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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Dear Customer
My price increases are not linked to the carbon tax.
They are a direct result of them.
Then Snip me then, you said this exact phrase to me before and sniped me, only later to let many more of my post be displayed here. And as I said before I support this site and what Mr.Watts is doing, so snip me already, But it’s funny that that will happen with this story here. Can you see the irony with that? But that’s up to you, you are the REPs here, but I will still visit here and support Anthony Watts. Another question, Is there someone else posting here using the screen name Me that is Pro AGW, because it isn’t this Me, and I’m sure you have the common sense to tell that?
REPLY: We can’t tell who is posting under “me”, and I suspect that the me@xxxxx.com email address is not real. A valid email address is required to post here, fan or not. Thanks – Anhtony
Fred 2 said
““I’m sure you agree that our sudden price increases have nothing whatsoever to do with the new carbon tax. However, we do promise to roll back this price rise the instant the carbon tax is repealed.”
Good one, I’d change the last sentence. “However, when we roll back this price when the tax is repealed, it will have nothing whatsoever to do with it.”
If you can’t say “Beat the Carbon Tax – Buy Now” could you say “Beat the Results of Juila Gillard’s Great Big Fat Lie about Taxing Carbon – Buy Now”
Just wondering . . .
“Our prices have not risen because of the carbon tax. (nudge nudge, wink wink)”
Bulldust says:
November 17, 2011 at 2:10 pm
If the Government wish to treat the expected increases in the same manner as all other price rises, why do we need ANOTHER group of enforcers just for this particular tax?
As the ACCC, as you rightly point out, can already investigate incorrect or false reasoning for price rises, let them do the same for the fallout from the carbon (dioxide) tax.
Ross Sheehy says:
November 17, 2011 at 2:03 pm
The Australian Consumer Law (formerly the Trade Practices Act) is very strict on misleading and deceptive conduct in trade or commerce (but not in political life). (my bold)
I would suggest this is one of the biggest issues we should be addressing – politicians lying in order to further their own agendas with no legal ramifications.
Our PM would not be in her current position if she were not a (backbiting, bent, bluffing, cheating, corrupt, crafty, crooked, cunning, deceitful, deceiving, deceptive, designing, disreputable, double-crossing, double-dealing, elusive, false, fraudulent, guileful, hoodwinking, mendacious, misleading, perfidious, recreant, shady, shifty, sinister, slippery*, sneaking, sneaky, swindling, traitorous, treacherous, tricky, two-faced, two-timing, unctuous, underhanded, unfair, unprincipled, unscrupulous, untrustworthy, villainous, wily) and, if you miss my meaning, DISHONEST.
It’s ‘The Tax that must not be Named’.
PS, it’s ok to snip my rant above towads you REPs here, but not my first comment on this story, and you can snip this comment too if you like.
Sale Prices Good through June 30th.
After July 1st and added PHAiTH Tax (Politicians Hot Air in the Head, pronounced Faith.)
The Phaith Tax is based on the religion of these politicians who believe in the CAGW Dogma and have made it a State Religion. All persons are required to tithe to their god.
Is the Australian news media silent on the $1.1 million dollar fine to suppress free speech?
Any fine is not acceptable. Free speech is the basis of democracy.
In the US, the constitution protects free speech, limiting the power of governments to hide and deceive the public. Is the US the only country that has constitutional protection for free speech?
Fanatics create their own paradigm, an emergency for which they justify propaganda, distortion of the facts, and in this case the science.
How about setting up independent voluntary audits of the increase in a businesses cost base? It would be a measure of increases in non-labour input costs and not sales prices.
Why not just post the regulation or statute itself
Latitude says:
November 17, 2011 at 1:04 pm
You voted them in…..
Well actually they didn’t.
Gillard, Labor called a General Election and LOST. Hers was not the largest party in the new Aussie Parliament and still isn’t.. Gillard however decided that the electorate don’t count and did a deal with the (Marxist) Greens to retain power (or at least what passes for power in Oz!).
That is what is called Democracy in Oz and also by left wingers! E.G Stalin, Mao, Chevez, etc.
EVERY business in Oz should post signs explaining that recent price increases ARE the result of the carbon tax. Let’s see how the green-shirt eco-fascists would deal with all those 1000’s of businesses.
Julia Gillard is seen by many Australians as having chronic problems with venality and mendacity. At the last election she promised that there would be no carbon tax under a government she led. She broke her promise simply to cling to power. At the next election the Australian voters are going to help this mendacious bovine to keep her promise by –
A. Ensuring that there is no carbon tax.
B. Ensuring that she is not leading the government.
How about a “Beat the ‘overall cost of doing business’ increase – buy now.
Spread the meme – any time anyone mentions the “overall cost of doing business”, perhaps informally OCDB, then it means carbon tax. A protest against the tax and the gagging. To paraphrase Shakespeare, “carrion by any other name would smell as rank”. The term doesn’t matter, as long as people know what it means.
Never going to happen. Under what legislation would you take her to court? I get really tired of those outside the US talking about ‘freedom of speech’. No such animal in the UK or Australia. You do what you are told or government employed thugs will kick, tear gas and rubber bullet you into submission.
What is even more hilarious is watching American thugs destroy the first amendment right against [the government] “interfering with the right to peaceably assemble”. Rubber bullets hitting you in the head may well prove beyond all reasonable doubt that fat burger munchin dick heads have no more idea what their constitution is supposed to prevent than the population they are busily killing.
Go team America.
It’s easy to conform with the requirements:
“Sorry, we have not been able to decrease our prices due to the Carbon Tax”…
Love Bureaucrats – they can never think in the negative sense…
I don’t know what depresses me most about the carbon tax.
It is based on junk science.
It will be bad for Australian industry.
It will raise prices.
It will give the Coalition* a better chance of winning the next election.
(For non-Australian, this is a coalition between the Liberal Party (conservative) and the National Party (conservative). Most of the horrible things that have happened to the world in the last fifty years (including the AGW scare) have been perpetrated by conservatives and the Big Money boys.)
“THE CARBON TAX IS NOT
RESPONSIBLE FOR OUR
PRICE INCREASES
…and PIGS CAN FLY”
I can almost see it now, the special committee announcing that they are going to solve the US budget crises with an Australian style carbon tax… what is all that smoke?
Exactly.
/Mr Lynn
The Australian Federal coalition government believed it had to include Greens into the mix to form a government. The Greens were elected by the Australian people because of the then state of political discord in the reigning government. This is a case of ….the Law of Unintended Consequences. The Aussies have paved the way: the way to a….a… Fascist state (see Wikipedia a state directed regulated economy for the benefit of the state) is to vote for Greens because one is incensed at the current government.
Lesson: NEVER vote for Greens under any circumstances as you will pay a heavier price than with the current crowd. Do not express your discontent by voting Green. Lesson learned the hard way. Thank you Australia: fore warned is fore armed.
If I had a business, I would put that sign up.
The Julia Gillard/Bob Brown carbon dioxide cops are coming to your neighbourhood. In yet more restrictive legislation from our Socialist/Green totalitarians in Canberra free speech will be further restricted.
I wonder if “truth” in advertising will apply to this kind of government snake oil we were subjected to a few months back? If so maybe we will see some retrospective prosecutions?
Also relevant, in UK escalating energy costs associated with Green energy and government red tape will cause closure the closure of a Rio Tinto aluminium smelter (Britain’s Green Suicide Gathering Pace):
So when Rio CEO Tom Albanese comes to announce the closure or abandonment of projects in Australia as a result of the Gillard/Brown carbon dioxide tax, he will be presented with the unenviable choice between making honest disclosure as required under the rules of both the Australian Stock Exchange and the London Stock Exchange, or lying about the true reason for the closures in order to stay out of an Australian jail.