It seems Australians are waking up to the folly of a carbon tax. I’m sure Mr. Flannery’s quote of the millenium helped bunches.
However the sheer pig-headedness of PM Julia Gillard, who lied about not seeking a carbon tax to get elected, is stunning in this statement:
Ms Gillard yesterday vowed to press head with the carbon tax plan despite poor polling and the campaign from the Opposition Leader.
“I’m interested in the policy cycle not the political cycle,” Ms Gillard said.
Full story here
The voter opinion turnaround is testament to the hard work of my sceptical friends in Australia. Good on ya!
Louis you meant ‘labor’ not ‘liberal’ in your comment I think (I’m an Aussie too)
here’s a comment I had published (in part) today
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/voters-abandon-julia-gillards-carbon-pricing-plan/story-fn59niix-1226049650911
Where’s the substantive direct evidence that a measurable amount of the late 20th century warming was caused by human carbon dioxide emissions Where’s the benefit (to Australia) of ‘going it alone’ before our major trading partners It is not in the national interest for this Govt to introduce this tax which will damage the economy and it will cost jobs and result in cost of living increases without any benefit to the national interest I know the Govt needs it for its ‘smoke and mirrors’ budget and possibly so as not to lose Greens support but surely the national interest should have priority with a Govt of whatever political persuasion
(end of quote)
I personally think that politicians should be personally (and legally) liable for not acting in the national interest as opposed to acting in their own political interest
Unfortunately politicians have no such liability – as opposed to other professsionals
What does that say about politicians – nothing good in my view
Ms Gillard: “I’m interested in the policy cycle not the political cycle”
A pity she doesn’t know about the carbon cycle as well!
Look and Learn James Allan May 4, 2011
‘One of the big issues in the next Australian election campaign is likely to be whether the voters believe Labor can responsibly manage the Commonwealth government’s finances. That is why Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan are so desperate to move the books back into surplus and out of deficit.
Of course those of us like me who lived in New Zealand in the early years of this millennium will be well aware that there are government surpluses, and government surpluses. Some come from restraining government spending; others come from taxing, taxing and more taxing.’
source: http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/allan/2011/05/look-learn
PS forget the mittens Crispin in Waterloo, we (in Oz) have much more inviting climate.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/24/andrew-bolt-scores-the-quote-of-the-millennium/#comment-628370
I can’t help admire Gillard as much as I dislike her for her dishonesty, she certainly is giving it everything to get the carbon tax regime in place.
It’s just a shame that she’s working so hard and being so resolute for the likes of Rothschild’s, Goldman’s and others rather than the people she swore to represent.
http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=90090
Jim,
you should realise that the MSM is VERY AGW biased, and sensationalist at that.
if the public become less sensitive about the comments in MSM, the percentage is likely to change to maybe 80 % against a carbon dioxide tax.
Andrew4 – congratulations to all right-thinking Canadians – shout it loud and clear that MMCC is crap.
One tiny chink of light for us in the UK – still labouring under our ‘greenest government ever’ is that eco-loon Chris Huhne, head of our Department of Energy and (for some reason which escapes me) Climate Change, may be headed for the door.
The other pinprick of light is that this ‘greenest government ever’ has quietly downgraded its proposals for offshore wind in 2020 from 30GW to 12GW. No explanation, of course…
That’s another furphy. Of course human beings have SOME influence on the climate. Every living thing influences its environment. I’m as sceptical as they come but even I agree with that, and so do the sceptical scientists. This is the usual pea and shell trick of stating something completely self evident and then using it to prop up a baseless and disproved theory.
This is the most imcompetent and deceitful government Australia has ever had. We’ll be lucky to survive it.
We have a new State Premier in NSW. We are to have another 3000 wind turbines to meet the Feds (Gillard) Renewable Energy Target of 20% by 2020. O’Farrell has said however that since RET is adding to electricity and downstream prices the Feds should be compensating consumers. The case for wind is much like the case for AGW, lots of theory and very little reality. The regulators website shows an average 31% power factor which is much higher than overseas.
The fact that the Fed opposition, Tony Abbott, has a direct action carbon plan is being used by Gillard as a reason for her to have a tax. Until Abbott takes a stronger stance like the Canadian Harper we will suffer. We also need some real carbon education. Some people are so freaked by “carbon pollution” that they want to eliminate carbon from their diet. Salt water anyone?
Most people are not looking at global mean temps. However, they are feeling winters getting colder and not milder as promised by AGW. Rate of sea level rise flattening and so on……………………….. It was always about the money.
There is something of a precedent that Ms Gillard and her (Labor) party could do well to contemplate.
During his single term as elected Labor Prime Minister (1946-1949), Ben Chifley, no doubt encouraged by the general acceptance of war-time exigencies, tried to nationalize the private banks against vigorous middle class opposition and a High Court ruling but refused to withdraw the legislation and called the 1949 election as a quasi-plebiscite on the issue.
His (Labor) government was defeated by conservative Robert Menzies in a massive landslide, still the largest swing against a sitting federal government in Australia — the Labor Party remained in opposition for another 23 years.
For Ms Gillard, I’m afraid a Maggie Thatcher “the lady’s not for turning!” stance will be counterproductive, but what else can she do?
The so-called carbon tax is not popular, her party and the servile media blaming poor ‘salespersonship’ but they are deluding themselves.
The public are not buying it because it stinks.
When some one slants a surface temperature record or tree ring data to reinforce their own views on AGW we all ask to see the raw data. When the Australian “newspaper” whom have openly declared their right wing political bias in print, publish figures from their own polls you just believe without asking.
I don’t think that is anywhere near good enough, any chance of the Newspoll raw data and how they calculated and collected that figure being posted up here?
The interesting aspect the recent Canadian election was the left of centre parties, Liberal, New Democrats and miniscule Greens all proposed either cap and trade or a carbon tax. Other than the Greens the larger parties disguised their environmental policies well hoping not to make it a central issue. When I heard one local candidate answer a question about an increase in gas prices of $.10 per liter a worthwhile price to pay via a carbon tax to save the planet, it was met with a combination of laughter and derision. Thankfully, common sense prevailed and we won’t have to worry about this for four years.
The whole world is waking up to the fact of how bad the output of the GCMs really are. They can’t predict thier way out of a paper bag.
That is democracy, the right to vote in tyrants to subjugate you.
It’s such a pity that the majority of Americans don’t understand their own constitution, but most have bought into the tyrants’ dismantling of it by renaming it democracy which it isn’t. And that’s the big fib they export as they work very hard abroad to set up one tyranical dictatorship after another, and the rest of the world is the loser because we, the majority, don’t know that a really excellent constitution can exist and is workable in practice, which clearly says that a government dictatorship has no rights to exist. (Most Americans don’t even know they don’t have to pay taxes to the IRS, another area in re-education where the basic facts are no longer taught, not just in the AGW scam.)
Anti protests get fewer attending than pro AGW, the message that this is a scam isn’t getting through to enough people to make a real difference.
Since Gillard lied to get in perhaps Aussie’s could simply drum her out of office. Lock her out of the building or something? Sue her? It must surely make the votes for her null and void.
as I am australian our only hope is she will get on a leaky boat and head too the USA as a asylum seeker they can have here along with D.H Rudd. God save australia as nobody else will.
If Parliament is still behind Gillard then she could still pass the carbon tax and not be outed until after the 2013 elections? To a distant political observer, Parliament will almost certainly go along with her else face the being outed by early elections if they somehow deadlock. Even the Gov-Gen calling for a double dissolution? It seems the calculus is she’ll lose the PM job in 2013 regardless so why not force it through, ala Obamacare, and spend two years after “passing it to see what’s in it”? Is this even possible in Australian’s system of government?
Louis Hissink I think you mean labour polititions
The situation in Oz is I suspect at least partly due to the use of the AV voting system. In the UK we get a referendum on Thursday as to whether we should give up first past the post in favour of AV. The Greens will be hoping for a result that lets them wield as much power as they do in Australia, I for one will be voting no.
The ALP would do well to remember Joseph Lyons, Australian PM in the 1930s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Lyons
He walked across the isle, away from his Labor party, took a number of them with him, and later formed a new party and became PM. Reason: economic policy. Not unlike the present predicament that Labor finds itself in. The carbon(dioxide) tax may achieve the same result, in that a party is split over an issue and loses power for a decade. The issue: a proposed ‘solution’ to a problem that is difficult to measure and not well enough understood, with the result that cannot possibly be measured and will not have the claimed effect.
And I am from Canada, and can well remember the decimation faced by the Conservatives after the ill-explained and hastily introduced GST, in 1993. They rose from the ashes, but it was a long time to wander in the political wilderness. At least the GST helped to fill the gap in the budget left by years of Liberal overspending.
Folks, the big decisions always come down to money. The Irish know this well, now. If it was a few cents a litre on fuel, no biggie. But to ask for huge sums, to fight something that is so ill-defined, is political suicide.
Just back from Prof. Bob Carters presentation here in Hervey Bay.
Another excellent delivery of the facts and how the Australian government is conning us.
There were in my estimation, about 130 to 150 in attendance.
Only one Green alarmist with the same old question, How come all the thousands of scientists and thousands of scientific institutions around the world are wrong and you (Bob Carter) are right. Another warmista shot to bits !
Another silly old goat, about my age, had carbon soot and CO2 mixed up. Showed the effectiveness of the governments ploy of confusing CO2 with (black) carbon pollution. They have at least one person sucked in.
By the quality of the questions asked of Bob, I would say that the audience was well informed of the science and knew well that the whole climate change debate is based in lies, fraud and money.
I did wear the WUWT shirt and Bob commented that I was brave to wear it around town. I remarked that Hervey Bay is a town of sceptics and I would be safe !!
Has to be more than 60%, my family and I weren’t even asked 🙂
The Australian governments of either persuasion have to rely on the government sponsored scientific organismic – The activist C.S.I.R.O., Activist scientists such as Tim Flim Flam Flannery and others such as Ove Hoegh-Guldberg.
There are only a handful of engineers or those with other science degrees in the Australian Parliament.
However as I’ve said before. The current governments have led the economy into an ever expanding black hole. They need this tax – any tax to try and rein in the deficits from their failed or bizarre policies.
If Oz doesn’t invest their tax in CO2, so to speak, they’ll still be able to get rich by selling dirty C (without the O duce) to the Chinese but they’ll miss out on the greatest unregulated trading bubble since the dot com era (and that seem to be what the instant green hippie companies are most worried about what with they tend to lack that C in CO2.)
Martin Brumby says: May 4, 2011 at 12:48 am
“The political situation in the UK seems all but hopeless.”
In the sense that the UK political elite seem to take the alarmism hook, line and sinker the nonsense from the BBC, Guardian and that sin-bin of nonsense: the Met Office, yes you are right.
But more “hopeless” as in we public have no hope of ever getting anything better from politicians. But in the sense that things will not change: very far from that.
I was on the other side at the end of the 1990s and I can say it was the same feeling. We couldn’t understand why the government weren’t responding to the obvious rise in temperature. It took many years for them to finally catch up with public opinion, and now that opinion has certainly changed as most people have realised that this is almost entirely based on rather dubious interpretations of highly partisan and dishonest “scientists”. But we’ve got to expect our politicians to take their time catching up.
Everything is against them. They’ve told so many lies that almost anything the weather does is a contradiction of what they predicted!
To be frank, in the UK we’ve now reached the stage, when even a very hot summer is only going put another nail in their coffin as it will only highlight the fact that the same people saying: “hot = more proof of warming”, were the same people last winter saying: “cold = more proof of warming” (ie gulf stream turning off nonsense)
As for the BBC. There are undoubtedly a few very red faces who know the BBC went way way way over the top on this subject and who must now wish that they could erase every single news story, weather comment & documentary that ever mentioned global warming.
Interestingly, here in the U.S. I’m starting to encounter Liberal democrats who don’t believe in man made global warming. It seems that people hear one of two responses to the request “show me the data:” 1. Sure. There’s nothing to hide. Here it is. Let me know if you find a problem. 2. NO! I faked it and I don’t want to be caught out. You’re evil!