Letter to the Editor
Watts Up With That
10 July 2011
Carbon Tax Mark 4 is flimsy but dangerous.
Because of public opposition to a new tax on everything, the tax has been gutted. The PM hopes to buy public support by giving exemptions to almost everyone and offering widespread bribes to voters. It is now feeble and ineffective.
But the Green-Gillard coalition is desperate and such people cannot be trusted. They will say or promise anything in order to get this new tax introduced.
Once on the law books, the exemptions will be whittled away, the tax rate will increase and the tax bribes will disappear. It is a stealthy cancer in the gut of the Australian economy.
The cost of electricity, food, fuel and travel will increase, but few people will recognise the root cause. Politicians will blame “Woolworths, power suppliers and Big Oil” for the pain.
This new stealth tax is the thin edge of the wedge.
It will have no effect on the climate, but is a fiscal weapon too dangerous to be left in the hands of green extremists.
Leaving Bob Brown loose with the vast powers of a carbon tax is like leaving the grandkids alone in the hayshed with a box of matches.
“Abolish the Stealth Tax” will be the next election slogan.
Viv Forbes
Via Rosewood Qld 4340 Australia
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This must be what the people want. How else do these politicians get elected, and stay in power? In the USA, we have a guy leading the Conservative ticket (Mitt Romney) who believes in AGW! No one’s bringing it up as “an issue.”
Again, we vote for these clowns. We get whatever we have coming.
“The PM hopes to buy public support by giving exemptions to almost everyone and offering widespread bribes to voters […] Once on the law books, the exemptions will be whittled away, the tax rate will increase and the tax bribes will disappear.
Watch the pea, watch the thimbles. There are no “exemptions”. End consumers pay the carbon tax, big “polluters” collect the tax for a cut off the top. Gillard retires on a massive public pension while “consulting” for Goldman Sachs. Her party claims that there have been no tax increases and CO2 goes up as it ever did.
Kyoto had exactly what effect on CO2 levels for the hundreds of billions of dollars stolen from taxpayers over its lifetime?
Liars and thieves all.
One thing that not mentioned is that the legislation for all this has yet to be written or even introduced to parliament. If it is voted into law it will then not come into effect until July 2012. This is a big if. Eleven months is an extremely long time in politics, some 330 24 hour news spin cycles.
All it will take to destroy this tax is one major industrial player to withdraw from Australia with the attendant loss of jobs for us to have a labor party back-bench revolt and an election before then.
Fortunately here in Australia we have a robust democracy that is being tested by our first real minority government. People are slowly coming to realisation that the Greens are really watermelons, and not an alternative government.
the saddest thing with this hoax is what the schools are teaching our young children all the doomsday propaganda
While Juliar Gillard sat before the nation on Sunday stating the CARBON TAX would be set at $23/tonne, she neglected to explain the Treasury modelling on the effects of the tax was set at $20/tonne, was this a deliberate lie by someone who has form, or an inadvertent mistake? I know on which horse my money rides.
Steve in SC said:
July 10, 2011 at 3:50 pm
> To prevent the camel’s nose under the tent from becoming the entire camel,
> the camel must be shot.
Shooting camels lowers CO2:
http://tinyurl.com/5vunn7q
Steve in SC says:
July 10, 2011 at 3:50 pm
> To prevent the camel’s nose under the tent from becoming the entire camel,
the camel must be shot.
Great metaphor! It’ll prevent a lot methane releases too.
Aussies, have you no balls. It’s time for an “arab spring”, haul those eco-terrorists out and install a rational government. You voted in a party with no carbon taxes and it did a 180. Throw the bums out and throw them into a cold dark cell and let them rot there. You’ve been betrayed, you’ve been had. You are governed by those who you chose to do what they didn’t, so oust the commie bastards.
Ross says (July 10, 2011 at 2:41 pm): “I have supported the ALP all my life – they were once the party that represented workers, they provided Australia with many social policies without extremism and they were usually honest – as a working person they were the logical choice.”
The more government can do FOR you, the more it can do TO you. Australians brought this on themselves by giving politicians so much control over their iives.
I’m not casting stones; we’ve made the same mistake in the USA and especially here in the People’s Republic of Kalifornia. It’s just so much easier to gambol in the sunshine and let the Morlocks handle everything…
Mike B,
Sounds good, but the usual trap is greed.
First thing I would do if I were an Aussie is find out who wrote this plan. Likely a coterie of people including international lawyers for a international law firm, former chief aides of parliamentary committees (like in US Congress, they are the ones who really know the ins and outs of these super-plans, and lobbyists associated with super-big enviro NGOs effectively working for Big Finance. Demand of Gillard et al. information of who actually wrote the bill. Every one. Hope this idea sounds good!
Roger Sowell says (at 1:41pm on 7/10/11) “As bad as this is, it seems better than the fiasco that California has with un-elected state agencies (primarily the Air Resources Board) forcing a cap-and-trade regulation on the state, rather than a carbon tax.”…..
Roger I also happen to live in CA and I agree with you that it is unlikely that CA’s version of cap and trade (which was a legislative bill (AB32) signed off by our former Governor (Arnold S.) will be changed much if at all anytime soon. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) was given the legislative authority to develop and implement the details of AB32. CARB was recently sued over the cap and trade plan – the courts said that they have to review alternative means to meet the goals of AB 32 (reduce CA’s greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050). Last week, or so, the legal process said that CARB can move forward with their cap and trade development work while they continue to review alternatives to cap and trade- i.e. a tax CO2.
As you know we have a separate legislative mandate to have 33% of our electrical generation come from Renewable sources by 2020- we don’t get to count our large hydro or nuclear generation when we do the accounting by the way. A former chief of staff at the CPUC warned us that it will cost us about $200.00/MMTCO2 in 2020 to move from the 20%RES to the 33%RES. (http://www.sacbee.com/2010/08/13/2955810/state-should-look-before-it-leaps.html#none) CARB noted in a report last year (6/3/2010) that “The cost-effectiveness of the proposal is estimated to be about $200/MMTCO2E in 2020. (page ES-3)” So by my math ($200/23= 8.7) we are going to be paying 800% more for a ton of CO2 then the folks down under.
In the near term I found out from PG&E today that yes they really did drop the price of my Tier 1,2,and 3 usage for a kwh during off peak times. I called PG&E with a question on my yearly True up bill- yes we pay our bill yearly as we have a 6.12 kw PV system, and a time of use net meter with PG&E , and that is how billing works when you have PV. The off peak price drop is a good thing for my wallet. Unfortunately they reduced my baseline quantity (actually they are cutting everyone’s baseline quantities by 10%) so I am not sure yet if I will be paying more of less for my monthly electrical usage. And yes, the cost for electrical energy is a bit high here in CA- Average price for an E-1 rate payer is currently $.18581 for PG&E customers. On the bright side of things if you happen to use a lot of electricity (Tier 4 and 5) and have an E-1 rate schedule your marginal price went down from .40 kwh to $.3418. For those interested in PG&E’s current and historical electrical prices the web link is here- http://www.pge.com/nots/rates/tariffs/electric.shtml#RESELEC
> Shooting camels lowers CO2:
> http://tinyurl.com/5vunn7q
Oops – should have said methane instead of CO2.
I can’t even watch ‘Home and Away’ on TV here in the UK these days without having the Oz green message/brain washing forced upon me. I dread to think what kids are taught in schools down under.
Bruckner8 : no – that’s the whole point. The PM stood up before the last election, on TV and hand-on-heart said ‘there will be no carbon tax under the government I lead’. And so she got returned to office, albeit with a minority coalition cobbled together with Greens and Independents. Had she confirmed a carbon tax as part of the plan, there is no way she would have been returned. As it was, the opposition fell short by as little as a couple of thousand votes. There was only 1 politician in the house of representatives that campaigned on a carbon tax platform.
It doesn’t end there. For what must be the first time in history – we have a government proposing a tax that will cost $4b more to implement than it takes in for the first couple of years. Can you imagine if Obama got up, an announced a new wealth redistribution tax that will cost more money than it brings in? They can’t even manage and old-fashioned tax-grab properly. Their utter incompetence, lying and deception has create a red-hot anger out in the electorate. They are certain to be booted from office, and the legislation either repealed or substantially watered down. Yet they push ahead anyway. Why? Time will tell. Is it incompetence, vanity or back door deals? Corruption seems the only likely answer yet at the same time seems remote because of the naivety of the policies.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kUTLUC1ve8&version=3&hl=en_US%5D
http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=coal-australian&months=60
Coal, Australian thermal coal Daily Price 122.45 usd/metric tonne
“Complete combustion of 1 short ton (2,000 pounds) of this coal will generate about 5,720 pounds (2.86 short tons) of carbon dioxide.”
CO tax is 23 aus/ ton co2. aw – i bet they could have doubled the cost of coal and nobody would have done anything but mutter under his breath and make an occasional rude comment if he thought it safe.
that’s a world class smash & grab! oz got pwn3d by the mungrels.
Safari time, Aussies. Get Crocodile Dundee and go hunting. Very good varmint picking in your capital.
Conniving politicians always find ways to separate the productive members of society from their earnings: click
An indication of the money involved in the tax. Quantas alone ~$ 125 million in 2013…
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/11/idUSWNAS256920110711
Can you just begin to get a handle on the quantity of new tax money in the hands of the government and the wild spending on new programs to result? Do you think there is any opportunity for graft, corruption, skimming, fraud, abuse or cheating that could possibly result?
Shirley and others, Australians like to have pride in their country, we like to be known as a laid back gregarious mob, love our weekends, love our football and any other sport to either play and watch. Politically we are also laid back, know what we like and what we don’t like. We hate paying tax and relied upon looking after each other, mateship to do the right thing rather than get government involved. But slowly things have changed, we welcomed other cultures, endured their imported vendetta’s but hoped that the Australian “she’ll be right mate” attitude would suffice in changing the worst of those cultures and attitudes, our media was silenced, it had to stick to a politically correct (neutral) stance, meanwhile in our cities there were people teaching hate as a religion, and our universities were quietly taken over and fostered dissent, but only against authority and a cringe against our pride and culture – the left became the self appointed intelligent elite sipping a red wine in comfortable armchairs. How else can we explain how we have arrived at where we are – yes we were asleep at the wheel, just like the whole world of science has been asleep at the wheel of the good governance of science, lost in the name of political agenda. And it is hard to reclaim that honesty and purpose.
Good letter to the editor, I send heaps, most are published. I thought Chris Huhn was under
police investigation regarding speeding fines? We had a judge who did that and lied saying the person driving his car wasn’t him- she was already dead. He was jailed for a S70 fine. How come
Canada, the US of A and China will not be renewing their Kyoto agreement 2012. Wind turbines
I thought UK was trying to push some on Ireland? Maybe we anti-AGW should print T-Shirts
with a pile of anthracite burning with the catch phrase ‘Burn baby – burn!’ LOL
The Australian political scene is much more complicated and sofisticated than many overseas commentators imagine.
Julia Gillard is a surpurb political negotiator.
She has sewn together sufficent parliamentary votes so that she is still in power after a year of walking on the high wire without any safety net.
Now imagine yourself waking up this morning and finding that you are still the leader of your country, that both you and your party are very, very unpopular with voters and that this is your one and only opportunity to remain prime minister for at least until you go to bed tonight.
She is not a socialist, an AGW supporter or any other type of issm, despite what here beliefs may have been when she was young.
She is a desperate survivor and a surpurb negiator.
She faces an opposition leader who has few of her skills but has a political killer instinct of the highest order.
Tony Abbott is attacking Julia Gillard in her heartland in the workshops of the country where workers rightly fear for their jobs – not necessarily at the outset of this appearently mild tax imposition but throught the certain knowledge that it is designed to grow and grow until their carbon dioxide emitting factories are shut down.
Julie is attempting to do the least damage to the economy that she can, while keeping the support of the Greens. If she survives until the next election, then she hopes the voters will reject both the Greens and tony Abbott’s conservative opposition and get a majority in her own right.
This desperate plan may well not succeed, but it seems to her to be the best of a very few unpalatable alternatives.
Tony Abbott is not a true believer.
He is forced to act that way because of the complex political cum media scene.
He is not a good actor.
But he is a surpurb political attack machine.
Puting apart the high cost of the damage being inflicted on our economy, this is a fascinating fight for a humble observer.
(Appologies for typing & spelling – in haste)
AussieDan: Just Google the Australian Fabian Society (Socialists) Gillard, Swan and Wong are
paid up members, then look at their beliefs. She is a socialist. In my book the difference between
socialism and communism is that a country can vote their socialist governments out.
It won’t matter – I think this will result in the demise of the Australian Labor Party (never did like that they dropped the U).
Opinion seems to be running at about 83% opposed – no government can survive this.
The Greens leader says he wants to shut down the coal industry while the coal miner’s union leader says this tax is a non-issue.
I also predict major falls in union membership whilst the leadership remains supportive of the party line.
My election prediction:-
:- no Labor members in WA and NT – mining and cattle trade ban.
:- maybe K Rudd and W Swan retain seats in Qld – no ALP member north of Brisbane – coal mining and cattle ban.
:- NSW, Vic and SA – bigger anti Govt swings than NSW state election – betrayal and spin.
:- Tas. – no discernable difference.
Back in the good old days of Louis XVI, the French had a window tax, which resulted in a lot of unhealthy windowless buildings. Of course, this helped reduce energy waste, as more heat was retained internally.
I am not sure if this is goofier than Australia’s current carbon tax proposals, but it must be getting close. Perhaps a window tax will come as part of their Phase 2 proposals for tackling a problem which does not exist.