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 valued customer;
Due to the threat of being fined over one million dollars by our government we have been forced to increase our insurance coverage. We regret our cost increase but know who is really to blame.
At the Texas Republican State Convention in Dallas in 2008, one of our state-wide elected officials gave a speech that included a line something like this:
“We don’t need Washington to tell us how to run our economy, and we don’t need Washington to tell us how to run our energy. And we don’t need Washington to tell us about the Second Amendment: it’s so we can protect ourselves from them!”
I later talked to the individual’s campaign manager. He said that kind of remark would have given him “heart burn” and would neither confirm nor deny it.
But here are a couple of radio ads for the 2010 election by our Land Commissioner, Jerry Patterson:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOuMvSswPkM
Jerry won with 61.66%.
Just imagine living in a place where you are a CITIZEN and not a subject (sort of like a serf).
I feel the pain of my Auzzie Brothers and Sisters. And they are helpless.
Regards,
Steamboat Jack (Jon Jewett’s evil twin)
Bulldust says: November 17, 2011 at 2:10 pm
——————————————
2/3’s Of the Australian voting public no longer trust anything that comes out of the federal government and its agencies. The illegitimate Gillard/Brown government has so corrupted the Public Service to the point where any government report simply cannot be believed. We’re still waiting to see the Treasury model for the Gillard’s claim that the CARBON (DIOXIDE) TAX will have minimal impact on the citizens. Independent modelling suggests a significant impact … why is the government and treasury so afraid to release their documents? Why did the government allocate 2 weeks parliamentary debate on the CARBON (DIOXIDE) TAX and then gag it after a few days so preventing the Opposition from engaging them in debate? Why did they refuse permission to table scientific evidence not supportive of the CAGW Scare in parliament? … these peer-reviewed papers included the work of Mann!
We have seen the evil hand of socialism at work in Australia and it is terrifying for the legacy that it will foister on future generations … energy deprived, unemployment, huge national debt, no free speech, etc. Music to the ears of the socialist.
Does Australia have “Guides for Politicians” that forbid misleading statements?
One doesn’t have to give a reason, publish a price list with a calendar:
Jan 1, 2012 to June 30, 2012 – $x.xx
July 1, 2012 to December 31, 2012 – $y.yy
OR (in their face)
I’ve had to raise my prices by double the carbon tax because it’s foolish to believe my volume of business won’t drop as your income drops and I have constant outflow due to bank loans, depreciation, etc.
Dear customer,
“Our prices have increased because Julia Gillard broke her promise”.
The world is going mad!
Why the heck did Australia bother to fight in WWII against Germany? They could have saved themselves a lot of the trouble by surrendering sixty five years ago.
What is really painful is there are people who will view this muzzling as a “Good Thing”
All good fun guys but one of the primary reasons the ACCC is there is to make sure business are not making false claims to consumers about their products. If you can truly show how the carbon tax was responsible for the price change then you would have nothing to fear. Mind you this is where it will get a little grey – because only the 500 largest emitters will actually pay the carbon tax, the rest of us will feel that impact indirectly through costs being passed on down thie line so for 99.5% of businesses it will be very very difficult to actually know/prove that the carbon tax and not some other upstream price change was responsible. The real core reason the ACCC will have been given this power is to catch people who put up their price opportunisitically and claim the carbon tax was responsible. Of course as we make rules more complicated we will get loopholes and false positives due to the complexity – the carbon tax is a very bad idea.
It’s time for much misfortune to come to anyone who dares to try and be a “carbon cop”! Make it so that no one in their right mind would attempt to go into a shop and look for any sign that might be construed as such.
[snip. Can’t have threats. ~dbs, mod.]
Around here, in the part of the world where I live, the costs of living have “sky-rocketed” these past few years. – And it is all for our own good.
It has been said, obviously by misguided people, that millions – no billions – or maybe even trillions, have been squandered on windmills, solar panels and other forms of “Sky Pie Renewable Energy Generators” (SPREGs). – But I know that that is not true, because our honest politicians are telling us the truth: – It is all due to naughty bankers who misguided the public in general and our politicians in particular into thinking we were all richer than we really were. – They (the bankers) let us overspend and the “only remedy – or political solution” for stopping overspending is to “raise product prizes” – i.e. tax hikes are for your own good. – It is no need for a misleading name for any tax that has the “dual” purpose of saving the economy as well as the planet.
You ungrateful Aussies you!
Well, I don’t want to fall foul of the Law now, do I?
Meanwhile in Blighty, a Labour shadow minister on the BBC states that climate change if not tackled will raise the temperature of the oceans by 2 degrees C.
PRICES HAVE GONE UP BECAUSE JULLIA LIED.
Dear customers.
Our prices have just increased by X.
We are sure you are wondering why this is but unfortunately, although the answer is indeed clear, simple, and straightforward, there is some difficulty in legally presenting to you those reasons.
There have been some rumours that this is due to the precise temporal correlation with those price increases of the entry into force of the CO2 tax introduced by the government of Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Wheras we are not legally allowed to confirm those rumours, there is also some difficulty in justifiably, and lawfully, denying them, inasmuch as the precise correlation between the those rumours communicated and the facts, insofar as they can be determined and demonstrated, would be such as to cause epistemological problems, of sufficient magnitude as to lay upon the logical and semantic resources of the English language a heavier burden than they can reasonably be expected to bear.
Happy Climate Fools Day
The Management
Bulldust says:
November 17, 2011 at 2:10 pm
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.
Latitude, Juliar Gillard did not win a majority; she LOST the last election in Australia.
Am I missing something? They have a carbon tax, but it cannot be indicated on the bills the company sends out. They pay a tax that is directly related to the business they do, so it only makes sense to indicate how much of the bill is carbon crap, I mean tax.
And it appears that the actual tax rate will be a secret so that the consumer will not be able to relate it to their increased costs. But, as one of the comments mentions above, the consumer is perfectly able to do the math and figure out what the tax% is from bill comparison.
The government believes that if you muzzle the dog, it will forget why it hates you.
Good stuff! Tell Jerry to run for President. I’d vote for him!
/Mr Lynn
Dear Customer: Our new higher prices will take your breath away.
higley7 says:
November 17, 2011 at 4:22 pm
They can indicate it on the bill but only to the extent that their supplier of every single material and service used by the company includes it on their bill. Since (AFAIK) there is no law saying you have to include carbon costs at any level of the game, the practical result will be that your estimate will almost assuredly be low.
However, if you give a more realistic estimate and the Carbon Cops don’t like the paperwork you have to back it up, you can be fined heavily. My prediction? Most businesses will not open themselves to the possibility of ruinous fines by saying anything about carbon at all.
Which, near as I can tell, is the intent of the regulation.
w.
I used to live in what would normally be termed a third-world African country. After the highly suspicious vote counting procedure in the then-recent presidential election called the announced outcome of the election (the president was relected) into serious dispute, guess what the first thing they did was? They made a decree announcing it was illegal to discuss the vote counting procedures, or to dispute the outcome of the election. Huzzah! Problem solved.
This announcement, whatever the nuance involved happens to be (I’m talking to you, bulldust), stinks too much of that situation. When a government thinks it can solve a problem by making it illegal to talk about it (and using it’s intimidating power in this way is, de facto, the same) then something has gone seriously awry. These are the actions of a Third World dictatorship, not the government of a free and open society in the Anglo tradition. They ought to be ashamed. If they can’t stand the heat of open debate and inquiry they need to resign because their actions are beneath the dignity of a free society. Free speech means you’re free to speak, right or wrong. It’s not the government’s place to determine what is acceptable public discourse.
Gal Julia Gillard, P.M. from Canberra
Does not like free speech, not on her Firma Terra.
Don’t mention the prices
The Carbon tax rises.
Obama and Julia. Transparency – Ha!
I agree with you Willis, Australia is certainly a nanny state to a degree. We have a bazillion petty regulations, many of which are never enforced. In truth the ACCC is almost completely toothless in any case … it is no threat to business. Our supermarket industry is heavily dominated by two main players in Australia (Woolworths and Coles) and they certainly wield that monopoly power. Yet the ACCC is about as effective at curbing their monopoly power as the UN is at creating world peace. I doubt they will be doing any serious prosecuting of fallacious CO2 tax price hike claims.
We went through a similar exercise when the Goods and Services Tax (GST) was introduced. Wholesales sales taxes (WST) were removed and a 10% GST introduced on final sales. I was running a small business at the time, and in our case the WST equated to approximately 10% of the final price anyway, so I didn’t adjust prices for the transition to the GST. There were similar warnings by the Government agencies at the time, that they would prosecute anyone found guilty of unwarranted price hikes. Not sure if anyone was ever held to account.
So yeah, is Australia more regulated than some countries? Agreed. But also less than others. We generally find a happy medium for the most part, and we are certainly a lot closer to the libertarian end of the spectrum than developed EU economies. As for the CO2 tax… it (and all the associated ancilliary legislation) needs to go. But I digress…
Willis, worse still … we have a 10% GST at the POS, Carbon (Dioxide) Tax is built in before that so we’re slugged an extra 10% tax on top of it … tax on tax.
I see a whole heap of BLACK BALLOON SALES !!!
(Aussies will understand)
The government believes it can fool people,the sad fact is,it can.See the true believers defending this government,they are protecting us from dodgy salesmen they cry,They are saving the grandchildren.
People actually believe it,they actually believe that politicians will be the saviour of mankind(Obama will lower the seas,Gillard will save us from really,really bad floods,droughts and fires,but not really bad floods,droughts and fires.),I have trouble getting my head around that.