits you to smear Abbott, but you play the “confidential discussion” card when asked a difficult question, right? I get it. None of this should surprise us really. Virtually every utterance since the election has rubbished the Coalition and supported Labor, including on the floods and the NBN. Independent? I think not. Labor in drag. What a disgrace to politics and to his (essentially conservative) electorate, who will no doubt give him the bloody nose he deserves at the ballot box at the next election.

But one piece of good news is that Tony Abbott has confirmed he will roll back the carbon tax if elected. You took too long to announce that, Tony, should have been seconds after Ju-liar’s announcement…

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,
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