Maybe there is hope and change after all:
Zorro says:
March 26, 2011 at 5:16 am
The AGW promoting, carbon tax toting, Australian NSW Labour government has just been virtually annihilated in the State elections – there is hope folks.
“It’s cataclysmic, I mean it’s a bloodbath,” Mr Foley, an upper house member, told ABC Television.
“The accumulated dysfunction … is what’s driving this result. It’s an accumulated dysfunction of four years, not 16.
Full story:
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/state-election-2011/coalition-romps-to-victory-in-nsw-20110326-1cbbt.html
Bloomberg: “Gillard faces tax fight with NSW”:
http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aJD9Wqs4AcBI&pos=7
DirkH.
I would definitely tend to agree with you overall as I think AGW is a non issue. However, in this particular case, the plan that the Coalition has outlined is clearly way better than that proposed by the Greens and Labor. The goal of 5% reduction, mostly by giving tax credits for installation of home solar panels and the like is way better than the alternative they have to choose from.
GOOD ON YA, MATES!!!!!!!!!
Aussies Everywhere:
Fire up the barbie and, if anybody starts whining about ‘carbon foot prints’, tell them to bloody well wipe their feet before they come in the house!!!
To all of my fellow Citizens of USA:
Remember to call, email, and fax your US Senators by Tuesday morning 3/29/2011 to tell them to vote YES on the McConnell Amendment (Senate Amendment 183 to S 493) to revoke the EPA’s authority to regulate CO2 or any other falsely labeled ‘green house gases’.
I have so much enjoyed reading this thread!
And yes, I lived and worked in Sydney for two years, leaving permanently for Hong Kong in Dec 2010. The endless AGW tripe on TV and censorship in the press and online of any comment exposing AGW fraud or even the most gentle skeptical criticism, was, for me, a feature of life in NSW. The public knew better though, and while the Labour ( educated NZ spelling, BTW ) govt had run its course, the carbon tax was the last straw and hence the landslide.
Australia is a great place to live but housing is extremely expensive. Watch out for China, you Ozzies, as a slow down there will definitely impact the Australian economy. The other elephant in the room is peak oil, although Australia has abundant natural gas to power vehicles.
I have been visiting Hong Kong for 25 years and the “winter” weather has been unusually cold and long – three months as opposed to the usual three to 4 weeks.
Good summary from AussieDan. Our ‘Liberal’ Party down under is the party of small business.It used to be pro manufacturing in the days when we had a manufacturing Base. ‘Liberal’ here is much closer to 19th century British meaning re small government parliamentary democracy . Today ‘Liberal’ has been taken over by leftist academic promoters of centralism who hope they will will get to rule and who know what is good for us. Politically, they are ‘authoritarian’ rather than ‘liberal’ but they manage to get away with the term because, socially, they promote sex, drugs and rock and roll 🙂
Stephen Richards said:
UK Sceptic says:
March 27, 2011 at 4:37 am
Actually no, we don’t adore the BBC. A large swathe of the population want to see it removed from the public teat by scrapping the legally enforced (criminalised, heavily fined and/or imprisoned if you don’t pay up) TV licence.
Are you sure? They claim huge viewing figures. “The most watch news service”, “the best natural history and environment programs. The best weather forecasts.
I’m sure. Their viewing figures are mediocre, their output is dumbed down and abysmal. Far from being impartial their news service is biased beyond belief. They can make excellent natural history programmes but their environmental programmes are deeply biased towards the climate alarmist agenda. They get their weather forecasts from the Met Office which is savagely derided by everyone as being wildly inaccurate, which it is.
In France the ‘audio visual redevance’ is about €120 euro and the government channels, of which there are several, are not allowed to advertise after 20.00hrs. There have been some blatant interference, by the president, on those channels. There is a suspicion that one reporter was demissioned because he challenged the President too much.
Since I do not live in France I couldn’t possibly comment. Besides, I thought we were dicussing the BBC.
I know of several friends here (french speakers only ) who like very much the cultural programs of the BBC.
That’s nice for them. However, they aren’t the ones being forced, by fear of imprisonment, to pay for it.
I feel very sorry for you english people in the UK because you do not have anyone in your political circles that belive AGW is anything but true.
Actually we do. It’s called the United Kingdom Independence Party.
No matter which party you vote for they all want to be the greenest.
I refuse to vote for any party that insists CO2 is harmful to life on Earth.
“Is it correct that “liberal” in Australia is not the same as liberal in other parts of the ‘west”?”
It’s been covered before, but I’ll repeat it for the benefit of others.
The Liberal party in Australia is a centre-right government. It was founded intentionally with the term liberal as in – small government, personal choice, individual liberty. There’s no real equivalent in US politics to this party – idealogically wise it would land somewhere inbetween the democrats and the republicans, with a bit of libertarian thrown in.
The term ‘Liberal’ originally meant those things, but was co-opted away in the USA towards those of a left-persuasion. I don’t know how that happened, but there it is. So the difference reflects more the gradual widening between Australian and US English more than anything. Just like ‘fanny’ – in the USA it is a mild term denoting bottom, in Australia a more lewd term indicating, well, front bottom. How that happened I will never know.
As for other posting here – the linked article is from the Sydney Morning Herald, which is about as paid-up to the warming scare as any newspaper can be. Try another Australian paper for more balanced insight. There’s no doubt the carbon tax was a factor, but not the deciding factor. Anecdotally, a lot of people wrote ‘no carbon tax’ on the back of their ballot paper just to make sure the message was getting through. And the large backlash in coal mining and steel areas (over a quarter of the population changing their vote) is a pretty strong indication of what was going on.
So no, the election wasn’t won because the carbon tax. But the backlash was amplified higher than it would otherwise have been, in specific areas.
WTF says:
March 26, 2011 at 12:00 pm
Watched CTV for a moment today and there was Green Party Fuhrer Elizabeth May – Maurice Strong’s pet – going on about it.
WTF, she’s hysterical. “Maurice Strong’s pet” is an understatement. I was at a band practice a few months back when one of our members called her “the real deal”. I snorked a mouthful of coffee, as the guitarist dragged me out the door. That band no longer practices.