Australia! Say YES – to an election on carbon tax

Guest post by Ruth Bonnett

In late 2010, I wrote about how bad science can give rise to bad policy.  My Christmas message to farmers in Australia and around the world:

I am an urban dweller who just happens to think that the ‘unsettled science’ and restriction of technology has brought about bad policy by way of the Kyoto Protocol and subsequent disastrous consequences for our farmers, and anyone else who values sound science, property rights and our democratic freedoms

Little did I know that our Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, who promised that ‘there would be no carbon tax under the  government I lead‘ would now break her sacred trust with the Australian public on 24th February 2011 and seek to burden all Australians with a tax on carbon dioxide emissions.

To inflict this harm, our Prime Ministers has resorted to several unconscionable tactics including characterising the producers of this nations as ‘big polluters’, launching personal attacks on critics, and on ordinary Australians who protest against this ‘carbon’ tax, and by bringing out stars such as Cate Blanchett and Michael Caton to somehow convince us ordinary folk that this ‘carbon’ tax will somehow reduce the temperature of the planet, make grey skies blue and improve the health of our children.

Never mind that Canada has just handed Conservative Stephen Harper a comfortable  majority – the only party to go to the Canadian people without a headline ‘climate change’ policy.  Never mind that Canada, Japan and Russia have all indicated that they would not join a second round of carbon (dioxide) cuts under the Kyoto Protocol at United Nations talks this year, with the USA reiterating that it would remain outside the treaty.  Never mind that unilateral action by Australians would put us in a vulnerable trading position and severely impact our economy.

And never mind the bald faced lies used to sell this bad tax, based on  unsettled science, fear mongering and outright hysterical claims.

Recent polls have shown that fully two thirds of Australians want an election before any carbon (dioxide) tax is introduced.

Indeed, say YES. Say YES to an election.

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Perry
June 7, 2011 12:15 am

An excellent article 7th June 2011 in Financial Post. Please take the time to read it
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/04/07/climate-models-go-cold/
David Evans consulted full-time for the Australian Greenhouse Office (now the Department of Climate Change) from 1999 to 2005, and part-time 2008 to 2010, modelling Australia’s carbon in plants, debris, mulch, soils, and forestry and agricultural products. He is a mathematician and engineer, with six university degrees, including a PhD from Stanford University in electrical engineering. The comments above were made to the Anti-Carbon-Tax Rally in Perth, Australia, on

June 7, 2011 12:15 am

YES!

June 7, 2011 12:17 am

The longer this government is in office the more it ignores the will of the Australian people.

Rick Bradford
June 7, 2011 12:25 am

Comrade Gillard, the head of the Australian Politburo, will do everything in her power to avoid an election, since her Labor Party is so low in the polls they need a bathysphere.

Mike Jowsey
June 7, 2011 12:34 am

Hey Ruth – good post, but, “watcha gonna do bout it?” As a Kiwi, I tried everything I knew: attending meetings, met with pollies, made submissions to parliament, emails to pollies, venting on blogs. Along with thousands of other Kiwis. To no avail. A hidden agenda prevails the darkness, it seems. Democracy is dead in New Zealand.
Maybe the thin-end-of-wedge policy is now spreading to the next discrete population which is easy to control in its complacency. I know 90% of kiwis are asleep at the wheel – Aussies are just an extension of the testbed. Hope you can force back this tide of watermelon fever.

George
June 7, 2011 12:37 am

The PM and many in the ALP are atheists and now look they have now found something to believe in CLIMATOLOGY

JeffT
June 7, 2011 12:39 am

Well said Ruth,
Now what we need is to get someone to admit to the 10% of the Carbon Tax that Minister Combet signed up to at Cancun, designated as the UN Green Climate Fund. (that is 10% of the Carbon Tax that 67% of us do not want)
PM Gillard lied in the Parliament, when this question was asked by Julie Bishop MP

Indeed, say Yes, Yes, Yes to an election.
(Apologies to Meg Ryan, in “that” scene from the movie “When Harry met Sally”)

Bruce of Newcastle
June 7, 2011 12:43 am

Yes from me too. I hate to see science trashed so by this mad government.
Well, if they did not learn anything from the NSW election and if they won’t learn from all the bad polls then I hope the ALP disappears the way the Canadian Progressive Conservatives did.

PatK
June 7, 2011 12:50 am

Kiwis have for many years been dismayed by the economy in NZ economy lagging behind Aussie, many of us hoping that politicians would have the guts to do something about it. Amazingly, the politicians now most likely to solve this problem are Aussies. Thanks for trying Julia, but it wasn’t quite what we had in mind.

el gordo
June 7, 2011 12:52 am

I’m inside the Murray Darling Basin and I say YES!

jones
June 7, 2011 12:57 am

I realise that people ‘know’ that politicians are all liars etc and that they have some degree of ‘intuition’ that democracy is a sham but what people have not yet grasped under the current (global) paradigm is that the above HAS to be the case.
The MSM has a crucial role in an ongoing ‘implied consent’ process.
Do people see what I’m driving at?
What a fascinating time we all live in.

the Rossshire Mannie
June 7, 2011 1:16 am

Well said “…………unsettled science’ and restriction of technology has brought about bad policy by way of the Kyoto Protocol and subsequent disastrous consequences for our farmers, and anyone else who values sound science, property rights and our democratic freedoms” so much money spent on Educating the masses yet we still suffer form Bad Politics through lack or abuse of sound science………… coffee break is over!

Pissed off Kiwi
June 7, 2011 1:21 am

Good luck Ausie, we had that poo pushing Greens leader, Bob Brown in NZ last week end, New Zealand needs a carbon tax as well blah, blah.
He says that only the polluters pays, yeah right, so they will absorb the AUD25-50/T cost will the so called polluters.

charles nelson
June 7, 2011 1:21 am

Yes.
We are all sadly familiar with the absence of logic that typifies the Warmist position, You know the kind of thing I’m talking about…the snow is caused by warming, the drought is caused by warming, the rain is caused by warming, the icecaps are melting…but the sea levels aren’t rising, more hurricanes, no hurricanes etc etc etc- ad nauseam…but here’s one that will have you rolling in the aisles.
The Australian Federal Finance Minister Wayne Swan is so desperate to sell the idea of the Carbon Tax that he has done some ‘modelling’ and discovered that a 20 dollar a ton tax would have NO SIGINIFICANT IMPACT on jobs, prices or economic growth.
Let’s just think about that for a second or two.
A tax that is designed, whose very purpose is, to throttle the use of energy…thereby saving the planet will NOT according to Mr Swan have ANY noticeable impact on economic activity!!!!!!!!!!
So it won’t reduce temperature increases (well, we kinda knew that anyway) because Australia is a relatively minor source of C02 emissions on a global scale…and it won’t have any impact on our consumption of fossil fuels…hmnn.
At this point any sane Australian would have to ask….’so what’s the bloody point of it then?’

Richard
June 7, 2011 1:25 am

If you want you can find the original “Say Yes” advert with Battersea Power Station in the background (shut down 30 years ago). You can see Cate Blanchett remove the dull grey clouds of pollution (even though CO2 is colourless). I much prefer to watch this parody of the ad.

Labor government now in the minority in the polls, people against the Carbon (Dioxide) Tax in the majority.

RB
June 7, 2011 1:28 am

Just like us here in the UK – producing less than 2% of the world’s emissions and being bullied, cajoled and forced into economic and technological reverse. This is being achieved by taxation and by the reshaping of our energy balance to include demonstrably useless “wind farms” (more accurately labelled “subsidy farms”) enforced by vested interests and politicians with conflicts of interest so profound that they should in all conscience remove themselves from any involvement in the making of policy. (Cameron and Clegg, for example. The former’s wife is the daughter of a wind farm profiteer and the latter’s wife is a director of a Spanish wind turbine manufacturer – and that’s just for starters – the vested interests and conflicts are rooted far and wide within the political class.)
The future result of current UK policy? A few already rich people get richer, much richer, most of the rest of us get poorer – and it effects global temperature and climate change not one iota.
Business leaders are already deciding to leave Britain, calling it a “Tax Bandit”. Our politicians of all main parties (Con/Lib/Lab) appear intent on wrecking our economy to make a few already rich people very much wealthier and the greens (headed by the awful Caroline Lucas) repeatedly call for a return to “wartime austerity” for the proles (by which they mean poverty).

Gene Carbonara
June 7, 2011 1:29 am

Where can I say YES?
Where is the ear?
I’ve been hollering for a referendum for yonks now

Robertvdl
June 7, 2011 1:36 am

The moment a politician opens his/her mouth he/she starts lying. Therefore you have the right to to protect yourself against these people when they go crazy. Second Amendment .(United States)
They serve us not the other way around.
http://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/paintimage2025.jpg

Rowland Pantling (UK)
June 7, 2011 1:41 am

Your Prime Minister is maybe lining her box for the future. She has possibly been tempted by an offer from the UN of a lucrative post in that organisation which is intent on becoming the world government. so, she needs to keep on side and the Aussie public can go hang! Australia covers 5.6% of the world’s landmass area or about 0.5% of total world surface area. But a miniscule area of the continent is urbanised. Averaging out population per square mile would also be an interesting exercise to show how futile any attempt at reducing CO2 emissions would be, let alone a “carbon tax”. I look forward to seeing the result of your next election based on “No Carbon Tax, thank you”!! Me from UK!

Iren
June 7, 2011 1:52 am

Absolutely, yes!

June 7, 2011 1:53 am

It is tttoo ccccold ttto vvvote ppproperly.
JUST QUIT JULLLIAR!

Geoff Sherrington
June 7, 2011 1:56 am

It is completely beyond my comprehension how otherwise sensible people can swallow the propaganda of this con. Never before have I seen gatherings of people bleating “Tax me”. Well, not directly me, but the “1,000 worst carbon polluters in the country” as the Prime Minister has said. Ignore the flow-on effect to your peril as you get poorer by the day.
Pure and simple, if the Greens held sawy and in their zealotry they closed all carbon intensive industry, millions of us would be dead in weeks. Ethically, by their standards, we could not leave Australia on aircraft, whih burn fossil fuel, and not many of us have a sailing boat on standby.
Even a partial reduction, short of a complete ban, would damage this country so badly that it would take decades to recover. Please, don’t act the fool.

Paul R
June 7, 2011 1:59 am

I say YES too.
This is how Clarke and Dawe thought our parliament should have been operating after the last election as both major parties were put on probation by the electorate.

Unfortunately we were betrayed, hopefully the result will not be as close next time and this Ponzi scheme in green clothing can be killed off here too.

Mike Jowsey
June 7, 2011 2:01 am

JeffT – good clips, thanks. What a load of BS. How do they sleep at night?
Nick Smith, NZ Minister of Climate Change Issues, has done a similar complete about-face. When in opposition he decried the ETS tax as putting NZ into an uncompetitive position internationally. Now his job depends upon the lie, he has become that which he despised.

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