On July 1st, the much hated Carbon Tax was implemented in Australia. Given that PM Gillard made a promise for no Carbon Tax on video at the beginning of her term in August 2010, then broke that promise, followed by a devil may care attitude, I can’t imagine anything that would enrage Australians as much as this.
Since there is so much coverage on this epic failure of the Gillard government, I thought I’d create a collage of coverage here. Follow the links to the appropriate essays and news articles. There’s also a speech at the end. First up is Jo Nova:
The-Tax-Whose-Name-Shall-Not-Be-Spoken Begins
Australians will pay $77 million per week in carbon taxes, while Europe with the 30 most green countries pays just one third of that, according to the Mineral Council of Australia.
“Australia’s carbon tax starts generating $77.3 million per week from today. New figures from the Centre for International Economics show that Europe’s emissions trading scheme — which covers 30 nations — has generated $23m per week so far in 2012.”
…
The ACCI points out the contradiction in sending a price signal but intimidating anyone who dares to say how big that signal is.
…
I loved this cartoon she posted to get around the ridiculous law that says shop owners can’t mention price increases due to the tax:
She says: Shop owners — do feel free to plagiarize ad lib. No copyright on those images.
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Carbon Tax Day and Labor slumps to 22% in Queensland
The carbon tax is now in operation and according to the latest Newspoll Labor will not win a seat in Queensland and is in danger of a wipeout Australia -wide if an election is held. A new Nielsen Poll also shows the carbon tax is poison for Labor in the electorate. It may not be true but the electorate will see every price rise as a result of the tax and it will be difficult to convince voters otherwise. As a political figure Julia Gillard was portrayed as an iron lady in the Thatcher mold when the carbon tax was introduced but she is now looking very much like Marie Antoinette riding in a tumbril to her fate.
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Voters desert carbon tax
PUBLIC support for the carbon price has plunged to a record low of 33 per cent, as Prime Minister Julia Gillard faces the fight of her political life to try to reconcile the public to her deeply unpopular tax.
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An utterly unserious government. An insult to our intelligence | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog
My God. This man is a minister in the Federal Government, trying to explain to Australian voters why they are paying a tax that won’t do anything the government claims, but will cost them jobs.
Would Menzies have behaved like this? John Howard? Bob Hawke?
Watch the singing and dancing from 1:20, and know that we are led by children.
The government has become a circus. Draw the curtain.
For those WUWT readers who don’t know:
Craig Anthony Emerson, Australian politician, has represented the House of Representatives seat of Rankin in Queensland for the Australian Labor Party since the 1998 federal election. He is the Minister for Trade in the Second Gillard Ministry.
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Here is a speech delivered by my friend David Archibald in Sydney yesterday at the Carbon Tax Rally:
Sydney Carbon Tax Rally Speech, 1st July 2012
Fellow Australians.
Plato said that “The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”
There is no doubt that we are ruled by evil men and evil women.
Evil men and evil women who are fully aware of the damage they are doing to our economy, and to the warp and weft of our society.
Evil men and evil women who seem to be in a manic rush to do as much damage as possible in the time left to them.
It is now universally accepted that the carbon tax is a very bad thing promoted by evil people.
The evil goes back a bit further than Julia Gillard’s broken promise and Kevin Rudd’s inane pronouncements.
This tax has been a long time coming, and has mixed paternity.
The last dark deed of the Howard Government was the passage of the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act in October 2007.
That act is the auditing basis of the carbon tax.
Mr Howard’s plan was to get the auditing system bedded down, then start taxing.
Labor’s carbon tax would be a couple of years behind schedule if Mr Howard had not laid the bureaucratic foundations for it.
The evil that men do lives after them, and in Mr Howard’s case that is a possible future in which Australia does not have a cement industry, a steel industry, oil refining, a multitude of other industries and, most importantly, a synthetic liquid fuels industry.
That is the part of the Howard legacy that many of us have toiled mightily to avoid.
That legacy is now with us, and we stare into the abyss of a continually shrinking economy.
The list of carbon tax plotters is a lot longer than Howard, Rudd and Gillard.
As a scientist, what saddens me is that most of our scientific institutions have failed in their duty to serve and protect the Australian people.
The CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology, the universities – have all failed us and sold their souls for a handful of silver.
Our academics have met our lowest expectations of them.
And then, there are the institutions that actively, and purposefully, and very treacherously, conspire against us.
Chief of which is the ABC, which has ceaselessly, and shamelessly, promoted the bizarre cult of carbon.
The ABC pays lip service to the norms of our society while doing their utmost to undermine it.
The ABC is well past its use by date.
It sees Australia through its perverted lens of self-loathing.
The next federal Government will inherit a lot of debt.
Sacrifices will have to be made to pay off that debt.
The easiest sacrifice to make will be to shut down the ABC.
The huge sum that is spent keeping the beast alive would be better spent paying off Labor’s legacy of debt.
If our nation is to endure, the ABC must not survive the next term of federal parliament.
None who love this country will weep for it.
Just as this Government did not weep for the cement workers who have already lost their jobs due to the carbon tax.
And then there is the matter of the CSIRO.
They have told too many lies over too many years.
Their betrayal of the Australian people cannot be forgiven.
To this day, they are trying to sell the Australian people into the slavery and oppression of the carbon tax.
The CSIRO must be reformed through the benefit of much correction.
The factory and smelter closures due to the carbon tax, that were so predictable, have begun.
Many of those factories will be closed forever, and no amount of wishing or hoping or endless tears will bring them back again.
The people who worked in those factories, leading productive lives that helped us all – well, many of those lives are now broken, families broken, ambition thwarted.
To those whoever breathed a word in favour of the carbon tax, bear the guilt of those broken and disrupted lives, and broken and disrupted marriages, to your graves.
Your sin was not a love of nature, but a loathing for your fellow man.
Your fault was not a desire to do the right thing, but lack of an enquiring mind.
The notion of global warming was concocted to provide a cloak of scientific respectability for a massive socialist redistribution of wealth.
That is as plain as day.
All attempts to even up slices from our economic pie, irrespective of effort, result in a shrunken and misshapen pie.
Thus we are witnessing the shrinking of the Australian economy now under way due to the carbon tax.
It is an accident of history that that notion of global warming caused people like me to enquire as to what actually is going on with our climate.
I am proud to have done my bit to push back against the darkness that ever encroaches on us.
What I found is that there is much to fear, but of course in the opposite direction to that claimed by the socialists.
I will summarise the findings of my last six years of research in the field of climate science in two sentences:
Our generation has known a warm, giving Sun.
The next will suffer a Sun that is less giving, and the World will be less fruitful.
Specifically, the current solar cycle is going to be a very long one.
That will result in the climate over the following solar cycle being very cold.
The grain belts of the wold will shift up to 700 km towards the equator.
World grain production will fall by at least 25%.
That is going to be the biggest problem the World will face in the next thirty years.
What about carbon dioxide?
Carbon dioxide is tuckered out as a greenhouse gas.
The total warming from here due to carbon dioxide may be up to point four of a degree centigrade.
Or it may even be nothing.
All we can be sure of is that it is not a problem.
The heating effect from carbon dioxide will be lost in the noise of the climate system.
The fake problem of carbon is distracting us from real problems.
First of which is the fact that Australia’s oil self-sufficiency is declining rapidly.
It is forty per cent now.
It will be down to twenty-five per cent by 2020.
We now import oil from as far afield as Azerbaijan, Algeria and the Congo.
We are forced to rely upon their kindness to keep our farms and factories running.
It need not be like that.
We could make our own transport fuels from our own coal.
And keep the money we pay for them in Australia.
Only then will our nation have any hope of being secure and happy.
But that won’t happen while the carbon tax, and the mining tax, live.
The carbon tax and the mining tax are a particularly horrific combination for Australia.
The carbon tax penalises our biggest resource endowment.
The message from the mining tax is that risk capital is not welcome in Australia.
The synthetic fuel plants meant for us will be built in Canada and Chile instead.
There could be a very good outcome from this carbon tax debacle.
It is not enough to merely put things back the way they were before this particular lot of Australia-haters came along.
We must use this opportunity – your righteous anger – to unleash the Furies on those who failed us, and those who conspired against us.
There are so many wrongs that need to be righted if we are to make Australia the earthly paradise it should be.
So let’s right those wrongs.
Let’s not squander control of the Senate next time.
Let’s have a good cleanout.
It requires effort on your part.
Coming here today is only the beginning.
Many of you are shareholders, and many of the companies you are invested in have sold their souls to get their snouts into the carbon trough.
Make their lives hell.
They deserve it.
Hound the directors until they recant.
As for any politicians who have ever believed in global warming, or supported the carbon tax, or a carbon-constrained economy, there is no hope for them.
They are either too stupid or incompetent to be taken seriously.
Merely recanting, at this late stage, won’t be enough.
Make their lives hell too, just as they wished a diminished life on you.
Australia will soon face some big challenges as the world enters one of its most turbulent periods.
Just maintaining our standard of living in the face of those challenges will require a lot of rigor.
We will only get the required level of rigor if we demand it.
Firstly of ourselves, and then of the politicians we choose to represent us.
Even then, keeping Australia safe and secure and happy will take our eternal vigilance.
David Archibald
Perth-based scientist David Archibald is a Visiting Fellow of the Institute of World Politics in Washington where he teaches a course in Strategic Energy Policy.
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The ALP wrecking Company Pty Ltd. “No economy is strong enough to withstand us!”
The Aussies never used to be a bunch of sitzpinklers, so how do these idiots keep getting elected?
Not one single government Minister will answer the question on how much the world’s temperature will be affected by this farce (IPPC: 4/1000th of a degree). They all dismiss the science except to parrot “it is settled” and “consensus.” The biggest joke is they keep saying that 100%, and sometimes a little more than that of the money collected, will be fed back to people and businesses affected. Yes you are reading that right a government claiming zero costs and losses in collecting and redistributing tax money! At the same time they are also increasing coal exports to China.
Gillard blew it, she should have taken a leaf out of Obama’s Play Book or better yet Clinton’s. ALWAYS make sure that when the fecal material hits the rotating blade it splatters THE OTHER PARTY! (Note how Obamacare doesn’t go into effect until AFTER the next election, neither does the food Safety Modernization Act or the wiping out of coal powered electrical generation.) Clinton was the absolute king of that maneuver. He signed off on the five banking laws that lead to the housing crisis, he ratified NAFTA, the World Trade Organization and he worked like the devil to get China into the WTO thus shipping US manufacturing overseas. The economic damage from those eight moves did not really hit until Bush was president so Bush gets all the blame not Clinton.
It was absolutely brilliant strategy on Clinton’s part, he is still a “Hero” because few connect the economic disaster to his Admin.
Clinton’s five banking laws (Just for _Jim)
The Commodity Futures Modernization Act 2000 (CDSs unregulated see link)
Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act of 1994 wiped out depression era law, The McFadden Act of 1927, prohibiting interstate banking. (Too big to fail)
Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 repealed The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 – Separating commercial banking from investment banking and the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956 prohibiting bank holding companies headquartered in one state from acquiring a bank in another state.
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Improvement Act of 1991 increased the powers and authority of the FDIC and allowed the FDIC to strengthen the fund by borrowing from the Treasury thus Allowing big banks to gobble up smaller banks more easily.
Housing and Community Development Act of 1992 and RTC Completion Act – loans to women and minorities, expands the existing affordable housing
Info from : List of Banking Laws
In my view, the carbon tax is a tool designed by leftists to redistribute wealth from the “North” (rich countries) to the ‘South” (underdeveloped countries). I think it’s also a way to get the North to use less resources so that the developing countries can use them at a lower cost (due to less demand from rich countries using less).
The UN, NGOs, policy-makers, and leftists have been trying for decades to finance development in the underdeveloped countries. I think they found their way.
Ah ha! Taking the mickey out of Craig Emerson has begun. Another great Aussie tradition. (h/t Andrew Bolt)
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/dancing_to_the_greens_tune/
Crocodile Dundee to the foreigner was a caricature of the bigger-than-life, independent, couldn’t- care-less, swaggering Aussie from a country that had the unlikely national anthem of Waltzing Matilda (they settled on an alternative “Advance Australia Fair” in 1982 and maybe things went sour from there!). Oh I know it was all in fun, but there is a reason for such a character to exist – I met a number of them travelling abroad.
But what have you guys done to yourselves? To vote in a socialist government these days is to buy into the ring-in-the-nose transnational, made in Europe, world plan of these dishonest, evil people. If you let these people-haters finish their work, you may find yourselves fighting over a limited number of billibongs and scared to boil your tea for the cost of the carbon. Don’t let this happen.
Kramer–but it doesn’t finance real development. It goes to enrich the reigning nomenklatura in each of those countries and the international oligarchs who steer business, I mean aid dollars, their way.
The modern-day international nomenklatura. We could even get nominations and the reasons someone qualified for such infamy. What did they want to do? How much did they take? Who else seems to have been involved?
oh please pompous git
Your tune has been played over and over,and been rebutted over and over.Howard sought a mandate for the GST,he just scraped through,but he made his intentions clear BEFORE the election.Both you and I know Abbott will get rid of the tax.Labor is being decimated mainly because of the tax,do you think Abbott will take the same path?Of course he pays lip service to AGW and has promised to cut our emissions by 5 percent without the tax,what politician doesn’t pay lip service to it?He has a touch of lefty about him,maternity allowance,global warming,environmental regulations,union control..he is a bit soft,I have a feeling that he will be the last politician I vote for if somebody like Turnbull claims the leadership because there will be nothing to choose from between the two parties..look what happened in the UK..got rid of the socialist,only to put another in his place after voting for a different party.Politicians will drive people to vote for radical parties because they insist on being seen as humanitarian,even if it is detrimental to the majority of the population.
That’s my rant for the day
You see, first they take your guns.
Then they take your money.
Then they take your freedom of speech.
Then they have control of you.
“Farewell and adieu to you fine Aussie people,
Farewell and adieu those that protest in vain,
For we’ve received info you’ve lost all your freedom,
And perhaps we shall never more see you again.”
U.S. citizens please take notice!
Those in the population with XX (sex) chromosome and of a certain age (and beyond) without a criminal record were given the ‘right’ to cast a legal, binding ballot in elections both national and local?
That’s all I’ve got; all I could logically come up with (AND I am prepared to defend it on a sociological if not scientific basis).
.
davidmhoffer says:
July 2, 2012 at 9:19 am
Noelene;
Abbott is now saying
“There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead”
>>>>>>>>>
My question would be is Abbott simply taking advantage of the backlash against the carbon tax? Or does Abbott speak out against the CAGW meme as well? Beware politicians for what they don’t say as much as what they do say.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Well David, before Tony Abbott became leader of the opposition he was hounded in the Aussie press for daring to say the science behind CAGW, was “Cr*p”.
He has since distanced himself from that previous stance once he became the coalition leader. However the sense is, that he still holds that view and will work diligently towards undoing much of the damage that that “cr*p” pseudoscience has caused.
Abbott has done what John Howard was afraid to do…. Abbott has engaged with the skeptics and the average Australians who have bravely stood up to the Socialist elites that are abusing our democracy, economy and nation……
….. The Labor party has been camouflage for Green ecofascism and global socialism and it has taken a minority Government to strip away the veneer and expose the Labor party as redundant, ineffectual and ideologically directionless…. It has become the plaything of the Greens party.
The backlash from the Australian voters…. and don’t forget, non-Aussies readers, that Voter turn out is compulsory in Oz, whether you do anything or not with your ballot is no body’s business but your own, just as long as it goes in the ballot box…. But what it does do is “Make those good men (and women) attentive to public affairs.”….. and this evil Labor Government will be swept away by an invigorated, engaged and annoyed Australian voting public…. and probably so will the Labor Party.
“Noelene says:
July 2, 2012 at 7:43 pm”
While you are correct, Howard took the GST to an election, 51% didn’t vote for the GST policy. Howard, like Gillard, secured power in the usual way politicians do. The GST did however replace other taxes, eventually anyway, it is unlike the New Zealand implementation which 15% is applied to EVERYTHING (With minor exceptions like female health care products etc).
Still, the carbon tax seems to be working to cool off this rock;
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/environment/weather/mercury-drops-to-61c-at-tuggeranong-20120703-21eay.html
And, even though there is a A$1.1m fine for any business stating costs have risen due to the carbon tax doesn’t appear to be having an effect on businesses stating exacly that. As I have stated before, Gillard will be gone well before the next election the start of the carbon tax and the ALP disasterous poll ratings will gaurantee that. Gillard won’t be too put of, Ban Ki Moon has her back, she’s got a nice cushy job lined up at the UN, looking after the poor and lifting people out of poverty. Bob Brown, ex-leader of the Greens who were used to help the ALP secure a minority lead Govn’t, resigned a couple of months ago. I suspect some of his alien mates told him to get out while the going was good.
Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up!
“J.Hansford says:
July 2, 2012 at 8:43 pm”
Abbot is also on record stating that (Paraphrasing a bit) “Emission targets can be met with a simple tax”…so he’s in both camps, or whatever the flavour of the days is. Whatever happens, I seriously hope Abbott isn’t ditched for Turnbull. Turnbull is an ex-banker and is a keen supporter of a tax or ETS to solve this climate change “problem”.
Australia is going back to the Russia Stalin period with the ACC police with powers to walk in and go through your business, fine you if you put up prices blaming the carbon tax without without perfect records kept ? most people don’t know how to work it out . $1,1000,000 $60000,00 to $60000 e.g if you have a refrigeration business you cannot speak to another refrigeration business anything about the carbon tax $60,000 fine if you do.
The original intent of America was a nation with taxes as low as possible. So this can’t happen here………… right?
kramer says:
July 2, 2012 at 5:00 pm
In my view, the carbon tax is a tool designed by leftists to redistribute wealth from the “North” (rich countries) to the ‘South” (underdeveloped countries). I think it’s also a way to get the North to use less resources so that the developing countries can use them at a lower cost (due to less demand from rich countries using less).
The UN, NGOs, policy-makers, and leftists have been trying for decades to finance development in the underdeveloped countries. I think they found their way.
Sorry Kramer – you couldn’t be more wrong.
The poor and undeveloped shall remain so, it is already UN policy – the prize is control of the developed world and even if that tanks economically, the power shall ensure that the powerful and well connected will still get theirs – even though the common man and woman in the developed world will be equalised with the common man and woman in the undeveloped world.
We are cattle, at best, useful as productive animals, at worst useless eaters consuming “their” resources, in any event we are not “them” – we are expendable and without intrinsic value.
Poverty for ‘all’ – wealth, privledge, and unaccoutable power for the elite.
“To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”
~Thomas Jefferson
Australia’s carbon tax won’t matter. Nobody outside of Oz will notice or care. Folks who liken Gillard to Margaret Thatcher should remember the “Poll Tax” that undid the Iron Lady.
ExWarmist,
You may like this:
“History affords us many instances of the ruin of states, by the prosecution of measures ill suited to the temper and genius of their people. The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy. … These measures never fail to create great and violent jealousies and animosities between the people favored and the people oppressed; whence a total separation of affections, interests, political obligations, and all manner of connections, by which the whole state is weakened.”
–Benjamin Franklin
“If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
~ Samuel Adams
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
July 2, 2012 at 10:21 pm
Both quotes – excellent – well said. There is much to admire in the founding fathers of the Republic. Too bad that the Republic has strayed so far from it’s foundation. I hope for renewal of the Republic.
Gillard should have said…. There will be no Labor Party after the Government I lead.
“gallopingcamel says:
July 2, 2012 at 10:17 pm”
With the help of thousands rioting on the streets of London. I don’t see much rioting on the streets of Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne etc after the introduction of the carbon tax. I guess if there is ever a chance the carbon tax might affect the footy and cricket games or access to drive through KFC there be riots, but I don’t see that happening in Aus.
@ur momisugly Noelene
Somehow I don’t think that less than 50% of the primary vote was a mandate. Perhaps your idea of a majority differs from mine. Here’s a reminder of what the Prime Miniature said:
As it happens, it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good. I took the opportunity upon my enforced retirement to build my world-famous House of Steel, saving $100,000 that I didn’t have to earn and pay tax on, or borrow and pay interest on. And do spare a thought for the many small and medium businesses that went out of business because of Liberal Party policy. Many lost their life savings.
You claim that the next minority Liberal government won’t introduce a carbon tax. That’s likely true. It will be an Eco Tax, or a Greenhouse Gas Tax, an Anything-but-a-carbon Tax.