Today is a great day not only in Australian history, but also in world history. It marks the day when people of character and sensibility pushed back against an overwrought and pointless green agenda, and pushed back in a big way. They’ve had enough, and they’ve scraped the Krudd off their shoes and are moving forward.
Tony Abbott has won the Australian election in a landslide, and vows to abolish the carbon tax as a first order of business. Abbott has declared Australia is “once more open for business” in claiming victory in Saturday’s election.
It is a huge blow to the Rudd-Gillard labor party and their green goals, which were built on a lie foisted on the Australian people. In 2010 when Gillard said “no carbon tax” in a videotaped speech that has been seen as the key moment Australians lost trust:
Then, shortly after she was elected prime minister, she acted as if those words were never spoken, and implemented a carbon tax anyway. There’s nothing worse than a liar who is oblivious to their own lies, and in my opinion, this was the catalyst that set the stage for the end of labor’s green dream as well as their dominance in government.
Abott says he will abolish the carbon tax. In an August 5th Herald Sun article:
If elected, the coalition on day one would suspend the CEFC (Clean Energy Finance Corporation) and prepare legislation to shut it down permanently. It’s vowed to introduce legislation within a fortnight designed to abolish the carbon tax, and all government climate agencies associated with Labor’s clean energy laws.
From the Herald Sun today:
“Today the people of Australia have declared that the right to govern this country does not belong to Mr Rudd or to me or to his party or to ours but it belongs to you, the people of Australia,” Abbott said.
“And you will punish anyone who takes you for granted.”
Andrew Bolt wrote on his blog: “Finally, a man worthy of the office of Prime Minister – and humble enough to hope it.”
Congratulations to my friends in Australia, the Krudd is kaput and the carbon tax is going away, and almost certainly Flim Flam Flannery too. What a great day!
Cook, Ove, and Sou, this Krudd’s for you!
Meanwhile, back in the USA, the Washington Post seems oblivious to this loud message from down under (h/t to Steve Milloy):
The first thing to do is to build the cost of pollution into the price of energy through a simple carbon tax or other market-based mechanism. Though the tax revenue could be rebated right back to people, higher sticker prices for fossil fuel-derived energy would still give them reason to change behaviors and demand more energy-efficient appliances.
It’s like deju vu all over again, because Australia’s carbon tax was setup just like that, and it was flatly rejected by the people of Australia today. Let’s hope we don’t have to deal with the same madness here in the States.
UPDATE: Australian Eric Worrall writes in a short story submitted to WUWT just moments after this was published says:
Tony Abbott, the man who once described climate change as crap http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Abbott#Climate_change , has won a landslide victory in the Australian election, an election which has seen substantial swings against Labor and the Greens.
While we Australians have been disappointed by Abbott’s genuflection towards green dogma, with his promise to replace the hated carbon tax with a watered down form of carbon pricing, we live in hope that it is simply window dressing, to appease greens within his party. Abbott has given us grounds for such hope, with statements to the effect that his budget to mitigate climate change will be capped, regardless of whether the allocated funding achieves its stated goals, and a promise to tighten up the allocation of the national science budget. http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/abbott-vows-to-cut-futile-research/story-fni0cx12-1226710934260
Abbott has also spoken out against Tim Flannery http://joannenova.com.au/2013/04/jobs-and-junkets-are-on-the-line-abbott-could-axe-flannery-and-the-climate-commission/ , the government doommonger general, who did more than anyone to deliver Australia’s white elephant desalination plants, with his strident support for predictions of permanent drought (end of snow, anybody?).
So its exciting times for climate skeptics down under – and potentially, a global warning for the ambitions of politicians and political parties which are getting too cosy with the greens.
A very good result, yet people still voted for Labor and the Greens. The fact that some 40% of Australian voters cannot see the destructive damage meted out by these fraudsters is very alarming. I am also alarmed at the multiple voting that helped Rudd to hold on to his own seat. Get Up actually told their supporters to get around to as many polling booths as possible and vote as many times as they could. The AEC have done nothing to stop it.
As for global warming it was double the temperature we have now only 280 million years ago when the world was lush with life, and so was the carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere. This can all be checked on the net from real Scientists. The danger is cooling not warming.
Stephen Rasey says:
September 7, 2013 at 11:57 am
US Associated Press completely misses the moment.
“Australian Conservatives outst Labor Party” by Russ Britt
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/australia-conservatives-oust-labor-party-2013-09-07
..
” [ no mention of seats. ‘Hey, it was really close. Really.’ ] ”
..
” [ he’s religious (gasp!). Who’d vote for him? ] ”
..
” [Labor’s infighting lost the election, not policy. You hear that Democrats??] ”
..
“Labor’s loss also was blamed on its imposing a tax on the nation’s biggest carbon polluters.” [ Just a minor issue, really. Hardly mattered at all ] ”
I hope the [/sarc] tag missing here, because it is the opposite of the truth.
Just for clarity, Tony Abbott repeatedly stated over three years and during the campaign proper, “This election is a referendum on the CarbonTax.” The people delivered a crushing defeat to the ALP/Greens alliance, with the ALP suffering the worst electoral defeat in 100 years.
You will find many ALP/Greens sympathists in the media incorrectly stating the ALP losses were due to infighting. This is a tactic to designed to quarantine negative sentiment of the discredited environmental and Co2 policies from spreading further afield. Like the desperate homeowner’s response to the rising flood waters, trying in vain to move the furniture to higher ground.
clipe says:
September 7, 2013 at 2:42 pm
ut8t5 says:
September 7, 2013 at 12:26 pm
Meanwhile in Canada, traitor to conservatism Harper promises behind closed doors to Obama that he is going green and willing to bring in a carbon tax.
>>>>>>>
Au contraire
Given what has just happened in Australia, Mr.Harper has put Obama behind a big “eight ball” with regards to Keystone.
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As with all things political, it is rather more complicated than that. Since Harper has been saying for years that he won’t act until the US does, and that he’ll harmonize with them when they do, his position hasn’t actually changed. He’s just providing some cover for Obama to hide behind when he approves Keystone. If there is an eight ball involved, it has to do with Syria. Harper was very vocal in his support for Obama’s position on Syria, and while we can only surmise, it seems likely that behind the scenes the conversation was along the lines of “you owe me one, now get off your duff and get the Keystone approval done”.
As for being a traitor, again, think it through. Harper is offering to trade tens of millions in carbon taxes for hundreds of billions in oil revenue.
jai mitchell says:
September 7, 2013 at 1:49 pm
We’ve thrown out the liars, frauds, incompetents, drunks, half-wits, and unemployables of the labor government. Now we’ve got the a different set of liars, frauds, incompetents, drunks, half-wits, and unemployables in charge. Hey ho.
They’ll be less keen on the green, but even greater suck-ups to the US and Israel. Expect more Australians to die in pointless wars.
dbstealey wrote: “In another example of voter fraud, in Washington state Pauline Gregoire lost her election a couple years ago. Then there was a recount. She lost the recount. Then there was another recount, which she also lost. Then someone ‘found’ a ballot box that had been ‘overlooked’, which gave Gregoire the few votes she needed to ‘win’. The Democrat Secretary of State immediately swore her into office — something that her opponent had repeatedly requested, but was denied.”
Unfortunately the Secretary of State in Washington State at that time was a Republican suffering Stockholm Syndrome.
MEMO:
Hey, all you Eeyores above, …. if you can’t rejoice at this, what can you rejoice at?
This is, in short, “… a time to dance… .”
Carpe diem!
***************************
And Here’s to you, the 690, a light brigade that WON THE DAY!
Jimmy Haigh. says:
September 7, 2013 at 7:03 am
I was watching a live “twitter” feed on ABC when the results were coming in. Unsurprisingly, most of the “twits” were from lefties who were just about unanimous in saying that they’d leave the country.
Well. I’m sure they wouldn’t be missed. But where would they go?
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To the EU. Maybe collections could be taken up to buy them one way tickets to Greece.
Geoff
All parties are soft-socialist, including the LNP. It’s all a matter of degree.
Representative Democracy is an inequitable system, representing only the constituency who voted for the party, those who received campaign bribes based on advance promises of redistributed wealth and the corporate recipients of special privileges, who gain from the welfare/credit/warfare state, maintained by all soft-socialist parties under the umbrella of Australian politics.
If your preference wins, you only control the vote in your district and state, having no control over other districts and states and the group voting tickets apathetic citizens have parties chose for them. Even the principle of equalising power in the senate is not fool proof because senators will rubber stamp the types of central planning, welfare, legislation and stimulus programs they agree with. Do you vote for taxation, Marxist central banking, crony capitalism, the welfare state, speculative bubbles? -No, I thought not.
The Greens attained power like any political party does -Through demagoguery and making deals with politicians. Their fervency was also encouraged by the corruption endorsed by both ALP, LNP and all political malfeasance across the globe. Many sincere, yet ignorant people voted for them through complete frustration of the system. It was also exacerbated by their compulsion to vote. It’s not only compulsory; they believe voting is virtuous and civilised -it isn’t. Voting is giving sanction to being ruled and coerced.
The Greens were playing to their audience like Liberal and Labor does. This is what happens under democracy, one government screws up the country and the other feeds off crisis and the public’s enmity. Simply voting will preserve this system, even by adhering to the ‘Lesser of two evils” philosophy. But I suspect it’s much worse than that. You actually believe in Liberal govt.
In the US, the civil rights act abolished government approved segregation and racial intolerance and people applaud government for bestowing equality and freedom upon them. But it was the government that approved it in the first place, just as the government approved the colonisation of Australia and the expropriation of indigenous land, while we applauded Rudd for saying “Sorry”.
This is the history of the world, the government breaks your leg, then hands you a crutch and says ‘see, look what I do for you’. Apply this to the carbon tax.
RoHa has got it.
Don’t be so downbeat, Guys. Tony Abbott is a Rhodes scholar and a devout Catholic and family man. Expect intelligence and compassion from our new conservative government over the next three years, a marked contrast to the last six.
A note on the likely Senate outcome.
Half the Senate (38 of 76) sat for the election and the new Senate configuration will take effect from 1 Jul 2014. A Labor/Green’s controlled Senate, as is presently the case, can block the proposed (from 2014-15 Financial Year) Coalition abolition of the Carbon Tax/ETS. The final result in the Senate will not be known for days however it looks certain that the Labor/Greens will not have control of the Senate from next Jul 1 next year. Most likely they will fall short by about 3 Senate places short. With help from 8 others/DLP, mainly right wing, in the new Senate they should be able to get this abolition and associated legislation passed in Jul 2014, even if Labor decide to block it in the meantime.
So goodbye Carbon Tax/ETS.
For anyone interested in the Senate voting this is a good link.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/federal-election-2013/results/senate/
In that, the Aussies proved themselves smarter than Americans. Our president did the exact same thing, but he got re-elected.
For the first time in my life I voted Liberal. I, who 6 years ago handed out How to Vote cards for the greens, voted vehemently against the labor/green alliance. It’s clear in this election that, while all the labor spokespeople said its was disunity that brought labor down it was bigger than that. For me, I discovered AGW was a fallacy. And once that happened, I wondered what else I’d swallowed unthinkingly. Labor have behaved badly in government, bringing in a carbon tax and mining tax that accelerated the economic downfall of a strong country. Then the tax increases kept coming.
We sailed into the GFC on a mining boom, and our banks were largely untouched by sub-prime mortgage conflation. Sorry guys, don’t think that was the previous government’s smart thinking. John Howard handed out tax cuts and surpluses with the mining boom largesse. Very little infrastructure planning and spending for the rest of the economy. Could have done better. But KRudd and co, spent way too much to keep us out of the GFC. OK we missed the GFC, but are now struggling right at the time that our mining boom is slowing. No-one in government saw that coming!
The carbon tax is part of the mix but not a huge part. It’s more than that. Labor don’t represent a large chunk of the population in Australia any more. The greens now have the urban intellectual elite, who can’t see the world beyond the safety of their local coffee shop, the libs have most people and labor have their “true believers”. My senate ballotpaper had 97 boxes, representing about 40 small protest parties.. That’s the largest spread I’ve ever seen. We have preferential voting so all those protest votes flow through somewhere Noone wanted any more KRudd stupidity, but not everyone is convinced about Tony Abbott either. It’s good victory and we all want some stability. Lets hope we get that now.
Jimmy Haigh. says:
September 7, 2013 at 7:03 am
Unsurprisingly, most of the “twits” were from lefties who were just about unanimous in saying that they’d leave the country.
Well. I’m sure they wouldn’t be missed. But where would they go?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Mid sunday morning here in SE Australia and the rehashing of the election and what might have been is well underway. in the usual shallow and breathless media fashion.
But in reference to Jimmy Haigh’s comment
Where ever they go we Australian’s can quote the famous comment of a past, very blunt New Zealand Prime Minister who in reply to a parliamentary speech decrying the large exodus of Kiwi’s to Australia.
“No doubt it will raise the IQ’s of both countries”.
From Friedrich Neitzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil;
Aphorism number 183
“Not that you lied to me but that I no longer believe you has shaken me.”
SamG said September 7, 2013 at 5:52 pm
Amen!
We’ll have to watch the labour market next, Tim Flannery and 12,000 followers from the Climate Change Department will be looking for new jobs. Will they need counseling … or PTSD treatment, or even de-programmed, before being able to rejoin the scientific community?
Keith Minto said @ur momisugly September 7, 2013 at 6:09 pm
Bob Hawke was a Rhodes scholar too. Didn’t seem to help us much!
SamG said @ur momisugly September 7, 2013 at 8:21 am
Dambisa Moyo’s book How the West Was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly–And the Stark Choices Ahead addresses the economic idiocy well.
My prediction: a change of LNP leadership soon followed by a carbon tax under a new name. Plus ça change…
To HB. Congratulations on your open-mindedness. To come from a position of belief to scepticism is remarkable! You clearly have a great mind and character. We just need to hope that Greg Hunt (the new Minister for Climate Change) has the same strength to realize he is wrong on this. Greg is a good man, it is possible he could be swayed.
Bob Hawke won respect from both sides of politics and was certainly well aware of the undue progressive influence of our national broadcaster the ABC.
This was well described by Nick Cater in The Lucky Culture http://www.amazon.com/Lucky-Culture-Australian-Ruling-ebook/dp/B00AXS5G9Y
You can’t beat a decent IQ tinged with compassion,…it shines through every time.
Don’t forget that about 35% of Australians still voted for the most corrupt and incompetent government that Australia has had since Federation. In other words, they rewarded the clowns; and returned many of them to office.
That does not bode well for the future, regardless of what Tony Abbot will try to do.
A very good result for Australia and Australians, now it is up to the New Prime Minister Tony Abbot to carefully and methodically undo the economic damage of the 6 years of muddling chaotic Green/Labor cobbled together alliance, to build the economy, create jobs, (other than in government, public service jobs) reduce the Labor waste and our growing dependence on debt.
He has a very good and safe majority in the Parliament, and I am not really worried about the Senate as with the ultra right wing (the greens claim) additions to the Senate, this will be a damper on bad green economic activism a balance to the power they used to wield far beyond their actual numbers or electoral support. Having to negotiate issues through a senate is not a bad thing as Labor and the greens mounted a very personal attack on Tony Abbot claiming that he would cut jobs, cut welfare, and take an axe to climate change mitigation with his direct action conservation plans.
Tony’s role in previous governments had been to blunt the attacks of the opposition and reduce the effect of minority parties so was labelled as an “attack dog”, lacking in compassion and anything else they could hang on him like the Gillard label of misogynist, and because of his effectiveness in industrial labour issues and reducing the effect of powerful union bosses pushing almost blackmail like claims against legitimate businesses that scare effect troubled some voters.
Tony Abbot answered his critics and is very conscious that all of Australia will be watching him as he assumes the leadership of this country and in my view the lack of a coalition majority in the Senate is an excellent opportunity for him to work with the electorate and all parties for a very good result for all.
Landslide majorities in both houses of Parliament just raises the expectations of extreme elements that for one reason or another financially back/fund, donate to your party and then want instant results on single issues “they see” as their priority. As one politician said to me years ago, “if I don’t have a clear majority in the senate, I don’t have to placate the extremists in my own party for not moving harder and faster to fix their particular issue”
Let Tony establish himself as a Prime Minister, a statesman for all, it might take a little longer, be patient with him as this is the way that conservative governments win successive terms, by winning the hearts and minds of the country.
One final comment, Labor governments traditionally get thrown out when they run the country into economic recession due to their fiscal irresponsibility, .they become “on the nose” to voters. This time they largely wrecked their own electoral chances by disunity,underlying waste and relied upon a manufactured fear climate, that didn’t work in their favour with voters, but did create some fears and thus a move to alternative right wing self interest parties.
Very optimistic at the election of a party of proven economic growth and fiscal responsibility!
Keith Minto said @ur momisugly September 7, 2013 at 7:27 pm
I “respected” him alright; I was a Labor Party branch secretary during the 80s. When my fellow ALP member Jack Lomax (chair of the Tasmanian Labor Foreign Affairs Committee) pointed out that we could only vote for ALP Party Policy by voting NDP, he was expelled. Policy decided at conference was overriden by the Parliamentary Labor Party under RJ Hawke.
This led to a great exodus from the Party here in Tasmania, partially made up by recruitment of radical greens. My letter of resignation to the State Secretary said, in part: “If you ever decide to start a labor party, please let me know because I would love to join.”