They are calling it “Carbon Sunday”.
This is a collection of links and excerpts regarding PM Julia Gillard’s speech announcing the tax. In a nutshell, from what I can see, the majority of Australians are pissed, and she’s toast, partly because she lied about it before taking office, partly due to the fact it is being implemented as a deficit from the get-go. Oh and then there’s the fact that it won’t make a bit of difference to the temperature, and will be nullified by China.
Apparently, the way it is structured, it looks “Almost bordering on a bribe” (-Andrew Bolt, see his interview with Lindzen below) .
You can download the new climate policy here (PDF).
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Carbon tax backlash in national plebiscite hosted by News Ltd websites | Courier Mail
ANGRY Australians have vowed to vote Prime Minister Julia Gillard from office at the next election after the controversial carbon tax announcement.
Scores of voters rejected the plan soon after details of the $24.5 billion package to tackle climate change were revealed, with more than 80 per cent who voted in a national online poll saying Australia shouldn’t have a carbon tax.
…
“They’re calling it ‘Carbon Sunday’ but I like to refer to today as ‘Suicide Sunday’ for a PM and three independents,” one reader wrote.
…
Just eight per cent of voters said they were confident it wouldn’t affect their hip pocket.
An anti-carbon tax group said its website crashed after being overwhelmed with people trying to sign up to a campaign rejecting the tax.
The organisers of the site, no-carbon-tax.org, said the site crashed because of the “sheer numbers of people signing up.”
In the Queensland polls hosted by couriermail.com.au, about 7000 readers voted on four questions, with about 90 per cent believing we should not have a carbon tax, over 60 per cent saying climate change was a myth, and 75 per cent saying they were now more likely to vote for the Coalition.
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My editorial on the carbon tax fraud. I then interview Professor Richard Lindzen, who says Gillard’s tax wouldn’t work, even if man really was warming the globe. Which he doubts.
Carbon Sunday
Andrew Bolt – Sunday, July 10, 11 (11:36 am)
Vent here while venting is still legal.
The Climate Change Committee deal here.
UPDATE
Some initial, quick thoughts:
– $4.3 billion over four years is going to be spent above what the tax raises to buy off the public with tax cuts and handouts. That’s one wild way to sell a tax, spending more than it raises.
– the compensation must soon run out if the Government doesn’t want to broke. The deal says that after three years, companies can buy offsets overseas for up to half their emissions. This means that costs here will rise, but the revenue to compensate for these rises is sent overseas.
– The Government claims this package will reduce emissions by 160 millions tonnes by 2020. But the immediate tax and spending levels cannot do that. This target can be achieved only with a dramatic raising of the tax. No figure is given for how much of our emissions will be cut by the tax as it.
– The Government refuses to nominate employment effects on the specific industries involved.
– No figure is given for what effect this will have on the world’s temperature.
– Julia Gillard cites in her support Margaret Thatcher, who indeed did warn in 1988 that we should worry about global warming. What Gillard fails to add was that by 2002, Thatcher had developed second thoughts about the alarmists, writing that global warming “provides a marvelous excuse for worldwide, supra-national socialism”.
– The Government is spending $2.7 billion extra over the next financial year alone – before the tax even gets imposed – to buy support throught tax cuts and handouts.
– It’s a magic tax:
Cost increases: <a title=”Households to see average cost increases of $9.90 a week. However, they will also receive assistance of $10.10 a week on average.Households to see average cost increases of $9.90 a week. However, they will also receive assistance of $10.10 a week on average.
– Gillard announces also she’ll buy out a 2000 Megawatt power station over the next decade at a price not revealed. That’s billions to actually reduce our power supplies, not increase them.
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Australian Climate Madness Blog:
Just to put all this nonsense in perspective, the policy is due to reduce Australia’s emissions by 160 million tonnes of CO2 by 2020. Sounds impressive right? Well, China’s emissions rose in just one year by 750 million tonnes, nearly five times Australia’s planned reduction by 2020 – in just one year. Climate Madness.
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Gillard’s tax on “carbon pollution”: the facts « JoNova: Science, carbon, climate and tax
Forestalling all of the 0.24 C° global warming predicted by 2020 would demand almost $60,000 from every man, woman and child on the planet.
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Many Australians to be better off under tax deal: Gillard | The Australian
According to a recent Newspoll, just 30 per cent of people support the tax.
“The presumption in the Newspoll that the majority of Australians don’t want action on climate change will change,” Senator Brown told reporters in Brisbane yesterday.
Ms Gillard warned the government would not be cowed by opposition to the tax and accused the Coalition of “lies and distortion” and “attacks on our economists and scientists.
“After all that, I simply say to our opponents: is that the best you can do,” she said.
“Because if you think that’s enough to knock us off course, you’ve got another think coming.”
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Climate change: Gillard or Abbott | thetelegraph.com.au
[Piers Akerman] The carbon dioxide tax has nothing to do with the environment and everything to do with raising an extra $11 billion in revenue.
The tax is not a reform, it is economic suicide.
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READ the full text of Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s address to the nation following the carbon tax plan:
I WANT to talk to you tonight about why the Government is putting a price on carbon and what this means for you.
The decisions I announced today mean:
AROUND five hundred big polluters will pay for every tonne of carbon pollution they put into our atmosphere.
BY 2020 this will cut carbon pollution by 160 million tonnes a year.
AND because some businesses will put prices up, there will be tax cuts, increased pensions and increased family payments.
We have had a long debate about climate change in this country.
Most Australians now agree our climate is changing, this is caused by carbon pollution, this has harmful effects on our environment and on the economy – and the Government should act.
Economists and experts agree that the best way is to make polluters pay by putting a price on carbon.
The first Australian Government to announce a plan for a carbon price was John Howard’s back in 2007.
A lot has happened since then; the debate has been difficult and divisive.
And no government – no political party or leader – can claim to have got everything right during this time.
But we have now had the debate, 2011 is the year we decide that as a nation we want a clean energy future.
Now is the time to move from words to deeds.
That’s why I announced today how Australia’s carbon price will work.
From 1 July next year, big polluters will pay $23 for every tonne of carbon they put into our atmosphere.
They now know how much they will pay unless they cut their pollution.
And they can start planning to cut pollution now.
By 2020 our carbon price will take 160 million tonnes of pollution out of the atmosphere every year.
That’s the equivalent of taking forty five million cars off the road.
Some of the cost paid by big polluters will be passed through to the prices of the goods you buy.
The price impact will be modest but I know family budgets are always tight.
So I have decided most of the money raised from the carbon price will be used to fund tax cuts, pension increases and higher family payments.
These will be permanent, matching the carbon price over time.
Not everyone will be financially better off – there is no money tree. The budget has to add up. But I want people who need help most to get the help they need.
That’s why 9 in 10 households will get a combination of tax cuts and payment increases.
For almost six million households this will fully meet your average extra costs.
And of these, four million Australian households – including every older Australian who relies solely on the pension – will get a “buffer” for your budget, with the extra payments being 20 per cent higher than your average extra costs.
When you have some time, you should have a look at the cleanenergyfuture.gov.au website.
It’ll help you find out what you’re entitled to.
And it will link you to ideas for how to cut power bills and cut pollution without cutting back on life’s essentials.
I also understand that there is nothing more important to families than having a job.
So I have decided we will take special measures to support jobs and keep Australia competitive internationally. And some of the money paid by polluters will also fund billions of dollars of investments in clean technologies like solar, wind and geothermal.
All up, the carbon price will support $100 billion worth of investment in renewables in the next forty years.
Putting a price on carbon is a big change for our country.
I know we can do it together.
Our economy is the envy of the world.
We have world-leading renewable technology, a coal industry determined to cut pollution among the world’s richest reserves of natural gas.
And we are a confident, creative people.
I see a great clean energy future for our great country.
I know we can get there together.
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Now look at the polling from the Herald Sun:
You can weigh in here
Finally, keep your eye on the prize.
h/t to Tom Nelson for collecting many of these
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UPDATE: Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. points out the absurdity of a basic claim.
Australia has released its much awaited carbon tax proposal (here in PDF). I am just now browsing through it. This analogy in the document strikes me as particularly unfortunate:
The Government has committed to reduce carbon pollution by 5 per cent from 2000 levels by 2020 irrespective of what other countries do, and by up to 15 or 25 per cent depending on the scale of global action.
Meeting the 5 per cent target will require abatement of at least 159 Mt CO2-e, or 23 per cent, in 2020 (Figure 2.4).1 This is equivalent to taking over 45 million cars off the road by 2020.
Why do I say an unfortunate analogy?
Well, Australia has only about 12 million cars (and 16 million total vehicles), so using a reduction of 45 million cars “off the road” to illustrate the unilateral emissions reduction goal simply illustrates the impossibility of the task.
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This new policy was of such national importance that Gillard had to pre-empt regular TV programming on Sunday to announce it….and they couldn’t even get the basic math right.
RoHa says:
July 10, 2011 at 6:29 pm
The balance of power is held by the Greens, who have pretty good ideas about almost everything except the environment. On that they are religious fanatics.
Did I read that correctly, are we talking about policies like these:
Ban uranium mining, nuclear power and new hydro-electric or water supply dams
Reallocate water rights from food production to the environment
Increase in the company tax rate to 33%
Abolish the WTO
End the ANZUS defence treaty.
Introduce same-sex marriage
Relax border protection laws abolish detention of illegal immigrants
Legalise the use of cannabis
Legalise heroin on prescription
Introduce death taxes.
Introduce laws to prevent outback economic development
Free (publicly funded) sex change surgery
Doesn’t the Australian constitution permit a “spill” whereby the prime minister is turfed out and replaced by someone with more votes within the caucus? This is the case in the UK, and (IIRC) both Thatcher and Major lost power instantly. We can’t do it in Canada, more’s the pity.
IanM
Still 2 years to the next election folks. Move along, nothing to see here.
Ian L. McQueen July 10, 2011 at 9:14 pm, that’s how we ended up with Julia as PM! Then, after knifing the elected PM and proceeding to lose the next Federal election, she went into partnership with the Greens (who would never, ever side with the Liberal/National Party anyway). But even then, she had to secure a partnership with 3 Independents. One of them is an ex-intelligence officer who’s claim to fame was spilling his guts over highly classified national secrets, and who won his electorate with something like 20% of the primary vote. He is nothing but a lap dog for the Greens, so he was always going to support Julia. Even then she couldn’t form government. She still had to win over another two (of three more) independents, and did so by indulging them with massive pork barrell fat, the likes of which has probably never been seen before in Australia. These two guys, now roundly hated in their own electorates in spite of all the incoming dollars that are provided by working people like me, are gonners at the next election. So they have to extend the life of this government for as long as possible to delay the inevitable termination of their political careers.
But as they say, a nation gets the government it deserves, and Australians voted for this mess so we deserve everything we’re getting.
What I find most disturbing about this is not the fallacy of the scientific argument, but of the economic one. The pensioner won’t be much affected? They’ll pay another $9.90 in taxes but they’ll get $10.10 in rebates? So they’ll be just fine?
Of course their food bill will go up because food gets to the store via “big polluters” like trucking companies, not to mention stored, processed, grown, harvested by… “big polluters”. Kinda important because all three of his kids and his 9 grandchildren want to move back in with him since they lost all their jobs and the bank repossesed their houses, so the poor guy’s grocery bill is going to skyrocket.
An the bright side, with that many people living in one house, body heat will keep it warm, no need for heating fuel. More water consumption though…does the tax rebate cover an extra bathroom or two?
Ian L McQueen – yes, it does. And that’s how Julia Gillard got in. She toppled the previous leader, Kevin Rudd by getting control of the caucus through the union powerbrokers that control the party.
Ironically a lot of Rudd’s support was lost when Gillard (as deputy) told him to drop the ETS he was proposing. Once that support was gone, she moved in for the kill, quoting opinion polls that had his support crashing.
Fast forward 12 months, she scraped through an election by forming a minority government, after promising on election eve that a carbon tax would not be imposed.
That minority government holds together because of signed agreements with Gillard herself. So a caucus removal of the PM could also bust up the government. So the party is scared to replace the leader because (a) they’ve already tried that once and (b) it has the potential to dissolve the government in a no-confidence motion.
All it takes for this bill and/or this government to fall is the loss of a single vote in parliament. This could either be someone ‘crossing the floor’, a retirement, death or sickness. They literally dangle by a thread and yet they try on the biggest change in the economy for decades, which only has about 15% public support. Their thinking is that they’ll buy off voters and people will get used to higher taxes, and life will go on. However, there’s a lot more to this than that – there’s the issue of rewarding a politician for lying before an election, there’s the issue of a union-backed party destroying unionised jobs in mining, steel and power. There’s a lot of red-hot anger in voter-land that is not going to be bought off with a couple of payments, all of which have to be borrowed. Because that’s the other madness of this scheme – it actually collects less money than it takes in, and the balance has to be borrowed. Only a truly incompetent government could invent a tax grab that leaves them out of pocket.
Yes, it doesn’t make any sense at all. It’s the ultimate in hail-mary passes, if I haven’t mangled the analogy.
Tony Windsor has been bombarded by educated people in Armidale for years about the climate
change lies etc. He takes no notice. I for one have been very outspoken and warned him I would not vote for him again. Any politician who takes on side a policy based on scientific untruths
when his supporters have provided him with alternative scientific proof then he has no idea.
He is a farmer buying up large land acquistions and has already sold his farm to a coal mining company and leased it back. But the land he has now bought is on land already under gas exploitation licenses by the Chinese. Yet he is going to introduce a private bill to ‘Save our farms’ from mining and foreign acquisition. The thing is mining or minerals are not owned by the land holder they belong to the crown. You can’t stop foreign ownership or exploitation by law. He has to change the legislation as these mining exploration licenses sometimes last for 30 years.
Probably protecting his newly acquired land. But – he has said he won’t support this government unless they agree to his private bill. Bit late, almost blackmail like Wilkie saying the same if new
and useless poker machine reforms aren’t passed. The Greens say they will block any move
from a future government removing carbon tax legislation. Hey this is democracy? We overturned the capital punishment law can’t bad laws be overturned too?
@Bob in Castlemaine
Well, these:
Ban uranium mining, nuclear power and new hydro-electric or water supply dams
Reallocate water rights from food production to the environment
Introduce laws to prevent outback economic development
are environment policies. (Now we don’t actually use nuclear power in Australia but I’m not too happy about it, so I don’t object too much to the ban on uranium mining either. I would like to see research done on thorium power.)
As for the others, some of them don’t seem any worse than the craziness of the traitor parties, and others seem to be harmless or even a good idea.
But, Bob in Castlemaine, Greens or no Greens, we’re doomed anyway.
I think, I finally understand – following the GFC, Australia stood tall as one of very few survivors in the Western World. Here we have sufficient growth and jobs that our interest rate is 7% and the Australian Dollar is now worth more than the American Peso. Now this is clearly upsetting someone who clearly had hoped to drive all Western style economies to the wall. Hence the Carbon Tax, what better way to ensure that Australia follows the rest over the financial precipice. Be seeing you soon good buddies!
Prime Minister Julia Gillard: AROUND five hundred big polluters will pay for every tonne of carbon pollution they put into our atmosphere.
The policy of PM Gillard works as follows:
1. Divide et impera. Five hundred companies are accused of “pollution” because they convert oxygen into carbon dioxide! She uses the term of abuse “polluters”. These hard working companies are pilloried due to their carbon dioxide emission. Due to the unfair utterances of Gillard, their reputation is unfairly injured. They have but one choice: leave the country. This is the consequence of the segratation policy of PM Julia Gillard.
2. Due to the fact that the government will not get the objective, i.e. make renewables cheaper than coal, she will take the following step: the payment of a carbon tax “named pollution tax” by all companies. “All companies are equal before the law”! People is so brainwashed that, when they hear the word “carbon”, they think automatically “pollution”. The real pollution (e.g. lead pollution) in the country remains untouched.
3. Finally, all animals and humans will be taxed because they exhale carbon dioxide. Farmers with large herds of cattle will have to pay for all animals. “All carbon producing creatures are equal before the law”!
It is not too late to defeat this disgusting PM proposal!
help…
I am sure i did NOT tick the notify of new posts..
inbox is crying:-(
and I cant find a go away tab…
help, please. mods
and no wordpress doesnt seem? to have me subscribed either.
I am surprised at the assumption that lower income households will vote ALP – the polls reacting to Gillards speech do not show this at all.
Should it be assumed that because someone does not have a huge income they are stupid enought to believe a proven liar?
Few people are being offered more than $10 per week as “compensation”. Few people would be foolish enough to believe her absurd statement that the tax will impact on families by less than that amount.
There’s not much confidence in the numbers Nova presents.
https://itsnotnova.wordpress.com/2011/07/11/carbon-tax-nova-misleads-perhaps-you-wont-notice/
With all the attention on Australia’s Carbon Tax battles you guys are missing out on the Carbon Taxes that are quietly being imposed and increased in Canada, the supplier of most of your oil. BC just increased it’s Carbon Taxes as did Alberta. Yup, Alberta has Carbon Taxes!!! The tar-sands province where most of your oil comes from taxes the carbon! Pay attention and help us get this madness stopped and reversed in Canada before it impacts you guys in the USA too much!
Carl Chapman says:
When one of the two major parties goes this bad, it’s bad for democracy. Democracy needs a choice between two reasonable alternatives.
What does it mean for democracy when both major parties go bad and there are no reasonable alternatives?
There are many comments here and in other places along the lines: “I can’t even gloat about the fools in the Labor Party committing political suicide. ” (Carl Chapman comment on this page).
Never underestimate your enemy. Are they really fools committing political suicide, or they really deadly serious and implementing George Orwell’s “1984” a few years late?
“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.“
“the majority of Australians are pissed”
Not unusual perhaps, but not too pissed to be thoroughly pissed off. As usual, Terry McCrann crucifies Canberra’s cretinous collective.
http://www.australianclimatemadness.com/2011/07/terry-mccrann-julia-in-wonderland/
The Australian stock market opened down on Monday and finished lower down. From:
http://au.finance.yahoo.com/q?s=%5EAORD
I suspect that 1.79% is just a down payment on drops to come. I’d not put any money into Australia now. Best to wait a year or two and see what happens.
I must, however, thank Ms. Gillard as she is about to become an “Example Extraordinaire” to all the other politicians of the world. One can only hope Obama and the Democrats are watching…
Self immolation, while spectacular, usually does not encourage others who are present to join in the agony and screaming…
Since CO2’s “greenhouse” effects are rapidly and thoroughly damped and nullified by far more potent forces (the hydrological cycle, for starters), the actual amount it would cost each Australian/global citizen to control/stop warming by cutting carbon dioxide emissions is infinite. None of the expenditures will have any traceable effect.
Either the country collapses, or an alternative arises which elbows one of the two into the dustbin and becomes a new second party. It may arise from repentant or rebellious factions in one or both of the original parties, but gains its mandate from a plurality or majority which rejected both.
Bloodletting may or may not be involved.
It seems that at various places around the globe, AGW advocacy is becoming a political third rail. It nearly fatally electrocuted the Canadian Liberal Party in the last election (along with associated issues and a parachuted-in Harvard ultra-liberal leader), which had basked for generations in an imagined “natural ruling party” status.
The current in the rail is ramping up. Encourage your opponents to grasp it!
With regard to sea level rising, has anyone looked at the World Shipping register to see the thousands if billions of tonnes at sea to transport mineral and other cargo around the world. If we stopped mining in Australia ship sizes would grow and distance travelled would be longer. All that tonnage and volume must increase the sea level.
John Mac Qld
Julia you forgot to mention how this carbon tax would actually reduce carbon?
This is not reducing carbon so much as “shifting funds”, the alledged big users are going to increase the cost to produce the product, Labour are going to give us tax cuts so it doesn’t cost anything extra for us to use that product but e.g. if we need to use 20 million tonnes of coal per year, then just by raising the cost will not stop anyone from buying it, (if we NEED to use it, then it has to be used) this plan as it stands fails to cut back on the alledged carbon produced to produce this product, in which case we might as well not have a carbon tax at all.