Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
You likely didn’t realize that the First Rule for the Carbon Tax Club is … nobody talks about the Carbon Tax Club.
And not only that … it could cost the poor Aussies big bucks if they say what I just said about the Carbon Tax Club.
Gotta love totalitarianism in the service of national eco-themed suicide …
From Miranda Devine’s blog at the Australian Telegraph (emphasis mine):
THE whitewash begins. Now that the carbon tax has passed through federal parliament, the government’s clean-up brigade is getting into the swing by trying to erase any dissent against the jobs-destroying legislation.
On cue comes the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which this week issued warnings to businesses that they will face whopping fines of up to $1.1m if they blame the carbon tax for price rises.
It says it has been “directed by the Australian government to undertake a compliance and enforcement role in relation to claims made about the impact of a carbon price.”
Businesses are not even allowed to throw special carbon tax sales promotions before the tax arrives on July 1.
“Beat the Carbon Tax – Buy Now” or “Buy now before the carbon tax bites” are sales pitches that are verboten. Or at least, as the ACCC puts it, “you should be very cautious about making these types of claims”.
There will be 23 carbon cops roaming the streets doing snap audits of businesses that “choose to link your price increases to a carbon price”.
Instead, the ACCC suggests you tell customers you’ve raised prices because “the overall cost of running (your) business has increased”.
So if some Australian business prints up this post, and tapes it to his window … he can be fined up to one megabuck. A million dollar crime.
Eco-terrorism at its finest, where Australia now has criminalized free speech … carbon. A word to conjure with, the name that cannot be spoken.
w.
PS—I think we should have a contest for the best sign within the Aussie law. To open the bidding, I suggest that Australian businesses post a big sign inside their stores that says:
WE ARE NOT ALLOWED TO SAY THAT
THE CARBON TAX IS RESPONSIBLE
FOR OUR PRICE INCREASES.
Sincerely,
The Management
Bulldust says:
November 17, 2011 at 2:10 pm
If one visits the ACCC site one can see that Miranda Devine has grossly misrepresented the position of the organisation. The Chairman was quite clear about the organisations’s position in his presentation, which is no different than it has been in the past about any other misleading advertising:
http://www.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/1017300/fromItemId/142
“Business costs increase all the time, and businesses are free to set their own prices. However, if a business chooses to raise their prices they should not misrepresent this as a result of the carbon price when it is not the case.”
“This is not new – the message is simple: if you are going to make a claim, you need to make sure it is right.”
I would suggest that Ms Devine has reading comprehension difficulties, or she is being deliberately misleading. The full guidance brochure can be found here, but the Chairman’s statements sum it up neatly:
http://www.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/1017091
My BS meter went off immediately reading this story… always good to check the source first folks.
Thanks, Bulldust. While you are correct in theory, in reality there’s no way to do what the ACCC suggests. They say that if you want to say that the increase is due to increased carbon costs, you have to get a statement from your supplier that verifies that their increase is due to increased carbon costs.
However, a moment’s thought reveals the problem with that. If a man selling bread wants to make a statement about carbon, he has to get a statement from his baker. For his baker to make that statement, he has to get a statement from his miller, and his electricity supplier, and the man who sells petrol for his bread trucks, and the truck manufacturers where he buys the trucks, and for the increases in phone costs and every other cost.
And each of those, in an endless loop, all have to get statements from the other one. Try this on for size.
If I drive a Ford truck and I sell materials to Ford that they make cars with, they can’t make a statement about carbon without supporting carbon evidence from their suppliers … including me. But I can’t say how much my carbon costs have gone up without the carbon statement from Ford. Cute, huh?
The net results of this chilling regulation will be:
1. The actual costs due to the carbon tax will be underestimated at the business end. Since you can get fined up to a million dollars for exaggeration, every single estimate of the cost will be on the low side. This will no doubt be used to make the claim that the costs are minimal. They are not.
2. Many people will just say “sorry, I don’t have an estimate”, because a) it’s far too much work and hassle to contact every one of their suppliers and ask if they have an estimate, and b) you can get fined if you overestimate. Most folks will wisely say nothing … chilling. Unfortunately, when a supplier says that they have no estimate, what is the retailer to do? He is muzzled, he can’t say anything, because of another man’s inaction.
3. Any tax on energy, direct or indirect, is a much larger drag on the economy than a tax on a finished product. Simple economics, taxing the inputs to a manufacturing process is a greater burden on the economy than the same tax on a finished product. See my discussion in “Firing up the economy, literally“.
So while you are correct in saying this is framed by the Govt as a “truth in advertising” issue, Bulldust, in reality it is nothing of the sort. It is designed specifically to make it very hard to say anything about carbon, with draconian fines. The net result is guaranteed to be a suppression of comment on the carbon issue. I see no reason to conclude that it is accidental that the regulations will have a chilling effect. The regulations have made it a practical impossibility for a businessman to determine the effect of CO2 on the business.
w.
PS—Beyond that, what kind of nanny state is it that tries to keep shopkeepers from making ludicrous claims? Why can’t they say what they want about carbon? At the end of the day the market rules, if they jack their prices too far they’ll lose customers. Who is hurt if they say “20% price rise due to carbon” instead of “20% price rise due to our kids going to college” or “20% price rise due to general business conditions” or “20% price rise due astrological influences”?
Me, I think the Australian consumers are smart enough to look at a sign saying “20% price increase due to carbon tax” and say “I’ll shop next door, they raised their prices 3%”.
So truly … what is the harm to the consumer? For me, that’s government gone mad.
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Any they keep sending those carbon ships (full of coal) to Asia…
Less than 1/3 of Australians would re-elect Gillard.
We had a compensation package here in Ontario after our electricity prices went up 18%. The compensation in the form of a clean energy rebate (they ARE clever aren’t they) was 10% and came in the form of a cheque just before an election.
Dear Customer, we are not… repeat not… raising our prices due to the new carbon tax.
We are, unfortunately, raising prices due to the rising cost of everything.
The Management.
p.s. Please join us for our “Don’t hold your breath”… “sale”. If you see our staff saying “sale” using the air-quotes gesture… that’s because it’s not really a sale, but in fact a brief period of lower prices
How about:
My prices have gone up because our government is trying to lower the earth’s temperature by 0.0006 Degrees Celsius.
No mention of a carbon tax 🙂
If every business would simple double it’s prices and say that the “cost of doing business has gone up” without reference to the reason, the public will get the idea soon enough. But everybody has to do it and not undercut each other. It’s a variation on the old union “sick-out” ploy to make management’s shenanigans cost them dearly.
I gotta think this could be challenged in court.
I would urge all persons to tell the truth. If the tax caused you to raise your price say so. It cannot in any logical trial be illegal to tell the truth. Swearing to tell the truth is the basis of all civil laws.
By the way I would think Australia has a law the makes it illegal to lie to a law enforcement officer so if you are asked that question by an enforcement officer what should you say?
Bastiat noted the problem of having do to what is moral and what is legal long ago. Do what is moral.
I thought 1984 was supposed to be a cautionary tale…
Not an instruction manual!
Dear customers,
The government says we must raise our prices but we are not allowed to tell you why under threat of severe fines. We suggest you ask them why yourselves.
Sincerely,
The management
Lord Monckton is proving to be more and more correct with his treatment of the greens. Remember that we skeptics are the enemy. I sincerely believe we are approaching WWIII with a threshold of no escape rapidly approaching and criminals, scoundrels & morons are steering the ships into the iceberg after watching the Titanic sink. The glimmer of hope I have for the near future is growing terribly dim.
Perhaps I need a rum and coke.
Just post what they suggested
“raised prices because the overall cost of running the business has increased”
and promote “clean energy future” sales
The real shame will lie in the months and years ahead. In BC we also have an ever increasing “Carbon Tax” and the funds go, like any good slush fund, to promote things “green”. Like a huge chunk of money to send kids to school to study ways of stopping BC from moving forward. It’s worse than shooting ones self in the head. We load the pistol, give it to our kids and have them do it. They have little choice because thats why they went to school !
Customer: Why is the price higher than last week?
Business: What price, it isn’t higher.
Customer: Yes it is look at this add from last week.
Business: Oh that was a printing error.
Customer: You mean it has nothing to do with the new Carbon Tax?
Business: What tax, its just the cost of doing business.
Customer: Silly me I’ll take it!
Our prices have recently increased due to Government mandated input costs of a trace gas essential to life on earth. Please direct complaints to…………
h/t to the dailybayonet.com
PS- I almost forgot- my coke supply is pre-WWF (Worthless & Wretched Fund) save the polar bear non-sense. Coke is off my grocery list until they can that garbage.
The ACCC helpfully suggests you can just tell your customers you’ve raised prices because “the overall cost of running (your) business has increased”.
It’s all very Orwellian. It’s the tax whose name cannot be spoken.
Communo-Fascism. Which is where all of this has always been aimed, as many have noted here and elsewhere. Did anyone seriously doubt that political action based on lies would result in suppression of basic freedoms? Didn’t the 10-10 video reveal the Warmists ultimate agenda? Doesn’t socialism always end in murder?
“…I must say that I think we owe [Stalin] a debt of gratitude! For the wonderful example he has given the whole world of the axiomatic truth that Communism always leads to dictatorship.” –CG Jung Speaking, pg 131
Socialist regimes killed over 120 million in the 20th Century–twenty Holocausts. Would any sane person ask for another Socialist experiment?
reference: http://www.sciforums.com/The-socialist-communist-death-toll-so-far-t-25006.html
You voted them in…..
You need to add a disclaimer to the bottom of the sign that says
“So we aren’t saying that our prices are increasing because of the Carbon Tax …. really.”
If you have that disclaimer they can’t fine you.
Our government made the same claims with the cap-and-trade proposal. The money collected would be used by the government to provide more services to the people. We should be happy to be taxed!
This is horrifyng stuff. It’s bureaucracy gone mad with power. We are going to have to blame it all on the Greens and make sure they never have such power in our Parliament ever again. Gillard is a dead duck.
Willis says: “……. Australia now has criminalized free speech” Strange to think it wasn’t so many years ago that Australia had criminals with free speech.
“pre xxxxxx xxx sale”
“Our prices have increased due to the xxxxxx xxx”
Insofar as there is no shortage of coal in Australia, I suggest those companies involved in that industry from miners to final users package the fine coal dust they have to deal with. Use clear glass containers and label it as sequestered carbon. Every retail sale should come with one of the containers with advice to keep it and pass it on like a family heirloom. Should they not wish to keep it, I’m sure the inventive Aussies can think of other possibilities for its disposal.
This plan keeps the issue constantly displayed while being supportive about the evil government’s revenue raising non-climate impacting tax that no way no how causes costs to increase. I’m sorry, did I write ‘evil’? I’m probably not allowed to say that either. Where’s my thesaurus? Looking for something better now . . .
Pricing notice:
(This page intentionally left blank.)
Dear Customer,
Under threat of a $1.1 million dollar fine from the government we are not aloud to say that recent price increases are due to the carbon tax.
So it is purely coincidence that our price rise occured when the carbon tax came into force. If you are unhappy with the recent price increase please email julia.gillard@Peter Mullans.gov.au.
Yours Sincerely,
Management.
I’m already advising clients that the cost of preparing tax returns and financial reports will increase because of the costs imposed by this tax on plant food. Electricity, stationery, software support – everything will have an increase and it will be passed on to every business and then to the end users – the consumers,
The net 20 cents per week compensation that the idiot government crows about ignores most of the the real cost increases.
And the impact on the weather – SFA!