Carbon taxing greens routed in NSW Australia elections

Australians need to get rid of these carbon dioxide taxing crooks before they destroy the entire economy.

Congratulations to the people of NSW.

Interesting. The article does not mention carbon taxes. Noe does it mention Labor’s efforts to tax the mining industry (with all sorts of loony taxes being proposed). The fact that ‘safe’ Green Party seats are also in doubt, though, lends some credence to the hypothesis that it is not the tedium of incompetence that has swayed the voters (as the article asserts), but rather the old fashioned union/socialists agenda of Labor that left Australia as an economic and cultural backwater for most of the 20th Century, spooked the voters. I think AW is correct. The carbon tax played huge, and the Sydney Herald is covering for Labor by omitting mention of the same.

Hopefully here in Canada in our National election that was called today the Liberals, NDP and Greens will go down in CO2 spewing flames! No talk yet of anything AGW. In fact I would be surprised if it even comes up but the Libs and NDP are still true believers even if they don’t say it.

Brilliant!!

Predictably,
Government supported climate scientists will resume there calls for an end to democracy, since it’s not, in their view, capable of rising to big environmental challenges.

Thanks for your balanced honesty, WTF.
You’re right. They ‘play’ the Aussies JUST LIKE the Dems & RINOS ‘play’ the U.S.A.
What will it take for you guys to SEE the game, here? The ‘joy’ of victory?
Julia and her ‘team’ walk ‘lock-step’ with Barry and his. They are merely pawns.
I’ve been here 4 years, which is long enough to SEE that Australia is even more
a police state than America has become. It just has ‘fewer humans’ and therefore,
we breathe easier – for the moment.
Geez… The naivete of most of you is disheartening, indeed.
WAKE UP. They’ve planned this crap from the Start. Maybe I should mail you my copy of ‘The Beach’ – an ‘end of times’ movie – about how Australia is the last best place on earth… It was written and filmed WELL BEFORE I WAS BORN in 1957.
Oh. And one last little tidbit I was just ‘given’ by God, let’s see if you can ‘get it’…
‘Have you ever heard the saying: ‘Think outta the Box”? – Well, my dears – just where in the world do you ‘S’cientists imagine those words ‘imply’ that you are?’ Think about it and then WAKE UP. ‘Cause we’ve ALL been programmed into this kinda thinking.
And, then – If you don’t ‘speak up’ after you’ve woken up – then I’ve done all that I’m capable of doing to assist you…but, I still PRAY for you all.
C.L. Thorpe

Is it correct that “liberal” in Australia is not the same as liberal in other parts of the ‘west”?

GO AUSSIES!

WTF says:
March 26, 2011 at 12:00 pm
“Hopefully here in Canada in our National election that was called today the Liberals, NDP and Greens will go down in CO2 spewing flames! No talk yet of anything AGW…”
Sorry. Watched CTV for a moment today and there was Green Party Fuhrer Elizabeth May – Maurice Strong’s pet – going on about it.

Congrats, mates. I quaffing a Wicked Elf right now in your honor. Here’s to you……………

Mooloo:
‘That it isn’t cannot be linked to the conservative governments, with their “White Australia” policies etc.’
The White Australia Policy was initiated by labour demands for protection from cheap imported labour from Asia and the Pacific. It was the first piece of legislation passed after federation. In the words of former Australian Labor Party Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, the ALP was racist before it was socialist. It was maintained with bipartisan support, but you are wrong to describe it as a policy of the conservatives.
There is much more to the the ALP rout in NSW, although the carbon tax was one factor, particularly in the coal mining areas in the Illawarra and the Hunter Valley – traditionally ALP, but they swung to the Coalition.

“Al Gored says:
March 26, 2011 at 1:17 pm ”
Sorry you had to watch CTV and see Lizzy May let alone listen to her prattle. Hope you hadn’t eaten yet! 😉

MooLoo
“I live in NZ and the one near us is not “an economic backwater”. In fact it’s economy is one of the healthiest around, in temporary dislocation thanks to a property bubble (caused by both sides).”
Indeed it is. And has been for almost 4 decades. But it is not the 20th Century. And the Australian turnaround began about 1980 or so.

BTW, It is the LABOR Party. Britain has The Labour Party. And it was indeed Labor that instituted the racial quotas and European style unionism, particularly 1940’s English unionism, that stifled Australia’s economy and culture.

but rather the old fashioned union/socialists agenda of Labor that left Australia as an economic and cultural backwater for most of the 20th Century, spooked the voters.
Mooloo – check out the number of artists, actors, film directors, musicians that are mainstream America yet originated in Australia.
economic backwater?? 1.00 Australian dollar is worth 1.02 US dollars. 5 years ago it was worth US 0.50C Unemployment is 5%

Actually, the carbon tax didn’t feature as an issue at all in the NSW elections, but it is understandable why some people would want to spin it that way. This is politics after all.
Although the Greens didn’t win two seats in the lower house of the parliament as they hoped, they did increase their vote by 1.5 percentage point. This may reflect as more seats for the Greens in the upper house of the parliament.
In my local electorate (Balmain), the Labor candidate won over the strong Greens candidate in the primary votes. After preferences were distributed, Labor got 51% to Liberal’s 49%.
I voted Labor because voting for a right wing party is against my constitution. The Greens could have won my vote, if they hadn’t turned the climate change issue into an apocalyptic religious crusade. Worse, the Greens arrogantly refused to direct their preferences to Labor, which very nearly helped a right wing candidate win the seat.
At the end of the day, we all had a good day fulfilling our civic responsibilities, and democracy won.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferential_voting_system
http://www.abc.net.au/elections/nsw/2011/guide/balm.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/elections/nsw/2011/

I guess global warming causes election disruption. ;->

As several have pointed out, and correctly, the Carbon Tax was not an issue in this election. As a state election, albeit the most populated state in Oz, there is not much we can say about that tax.
The Labour party in NSW has been dysfunctional and apparently corrupt (aren’t they all, though) for quite some time. That is what brought them down, fair and square, as the departing premier admitted.
Yes, the ‘Liberal’ party is the ‘Conservative’ / ‘Republican’ / right wing party down here. It is actually a long-standing coalition.
And to those wishing to move here, I would sincerely recommend it. The standard of living is much higher than in Europe and the US. The Aussie dollar is very strong right now, so prices are a bit skewed, but when (perhaps if) it ever drops to match the others, or they rise again, it is much cheaper than Europe, and on a par with the US. The country is vast, and there are opportunities to match. Think of the US about 100 or even 150 years ago, but with all the modern infrastructure. Also consider the world’s largest ever market is just growing, and fast, right next door. Asia is just a step away, not the other side of the world. Also consider the vast resources of coal, gas, iron and sugar that that market will be wanting (to execute 100 years of development in two decades), and that we have.
All of that opportunity added to some of the best, laid back and generous people I have ever come across in all my world travels. Best country in the world, mate!

@ Aynsley Kellow
>There is much more to the the ALP rout in NSW, although the carbon tax was one factor, particularly in the coal mining areas in the Illawarra and the Hunter Valley – traditionally ALP, but they swung to the Coalition.<
I hope you revert here to read this
Agree to your comment above, but you are missing the most cogent piece of evidence here
Look at the seat of Bathurst. The two major population centres are Bathurst and Lithgow. The swing against the ALP was about 30%. Bathurst is generally conservative and the vote there didn't much change. What did change was the Lithgow vote – staunch ALP-all-their-lives voters actually changed to the Libs for the 1st time in their lives, and did so in droves. And what is the major industry in Lithgow ? Coal mining (I worked in the very heart of Lithgow for about 15 years). So in essence we have the three regional centres of coal mining – Newcastle/Hunter, Illawarra and Lithgow – voting Lib for the 1st time ever.
Gee, I wonder why ?

Anthony, a poor article for your site. It adds nothing to the debate, it reeks of gloating and it implies something that may or may not be true, that being, that the routing had something to do with peoples’ attitudes on climate change. NSW had much higher profile problems than climate change so i think the connection that the article draws between CO2 taxing greens and the loss of government is at best tenuous. I use your site a lot to persuade people away from the rigid global warming dogma and junk science. Article like this one undermine your credibilty amongst readers who are intelligent enough to want meaningful information and genuinely logical argument.

I love Australia, the country and its people but let’s face it, Australian politics is both opaque and visceral. Here, political leaders are found, groomed and catapulted into power by mostly hidden party machinery; paid for by big business and media ‘mates’. Oddly though, given the shallowness of the National political culture, loyalties run deep, there is a sense of history too, some of it pretty nasty and recent.
I think this goes some way to explaining the popularity of the Greens. Given the choice between venal and corrupt politicians and a remote, vaguely degenerate English Monarchy; many Australians identify with the Environmentalist
position – they love their country…but not necessarily their flag!
sHx above, said something like…’I’d have voted Green if they hadn’t hitched themselves up to CO2 climate apocalypse nonsense.’
Absolutely! That’s because we are all quite rightly worried when something that is: irrational, exploitative, obviously based on unsound observations and poorly constructed falsehoods, is first: Media Hyped at us using absurd scare tactics – then finally elevated to the position of Government Sanctioned Truth…then Law…then Tax. Feels a bit too close to ‘totalitarian’ for comfort.
Our distaste for the AGW global apparatus is the same as our distaste for Religous Fundamentalist States, Communism and Fascism. We do not like being governed by people who have got BIG WRONG ideas about things. It’s dangerous.
Few nations on earth could have been more susceptible to the Global Warming Scare than Australia. With its slow, massive climatic cycles, it was easy for the ‘Greenies’… (slightly derogatory term in use here) to hitch their message to the tail end of a perfectly natural fifteen year drought…
Tim ‘Ghost Metropolis’ Flannery, was the chief ringleader. His numerous bizzare predictions about the Australian Climate, Rivers, Rainforest, Reefs, Bushfires, Aquifers, which got him so much attention and money just a few years back….must make him blush with shame today. Just how wrong can one man be and still hang onto any credibility? Oh hang on a second… PM Julia Gillard just gave him a rather well paid, part time job in the Carbon Tax Dept or some such nonsensical body!
Now that the climate cycle has turned maybe the Warmists will slip from power but the struggle is not over yet. The Climate Changers are in power, they want that tax money. The rivers may be full, the desert in bloom but the huddled, urban dwelling Greens don’t care. They are believers, tuned in to their religious broadcasts. And there is plenty of material there to support them. If Climate Change is a religion then ABC is like the Choir of the Sistene Chapel!
Another vile organ of propaganda is the Sydney Morning Herald. Last week there was an article about ‘Denial’ in which AGW Skeptics where bundled with deniers of Evolution, Aids, Vaccination, etc. Of course there’s no where to point out that what makes AGW Skeptics different is that we rely on BETTER science to refute the opposition theory…that’s what they can’t stand!…and that’s why we’re winning slowly.

Go Greens Go and vanish forever you arrogant fools.
Peter Walsh, Dublin, Ireland

Shub Niggurath says: March 26, 2011 at 1:08 pm
[I keep hearing that Australians are very level-headed, practical-minded etc, etc. But it is in their country that a prime minister lady is blabbering nonsense about ‘carbon’ and taxes all the time. How did it get to this stage? How did it get so bad?[
————————————————————————–
Shub Niggurath. This extract might shed some light upon the situation in Australia. Draw you own conclusions. Same for N.Z.
In response to a question at Senate Estimates from Senator Cameron about what role the scientific community can play to educate the general public about global warming in the face of such confusion, Chief Scientist for Australia, Professor Penny Sackett provided the following response:
23 February 2011
Senator CAMERON—Could I also congratulate you on the work that you have done and thank you for that work. Back on 17 March 2009 in a speech, you said that the largest single challenge facing the world was to ‘transform the world’ in a way ‘as profound as that witnessed in the dawn of the industrial age’—this was in relation to global warming. Given the amount of fight-back there has been against governments all over the world in relation to taking action on global warming, what role can the scientific community play to educate
Wednesday, 23 February 2011 Senate E 17 ECONOMICS the sceptics, the deniers and the general public who are fed some of this nonsense continually? How do you deal with that?
Prof. Sackett—Thank you for that question which I believe is a very important question. It is one that scientists are struggling with, I think it is fair to say, all over the world. This is an enormously important time in history, probably unlike any before it, for a number of reasons. Science is not the complete answer but science does provide a way to provide evidence on which decisions can be made. Science does not tell us which decisions to make. Many factors go into making a decision, a policy decision, if it be a matter of policy—and there are decisions that are not a matter of policy, but are individual decisions. Science does not tell us which of those decisions to make but it does tell us the possible consequences of some of those decisions.
Because this is an enormously important issue—perhaps one of the most important—facing the world, it is important that scientists engage. I believe that scientists are attempting to do that. They face challenges in doing that. To do so, I believe they need to be clear about when they are talking about science and when they are talking about policy, and that line needs to be very clear so there is no confusion. I think in this country, and in other countries around the world, that line has been blurred to the detriment of both science and those in government charged with those who elect them for making policy decisions.
First and foremost, I would like to see a clean, clear and continual reminder of the division between what is science and what is policy. That is what I have attempted to do, and continue to do even here today, because I think it is a disservice to both important areas of human endeavour not to do so. Scientists in every area of science are broadly telling us the same thing. And, when I say ‘scientists’, I would like to point out again—because I think it has been mentioned in these chambers before—that we are talking about all of science; we are talking about physics, we are talking about chemistry, we are talking about the science of the oceans. That is a very important message for people to hear. It is not a particular sort of scientist. It is not a scientist who works in government labs but not those who do not. It is not the scientists of one country only or a few countries only. It is scientists of all sorts in all countries, in all sorts of laboratories that are telling us the same thing. That is a message that I have great concern is not reaching the general populous at a level that engages them and enables them to ask the questions that they have in an environment where those discussions can take place without distractions of policy, without distractions of politics, if I may say. That is a great concern to me. (see full transcript here)
http://www.chiefscientist.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/senate-estimates-march11.pdf
Douglas

There is hope for Canada… may the greens go defeated

Tony Abbott (opposition) has indicated that he believes that the treat of anthropogenic global warming is overestimated. The party has already stepped away from Turnbull’s support for a carbon trading scheme. They would therefore seem the obvious choice.

What happens when the masks come off and the dissimulations are revealed.
And, when the real policy implications of the “feel good” mottos are laid out. The proportion of people who are fooled drops dramatically. And the Left takes a bath.

King of Cool said in part on March 26, 2011 at 3:49 pm:
“This is more than a landslide victory. It is a clap of thunder from down under.”
He went on to report that: “Voters have also reacted violently to the Independents presently holding Australia’s fate in Federal Parliament. In Tamworth, Tony Windsor’s state successor and Independent candidate Peter Draper has been booted out of office losing 15% of his vote and the Nationals gaining 9%. And in Port Macquarie, Rob Oakeshott’s successor Peter Besseling has been categorically sacked with an emphatic 35% swing to the National Party. ”
Unquote
This needs to be translated for those who do not live in Australia.
Messers Windsor and Oakshot are independent members of our federal parliament with no party alignment. They sided with the Labor Party after the last election to give Good Queen Green-Julia the job of Prime Minister. She now leads a minority governement with the help of the Green Party and the Independents.
Messers W & O come from conservative rural electorates who are furious at their betrayal and who have thus risen up and thrown out their State parliamentary equivalents.
Messers Windsor and Oakshot are now in a difficult position, having burnt their bridges behind them.
Good Queen Green-Julia must have had a rather troubled sleep last night, having promised, the day before she was elected, not to levy a tax on carbon.
Since the election, she has now announced that she will levy a tax on carbon.
Our new Premier, Barry O’Farrell, before his election, asked voters for their support to send a message to Canberra.
In his victory speach he repeated that he would “send a message to Canberra”.
That got the biggest cheer of the night.
This was a watershead moment last night.
The tide just may be turning.
We do live in Australia after all and not in a land of make believe.

4 eyes you wrote in part on March 26, 2011 at 4:42 pm:
QUOTE Anthony, a poor article for your site UNQUOTE
No 4eyes, you have got that wrong.
Please read all the above comments.
While there is no doubt that poor administration, cronyness and worse was enough to cause a change of government, Barry O’Farrell’s request to “send a message to Canberra” and his statements that he will “take the fight to Canberra to beat the carbon tax”, also carried much weight.
You only have to look at the very strong anti Labor and anti Green vote in the industrial and coal mining areas of the state, which have ALWAYS previously voted Labor, to see this was an anti carbon tax vote.
Also you should look at the Independents poor showing and loss of seats in last night’s election, in the areas that had last year elected Messers Windsor and Oakshoot to Canberra, to see that this was an anti carbon tax vote.
The federal Labor party only won their precarious minority government role, because of support from Messers W & O, plus a failure of the NSW Liberals generally to win sufficient support.
NOW, the NSW Liberals do have that support.
We are now all a year older and much, much wiser than we were when Good Queen Green-Julia had her moment of triumph last year.

R James says:
March 26, 2011 at 5:32 pm

Jerome – don’t get too carried away with praising Australia and inviting people to move here. As it is, I sometimes have to battle against about 20 people to catch a wave in the surf. I see no need to push our population higher.

Oooops – good point.
The Aussie dollar is so high it’s really expensive here . The politicians are so low they have to crane to look up to snakes. The beer is truly awful. We have bush-fires every week, floods every other week, and droughts at least once a month. Only one road around the entire country.
You don’t want to live here, mate!

ianl8888: Don’t doubt it impacted, especially in the coal areas, but the ALP has been headed for a horrible defeat for months if not years. The carbon tax was just another factor.

UK Sceptic says:
March 27, 2011 at 1:37 am
NSW today, UK tomorrow? Well I can dream, can’t I?
Well done you Aussies!
I’m afraid it will be much more difficult to find more than a douzaine of voters in the UK with sufficient intellect to understand what their government is doing. The polls still favour the AGW position in spite of enormous efforts to change it. Most likely due to the governments publicity agents, the BBC. They all adore the BBC (auntie) over there.

Even though the carbon tax issue is not a state matter, the conservative parties astutely ran on a platform of No Carbon Tax to capitalize on discontent over rising power bills.
It has been the biggest rout in Australian political history and it’s obvious that a lot of coal miners in Lithgow, the Hunter and Illawarra (staunch Labor supporters over generations) have deserted Labor because of this impending pernicious tax.

Hmmm well the headline of this post is not quite 100% and some have rightly suggested that it may be misleading. Especially for those not familiar with Oz politics.
I would suggest Aynsley Kellow has it about right. If Anthony would like a short post deciphering the NSW election repurcussions, he may like to ask Aynsley to do one if he would be so kind.
p.s. To all those who are contemplating coming to Australia, let me tell you you will never ever make a better decision. This truly is the lucky country despite a string of lousy politicians over the years.