Via the GWPF and Dr. Benny Peiser – here is a summary of articles discussing the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) future in Australian politics. ETS looks “deader ‘n a doornail” right now.
This graph (courtesy of David Archibald) may help you gauge the impact of the proposed ETS in Australia:
Anti-Green Putsch Down Under: Climate Change Delayers Topple Rudd
Julia Gillard has made no concrete commitment on when to put a price on carbon emissions, despite former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd urging his party to try passing an emissions trading scheme after the election. —Tom Arup, The Age 24 June 2010
In the inner sanctum, Julia Gillard had urged that the Rudd government not honour its election commitment for an emissions trading scheme unless the opposition’s Tony Abbott agreed to one. The deputy prime minister argued strongly with her cabinet colleagues that the government should dump the scheme “because it’s hurting us too much” politically, according to cabinet members. Mr Rudd and the Finance Minister, Lindsay Tanner, opposed her inside the so-called Gang of Four ministers which in effect ran the government. –Peter Hartcher, The Sydney Morning Herald, 26 June 2010
He could not have realised it at the time, but Kevin Rudd presaged the misstep that would ultimately trigger his downfall at a hastily convened news conference well after midnight on the final day of the politically disastrous Copenhagen climate conference. — Adam Morton The Age, 26 June 2010
On Monday green campaigners hit the halls of Parliament House with an air of optimism. Kevin Rudd was opening a window on climate change and they had arrived to ”consult”. Most had been invited into the government’s tent. Instead, drama descended on Parliament House on Wednesday night. A coup was on and Rudd looked finished. Was Bourne and the environment movement watching the window slam shut? —The Sydney Morning Herald. 26 June 2010
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Of course, my presence in Australia doing a tour presenting factual skeptical arguments on global warming during all of this drama is completely coincidental – Anthony
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lets face it. does anybody believe what the papers print. god bless australia because nothing will save labour.
a (Allan M) says “Baa! No more KRudd747 jokes”
Yeah now we have to start up on the “Pommie Commie” jokes 🙂
Like most of our governments they are simply following UN global governance policies. If the UN wants it then they will bring it in any way possible. Look at the EPA and America. In Australia already on our electricity bills there is and ETS component.
Where it’s at in Oz right now:
1) Rudd dropped the ETS legislation … he was too chicken to push this as an election issue as he support evaporating for the tax as the economy started teetering in the GFC. He took a beating in the polls.
2) Rudd then picked a fight with the biggest boys in town (mining) in order to make the deficit budget look better after huge spending on schools and insulation schemes during the GFC.
I said at the time that this would be Rudd’s “last big mistake.” Understandably the mining industry did not like the idea of being the most heavily taxed in the world and lashed out with copious advertising.
3) Rudd fought back with ads of his own despite promising not to use taxpayer funds for political advertising prior to the last election.
Game over … Gillard saw the opportunity when the polls started showing a loss of faith in Rudd and she plunged the dagger in swiftly.
The thing is, the policies have not changed with the incoming first female (and red head) PM. She was part of the inner circle that developed all the bad legislation in the first place. Abbott (opposition leader) will have to push that all the way to the next election without looking like he is being nasty … cos she is female. He’ll probably have to stop flirting with her too LOL
“I was concerned that if you were going to do something as big to your economy as put a price on carbon, with the economic transfer that implies… you need a lasting and deep community consensus to do it,” Ms Gillard told the Nine Network.
“I don’t believe we had that last and deep community consensus.”
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/gillard-calls-for-climate-consensus-20100627-zbgl.html
“david elder says:
June 26, 2010 at 3:20 pm
New PM Julia Gillard is saying that an ETS should only be introduced if there is a more widespread international agreement on emission reductions. This is precisely what a lot of us ‘denialists’ have been saying for years, in the face of abuse from Greens and their unquestioning media cheer squad, often taking the form of the term ‘denialist’ with its infuriating holocaust-denier overtones. Australia’s contribution to world CO2 emissions is a paltry 1.4% anyway.”
Meanwhile over in Little Ole New Zealand. The Politicians here and the National Govt are still hellbent on making us ‘World Leading Guinea Pigs’ by bringing in ETS on July 1st. Heck our emissions are only a measlely 0.2-0.4%!
Kaboom says:
June 26, 2010 at 3:41 pm
She is clearly an “eat the rich” closet Marxist, who has her hand-prints all over the Resources Super Profits Tax currently doing the rounds.
Yes she is, it may be nice to see KRudd fall but she will be just as bad or worse. She as good as admitted she is a Fabian Socialist – http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2010/06/red-julia-new-aussie-pms-socialist.html#links
One side comment on gender issue, the move to install Gillard was based on polling numbers with a play to a nascent fem or vogue thing.
Kevin Rudd had lost Queensland support, there are on enough marginals in our bloody great state to take Labor out of the game, Western Australia is a mining state, therefore ETS and the new Mining profits tax in a truly conservative state, would insure change of government. There other seats in S.A and Tasmania and northern NSW as well.
But where the panic really set in in is western Sydney and Parts of Victoria in seats labor Power brokers hold, were in danger, The ALP has ever had a Melbourne Sydney focus.
So they are seeking a fem vote on gender issues, Julia Gillard was insurance from the get go for this. May work but not in Queensland, we had the trick with premier (Governor) a dismal failure and WA.
Having said that Prime Minister Gillard was hard left socialist in her student days, but she appears pragmatic as she has aged.
Those marginals I described before vote policies. There are many in Labor who don’t believe in AGW and who appear it’s strongest defenders but that is because they need green preferences to survive. That is the raw politics of the situation.
Correction for before, “poison rum mug” and “knocked off an opposition leader and Prime Minister”.
The ETS is delayed right over Horizon.
I do not think that Climate Change featured much in the downfall of Kevin Rudd or will it be a major issue in the election.
Polls on how important Climate Change is to people are all over the place and depend on who is conducting them. I believe that except for the Greens who represent 12% of the population, the rest couldn’t give a hoot on an ETS and will have many other issues ahead of it when they vote.
The bottom line will be that Australia will not go ahead on a carbon price, no matter who wins, unless the rest of the world goes with it. It would be economic suicide to do so. And the way Copenhagen went and with Obama’s other pressing problems, I do not think this is about to happen soon. No doubt however it will remain on the back burner.
tango,
A nit-pick here: The ALP no longer has anything to do with labour.
They changed the spelling to reflect the change in direction some decades ago.
New Zealand goes ahead with its ETS next week, July 1st, despite a lot of public opposition.
Government projections for emissions for 2020 are for them to remain the same as 2010 levels.
Cost? Billions. Outcome? Zero impact on the environment, huge cost to the consumer.
“TWE says:
June 26, 2010 at 7:11 pm
Yes she is, it may be nice to see KRudd fall but she will be just as bad or worse. She as good as admitted she is a Fabian Socialist – http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2010/06/red-julia-new-aussie-pms-socialist.html#links”
I tend to agree Gillard appears to be in a similar mould of sorts to our Former NZ Labour Prime Minister Helen Clark. She was a rabid Fabian socialist and did a lot of damage with her control freak ‘driven’ ways this end.
Of course only time will tell as far as things go. To close to call. It would be prudent IMHO to make sure she doesn’t get elected and be on the safe side when she calls for an OZ election and save yourself a lot possible ‘bigtime’ trouble. 🙂
Did you see the perth weather headlines a couple of days ago – coldest day in years
I should add this to the last post -“Voters have delivered their own to-do list for her.
Topping the priorities is sorting out the mining tax debacle – a particular threat to Labor’s chances in several marginal seats in resources-rich Queensland.
Thirty per cent of poll respondents said negotiating a settlement with the mining industry was an urgent must.
Fast-tracking the health reforms outlined by Mr Rudd is seen as key by 24 per cent of people. Other priorities include getting the Budget back into surplus (18 per cent) and a tougher stance on asylum seekers (13 per cent).
Introducing an Emissions Trading Scheme – Mr Rudd’s big unfulfilled promise from the 2007 election – is top of the list for 11 per cent of voters.”
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland-voters-angry-at-kevin-rudd-coup/story-e6freon6-1225884678324
Politicians get in trouble when they issue ultimatums …. which turn out to be ‘not true’.
Gordon Brown : “We have 50 days to save the world” ……………. really ?
Kevin Rudd : “Tackling climate change is the greatest morale challenge of our generation” ……………. clearly it isn’t.
I’m not sure what Obama has said … but he should think carefully.
A lot of credit for the change in Australia’s attitude towards AGW needs to be given to radio station 2GB anchored by former Australian football coach Alan Jones. The station was founded by the Theosophical Society which has a long history of scientific scepticisim. The US needs a voice like this.
I find it interesting that Gillard, in her “acceptance speech”, said: “I believe in Climate Change.” Rather neat confirmation that to some politicians, Climate Change is a matter of belief, rather than knowledge. I interpret her comments on the Emissions Trading Scheme as follows:
(a) It confirms the Rudd administration policy (3 years delay, which in politics means indefinite postponement).
(b) The “community” needs to be persuaded of Climate Change before an ETS can be implemented. So perhaps we will see more initiatives of the kind seen in Victoria (seminars to public servants on how to deal with “denialism”). Victoria is where Gillard has her seat (I don’t know if that is relevant).
(c) If (b) fails, the ETS will be dumped (because it too risky at the polls).
(d) Gillard is holding out the promise of an ETS, in an attempt to attract “green” swing voters at the forthcoming election (which may be very soon). Or at least in order not to lose Labor votes to the Greens.
Paul Deacon, Christchurch, New Zealand (we hope Anthony will visit us one day…)
In 2.5 years, Labor gave us 160 Billion in debt and a huge list of promises that were either dumped or delivered so badly that all credibility was lost.
The irony about the electorate mentality downunder is that no matter how bad the track record we will almost certainly vote Labor back in with a new leader based on another new list of promises followed by more debt, as has been the case here in NSW with the state Labor govt. This seems to be Labor’s successful approach to renewable government . 🙂
In the mean time, the only local realistic means of reducing CO2 (if you believe this is an issue) is new fuel cell technology which has been developed by an Australian company ( http://www.cfcl.com.au/BlueGen/ ), and has been refused by the Labor government as a alternate source of energy for our home grid feed-in solutions because it’s not renewable. This is despite the technology being able to reduce CO2 by over 60% due to improved efficiency of local generation, removing the huge grid system transmission loss. BlueGen industries is now planning to sell it’s technology to Germany. I wish them all the best of luck. – I’m assuming that this technology which threatens the existance of a grid system is seen as a big risk to government owned power utilities, and this is probably why the goverment has run shy on this. This will probably be the case in most other countries.
We certainly live in strange times !
Can someone please tell John Key, PM for New Zealand, how unpopular ETS is? He’s determined to see it through.
Jeef says:
June 26, 2010 at 11:14 pm
Can someone please tell John Key, PM for New Zealand, how unpopular ETS is? He’s determined to see it through.
Oh he knows all right, so does Nick Smith. They actually don’t care what we think about it and Smith even said he knows the Emissions Trading Scheme will never be popular. They’re going to do it no matter how many people don’t like it, and they know it can’t really be an election issue because they watered down Labour’s ETS by 50%, so that’s our alternative if they get voted out. We’re stuck, no escaping it unfortunately. Even if all our politicians decided to reject CAGW (which will never happen anyway) and all related legislation, how would we look to all the other countries? It would destroy the ‘clean & green’ brand on which our economy relies and would open us up to all sorts of economic attacks from a vindictive UN in future. I know it sucks, but I see now that the current government really doesn’t have a choice regardless of what they believe about CAGW. Smith says NZ can’t be a leader in ‘fixing’ climate change (hence the watering down of Labour’s ETS), but in my opinion we also can’t be a leader in rejecting it, we’re just too small. All NZ’s hopes rest with the complete collapse of CAGW, and international rejection of it.
Les Francis says:
June 26, 2010 at 5:46 am
Hmmmmm……. Jooolia Gillard in her acceptance speech has stated that she will be “Prosecuting a carbon tax policy” with vigor and at the first available opportunity.
Yes i head this said to.
So far here in new zealand only 2 power companys have put the ETS tax on to customers the rest are holding off sofar. Once this ETS starts on thursday their no turning back. The flow on effect will be huge 🙁 .
Oh, Mr Watts!
Do you remember the vote of thanks from Mr Small after your talk in Hamilton?
His plea to your audience to think for themselves and not place their trust in the media or politicians.
Australia will have an ETS after the next election when labor is re-elected. 🙁
The election will not be fought on the ETS.
It will be introduced perhaps in the same manner that is outlined above by TWE for New Zealand.
It won’t matter that it is not electorally popular, the Government simply wants the money and the control.
And there do seem to be a surprising number of people on blogs and in the media adamantly stating that there is no way Gillard will bring in an ETS …now.
Ho Hum.
Please, read the posts and comments at the Left leaning Australian Blogs “Lavartus Prodeo” and “Club Troppo”.
We must continue to keep the reality of the dubious temperature data front and centre.
“Climate change” is only a hyped political tool for useless politicians who have nothing consistant to tell….
Has Australia a kind of younger J.HOWARD ?
Socialists are has been ,out of touch, who led europe to the current mess with their uncontrolled lunatic wellfare states!
And OBAMA will not stay long despite the MSM bias
Jeef says:
June 26, 2010 at 11:14 pm
Can someone please tell John Key, PM for New Zealand, how unpopular ETS is? He’s determined to see it through.
**************************
Jeef – I wrote to John Key recently. The letter was also published in the July issue of Investigate magazine, should you wish to read it.
Paul Deacon, Christchurch, New Zealand
I didn’t expect ETS to fly since late last year when it suddenly went from smooth sailing to an alomst walkout. I’m glad Rudd went simply becasue he appointed Conroy, who truly scares me.
I think in the next election my vote will go to whoever can keep him as far away from government as possible