The question is, how long will this last, and how long will the public tolerate these two kissy faced politicians?
The vote in the lower house, which was applauded by Labor MPs and spectators in the public gallery, was a crucial test for the government, given its wafer-thin majority. The bills will now go the Senate for debate but will pass comfortably with help from the Greens, probably next month.
After the vote, Prime Minister Julia Gillard embraced Climate Change Minister Greg Combet, who had the difficult job of steering the policy, and even exchanged a peck on the cheek with Foreign Affairs Minister Kevin Rudd, whose reported ambitions to retake the leadership are proving a headache for the Prime Minister.
The passage of the bills are a crucial victory for Ms Gillard, whose popularity has fallen steadily since last year.
Under the legislation, about 500 of the biggest carbon-emitting companies in Australia will pay a price for each tonne of carbon. Most of the biggest emitters are electricity generating firms, mining companies and heavy industry manufacturers.
To compensate households, the government is cutting income taxes and boosting payments such as pensions and other benefits, as well as offering various lump sum payments.
The average household is expected to pay about $9.90 a week in extra living costs, including $3.30 on electricity.
However this will be offset by an estimated $10.10 in extra benefits and tax breaks. The Australian scheme will cover about 60 per cent of Australia’s emissions, making it the most broad-based in the world.
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No matter what one may say or believe, this carbon tax will not decrease atmospheric CO2 by one single ppm. Most probably, the buraucratic machinery that this tax needs to make it work will emit more carbon dioxide than it saves, since we will still need to switch on the lights no matter what Gillard imposes. So the CO2 I was emitting yesterday wil still be emitted tomorrow. Add to that the additional CO2 that will be produced by the new offices that this new tax needs to be administered. The net effect will be a little bit more CO2 being emitted than before the tax was introduced.
There’s an old WWII song, Bless Em All, that comes to mind. The Brits and Aussies were well known to change the “bless” to another word more fitting for pub sing-a-longs and more reflective of what they really thought about their officers.
In the end, really, when the Left confiscates your property it’s just another tax. I understand Labor has sworn to defend it after they get pummelled in the next elections. If you’ve not divested of any investments in Australia, this morning would be a great time.
bulldust @ur momisugly 1:04 a.m.
Spot on, mate!
Spector says:
October 12, 2011 at 1:11 am
Further to your figures, 87% of Australians voted for candidates who said they opposed the Carbon Tax. Every Labor candidate lied.
Never mind great white sharks , look out for carbon sharks around the Australia cost line looking to make a real killing out of this .
Commiseration to you Aussies. A double whammy of disasters in just a few days.
Still you can always emigrate to the democratic island state of Tuvalu, whose future is now assured thanks to the foresighted policy of the Australian Government. They may even play underwater rugby there also.
And yet, there are still people here in Australia who believe the CO2 molecule can AMPLIFY “heating”…*sigh*…I despair!
Julia said the ALP wanted to set a lead in the world by introducing this carbon tax. I suspect she was hoping to lead the world in reducing CO2 emissions, however I expect the lead will be in wrecking the economy.
Chris Watson says:
October 12, 2011 at 1:28 am
It’s a bad policy, nevertheless your commentors shouldn’t be so hysterical. It won’t lead to economic catastrophe, and emotive hyperbole is unmanly and un-Australian!
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No Chris, that wasn’t “Commentators” being hysterical………. What you heard was criticism of Labor and Labor Party policy and a Pledge by the leader of the Opposition (alternative government)……. There are no hysterics in our parliament mate….. Just a very serious and sober man making a clear statement of fact.
Three things. A carbon tax will make Australia uncompetative. CO2 is not pollution. And Julia Gillard promised before the last election that. “There will be no Carbon Tax under a Government I lead.”
…..This is a tax that was based on an exaggeration and implemented by a lie…. and it won’t make a single difference to the temperature of the globe.
EH? How does this work?
Co2 emitters are taxed on some dreamed up scale of sins. They, of course, pass on the tax to their consumers. Industrial and commercial consumers pay the increased bills and, naturally, pass on the tax to the consumers of their products and services
The Government, the tax raiser, repays the domestic, (household), consumer slightly more than the notional rise in their bills.. So far, expensive to administer and pretty pointless.
Now comes the socially inept part: exporting industries are faced with an immediate rise in their input costs, costs that are not relevant to the global market, so either they reduce their wage bills or become globally inefficient. There is no other option, Australia’s socialist government have voted their workforce lower wages and/or higher unemployment.
Australian industry would be well advised to make this point at every opportunity.
The average household is expected to pay about $9.90 a week in extra living costs, including $3.30 on electricity.
However this will be offset by an estimated $10.10 in extra benefits and tax breaks.
Any one else see a little problem with the math here…? In addition to lost revenue, Australia can now expect a flight of capital to SE Asia.
To all my (soon to be) poor Australian friends.
Make sure you ask your representative which way they voted, shame them and make sure they don’t get to represent you again.
A website showing who voted which way might be useful.. Just a thought
Huh?
My deepest sympathy to our Aussie WUWT mates. Please continue to visit and comment as long as you can still afford to do so.
Here’s an eye-popper, jaw-dropper, mega-whopper:
“The average household is expected to pay about $9.90 a week in extra living costs, including $3.30 on electricity.
However this will be offset by an estimated $10.10 in extra benefits and tax breaks.”
C’mon! The public will get more money after the government touches the money both coming and going!?! This is a moneymaker for the public?!?
It’s a safe bet that the “expected” $9.90 will be much higher and the “estimated” $10.10 will be much, much lower.
It makes NZ’s emissions trading scam look good. Our government keeps saying they have aspirations for our economy to catch up with Australia’s, might just happen now.
If you were a Federal Government advisor clever with thoughts and words, how would you work your way around these?
Ownership of Australia’s minerals, with some exceptions for royal and radioactive fissile metals, is vested in the Crown in the power of the States. Thus, for example, Victoria owns its coal.
The ownership of minerals in Australia is subject to the primary maxim “Cuius est solum eius est usque ad coelum et ad inferos”, meaning “to whomsoever the soil belongs, he owns also to the sky and to the depths”.
Carbon dioxide is a mineral. Indeed, bottled water with CO2 is named “mineral water” by some.
If Victoria’s coal becomes CO2 or other CO2 goes into the sky, then we have to define ownership. That which exists under or over Victoria, belongs to Victoria.
Section 114 of the Constitution says in its latter part “.. nor shall the Commonwealth impose any tax on property of any kind belonging to a State”.
However, section 51 xxxi notes that the Commonwealth has certain powers for “The acquisition of property on just terms from any State or person for any purpose in respect of which the Parliament has power to make laws”. We have not seen much press about compensation in these Constitutional terms.
Next, there is a general Constitutional principle that if Commonwealth and State law is in conflict, the former shall prevail.
Finally, section 55 notes that “Laws imposing taxation shall deal only with the imposition of taxation, and any provision therein dealing with any other matter shall be of no effect”.
Can a carbon tax be legislatively mixed up with carbon trading schemes?
So, what we are seeing with that enormous bundle of paper named the Carbon Tax Act has so many diverse implications that some Constitutional lawyers are bound to benefit.
As expressed above, the “Carbon Tax” so named is of doubtful legality, ab initio, and there are many points of clarification needed.
“Climate Change” is only a front. It’s all about raising revenue to get back the billions wasted by the current government. Deep down the opposition is happy about the current government doing the dirty work as the Carbon Tax revenue should see them inherit a surplus when they take over 2013.
The tax on power stations is suppose to force them to move to alternate green power plants. I dread to think how high the Carbon Tax needs to go to make these alternate green power plants viable.
Ive never ever fealt so gutted as i am now. We had a good country, with great resources, and a great living standard.
Never have I seen a bunch of individuals so desperate for power, that they are prepared to really hurt their fellow country men
This tax will have 0 effect on climate, (and that is on the assumption that CO2 was having a major impact on climate change – which it isnt!).
Recently the state of NSW had an election where the Labor party was swept from power so decisively that they didnt even have enough members to form a shadow cabinet. A number had to take multiple portfolio’s.
Over 75% of the Australian people realise two simple things.
1)Introducing this tax will have no effect on the climate.
2)75% of Australians dont want this tax.
Last I looked this was still a democracy and the next election cannot come soon enough! I can assure you that there are a massive number of very angry Australians!
Why the socialists in EU loved the carbon tax, because they’re socialists and any new tax always leads to more taxes of the same type.
It’s always starts with: It’s only for the biggest polluters trick.
Now they even tax biofuel like biogas, the supposedly clean green stuff.
The whole population of farmers in EU is wholly dependent on subsidies to make a full time living only because of all the taxes. First it was to reduce evil diesel, then evil clean diesel, evil petrol 98 oct, then evil clean petrol lead free, then evil green diesel and evil green petrol, then biofuel E85 and now evil biogas. And lol evil electricity for them nutty farmers that gone hybrid, because, well farmers belong to the agriculture industry and all industries electricity use is evil and has to be taxed.
And of course, to be safe, they tax the tax with energy tax and value added tax on top of everything.
So, essentially, when the tax income is reduced from one source a new source is tapped into, well, actually that is the past, today they tap into the new source pretty much right away long before the old source is tapped out, after all keeping the population dependent on subsidies are very expensive, especially since all the new green clean tech companies are wholly dependent on subsidies as well, and after all all the old evil corporations are still dependent on the old subsidies they got that was to mitigate that first new tax what with the chapter eleven issues.
Who said socialism wasn’t progressive? :p
A Pyrrhic victory for the watermelons.
In Australia there is a poignant saying that originally relates to the Aborigines’ situation: “Poor Fellow, My Country.”
As an Australian, I am taking comfort that while the legislation is a victory in battle for the warmists, in reality they have lost the war (and they know it). It will be repealed in 12 to 24 months, possibly at great cost due to the ‘poison pill’ structuring of the new laws. The repealing of the act will parallel other demises of the bizarre catastrophic man-made global warming cult. Then it will be no more.
It has been a great comfort for me to have found WUWT and its readers. Sincere regards and now I’m off (but back reading soon) to Oz’s great sceptical firebrand (who should be snapped up by the Liberal Party for parliament), Jo Nova. I’m going to put in my 2 cents that Tony Abbott (opposition leader) should call a Royal Commission into global warming as part of the process of dismantling the mad legislation of the Gillard Labor government. I’m sure you have an equivalent in the USA – is it a ‘Congressional Hearing’? – an independent judicial hearing into a matter of contention.
To you folks in Australia, this reminds me just too damned much of the U.S. presidential election in 1964.
The “Liberals” told us: “If you vote for Goldwater, we’ll be in a war on the Asian land mass in two years!”
I voted for Goldwater anyway, and damned if we didn’t wind up in a war on the Asian land mass less than two years later.
Democracy. The ancient Greek word meaning: “How the hell did we get in this mess?”
I always thought that Aussies were pragmatic, sensible grafters. Here in the UK we have had droves of people emigrating to Australia for just that reason, work hard, get on. But my opinion has been altered by events, this is a classic scam , and the population will have to take to the streets to get this “mad woman” and her colleagues off their backs. Shame really , they had been doing so well and were set to clean up in the coming Economic downturn. My thoughts are with you.
I believe an old European tradition ought to be imported by Aussies – namely, “OFF with their heads!” regicide.
A curious thing strikes me about strong socialistic interferance with the markets, such as the carbon tax, is that is tends to happen only in either the very poor, or the very richest, countries.
Richard Pipes of Harvard states that communism has only ever been able to gain power in countries which are either too poor and/or disrupted by war to properly resist it. I think the same happens at the other end of the spectrum, the only countries where the strongest ‘green’ or socialistic policies are put in place are the very richest. Australia is in a mining boom, so the politicians are able to get a carbon tax through partly because we are so well off as to be blind to the true costs of such a tax (and the fact that the academic-bureaucratic complex has to try and transfer some of the nation’s riches to itself, one way or another).
The middle-off countries don’t bother with extreme forms or socialism because the politicians can’t so easily swindle off the (lack of ) profits, and the poorer countries dont have any profits left over to be siphoned off.