UPDATE: at ~ 11:14AM local time in Australia, it was repealed!
From ABC: Legislation to scrap the carbon tax has passed the Federal Parliament in a major win for the Abbott Government.
After a lengthy debate, the Senate voted to get rid of the price on carbon, with 39 senators voting for and 32 voting against.
This was the Government’s third attempt to scrap the tax since the election – the first two were rejected by the Senate.
The Australian reports:
THE carbon tax has been repealed, fulfilling Tony Abbott’s “pledge in blood” to abolish the landmark Gillard government scheme.
The Senate passed the government’s amended carbon tax repeal bills by a margin of 39 votes to 32 at 11.14am, with only the Labor Party and the Greens opposing their passage into law.
It was the Senate’s third attempt to pass the repeal legislation.
The vote was held as Bill Shorten gave a clear pledge to take a new carbon pricing mechanism to the next federal election, due in 2016, in the form of an emissions trading scheme.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/policy/carbon-tax-repealed-by-senate-at-the-third-attempt/story-e6frg6xf-1226991963431
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An ill-fated foray that never made much sense
Guest opinion by Phillip Hutchings
With perhaps a few more grandstanding shenanigans in our Federal Senate this week, Australia’s two-year experiment with a Carbon Tax will soon end. Legislation to kill the tax, which was brought in by the left-leaning Labor-Greens coalition in mid-2012, is now being finalised by our one year-old conservative Government.
That carbon tax has cost three prime ministerships, confused the voting population, and achieved pretty much nothing. Other market dynamics have been far more important in changing Australia’s greenhouse emissions, yet it’s politically insensitive to mention them.
The sanctimoniousness of such a tax in Australia is breathtaking. We are an energy heavy-weight, the world’s largest exporter of coal. Soon we will also be the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas. At the same time as our Labor prime ministers were being successively culled by infighting over the carbon tax, the world’s biggest oil & gas companies were directing more than two-thirds of global investment in LNG production into Australia, the biggest investment boom ever in this country.
We are an economy built on the world’s hunger for fossil fuels. Yet with our gas and coal sources being either offshore or in remote locations, these vital export industries are mostly hidden from Australian voters.
The carbon tax itself was a lightweight. The theory underlying a carbon tax is to provide a long term price signal to drive a change in the industrial and consumer behaviour. On this score, the Australian tax was doomed to failure. After all, politically it had to appeal to the latte-sipping lefties, but without affecting their wallets.
The outcome – a watered-down policy that was all noise and no effect.
To minimise the economic fall-out, the Labor-Green Government limited the carbon tax to large industrial emitters (more than 25,000 CO2e/yr). Road transport and agriculture was exempt. Put together, that meant only about 185 companies in Australia’s US$ 1.5 trillion economy had to comply. And even those few were only lightly touched.
Industries which are “trade exposed” such as cement or aluminium smelting were mostly excused. They got either 66% or 94.5% of their carbon cost covered by the award of free units.
Just over one-third of Australia’s carbon emissions come from coal-fired electricity generators. And the dirtiest electricity comes from the aging brown-coal plants in Victoria – with almost double the emissions of modern gas-fired plants. Yet being located in a Labor-voting union heartland, they too got off lightly with the first half of their emissions effectively carbon- tax free. Nice.
None of which gave much incentive at all for carbon reduction. It’s hard to see any evidence at all of industries making long term investments in lower carbon-emitting factories or generating plants.
The domestic airlines got slugged with an extra 6 c/litre fuel excise, surely as crude a carbon tax as you can get. How was that supposed to reduce emissions? Yep, sure, aircraft fleets get renewed over time, and you bet, fuel efficiency is a factor when selecting alternative aircraft. But a surcharge on fuel itself was not going to change Qantas’ emissions.
So as a policy instrument, Australia’s carbon tax was never going to change emissions itself. It was a neutered program, raising Government revenue but not effective in changing behaviour.
Source – Quarterly Update of Australia’s National Greenhouse Gas Inventory: December 2013 Australia’s National Greenhouse Account
Yet, Australia’s greenhouse emissions have been declining for almost eight years. After decades of steady increase, that pause in carbon emissions since 2007 is striking. And it started six years before the carbon tax was implemented. It’s pretty easy to find the main reason for that – a steady fall in national electricity consumption. Latest figures show that Australia’s electricity use is at the lowest level since 2006. And with three-quarters of Australia’s electricity coming from carbon-intensive coal-fired sources, the fall in electricity use has led directly to a pause in carbon emissions.
But what caused Australian consumers to wind back their power use over the past eight years? Simple price elasticity, that’s what. There’s been huge investment in the network, the poles and wires to deliver (as opposed to generate) electricity. In most states, that led to a doubling of retail electricity prices. And yes, consumers did respond to that price signal, changing from electrical profligacy to parsimony. Nothing to do with the carbon tax, it was the regulated electricity supply industry recouping their capital investment.
What did we learn from this? The theory behind a carbon tax works fine – provide a price signal, and the consumer responds. It’s just that in this case, it was nothing to do with the carbon tax and all to do with regulated utilities doubling power prices as they caught up on network investment.
Here’s another little perverse change. Some years ago, I helped a fledgling gas producer negotiate a long term gas sales contract for electricity generation. The customer was a state Government-owned electricity generator, then setting up a new flagship and clean gas-fired generation plant. That helped shift the state’s generation sources ten years ago away from dirty coal, and into cleaner gas.
Yet earlier this year, that generator announced the closure of its gas generation in favour of dirtier coal generation. The reason? With three large export LNG plants now being commissioned for export, that gas is worth more for sale to China than for powering my fridge. In effect, a state Government snubbed its nose at the intent, let alone the price signal, from the Federal carbon tax.
So as a policy instrument, Australia’s carbon tax has been a failure. It never could have worked. And politically, it’s been a graveyard. Let’s hope politicians and bureaucrats from more enlightened jurisdictions study it and learn.
Australia’s carbon tax – no wonder it’s about to be buried.
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17 July: ABC: Emma Griffiths: Live blog: Senate looks set to push through carbon tax repeal
Tony Abbott’s promise to “axe the tax” looks set to be fulfilled by the Senate in the next few hours…
Follow ABC News Online’s live blog for updates and commentary as they happen…
10.19: Simon Cullen: Earlier this morning, the Senate voted down a Labor amendment which would’ve converted the carbon tax to a floating carbon price…
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Wouldn’t this make her about half-right?
And, since I prayed, I must say a quiet (and not shared by many, here on WUWT, I know…) thank You, Lord (as in El Shaddai).
“Christine Milne, Senate, Tuesday: ….. There will be one million deaths per week for the next 90 years if it gets to 4 degrees.”
——————————
Yeah, but look on the bright side for humanity Christine, one of them will be yours.
“The vote was held as Bill Shorten gave a clear pledge to take a new carbon pricing mechanism to the next federal election, due in 2016, in the form of an emissions trading scheme.”
Mr. Shorten is obviously preparing for a second consecutive term in opposition.
I must add: why are all these psychotic, anti-humanist Greenies having children at all? They can’t stand “breeders”! Humans are sinful. It’s all part of their mantra. Don’t they know the number one way to reduce your carbon footprint is to not have kids?
Seriously, how many Green mouthpieces have large families? Al Gore, Suzuki…Hansen has a ton of grandkids, doesn’t he? The Hyphen’s tweet to the “future” should have read, “I regret having you as my grandchildren. You are my hypocrisy’s Scarlet Letter. Namaste.”
Today Australia, tomorrow the world!
Time to end this inane hoax once and for all. Opposition leader Shorten in Australia has pledged to bring the tax back if his party is re-elected. Hopefully this is the pattern world over, with every activist, journalist and politician who ever sought to promote or profit from this snivelling idiocy sidelined from any position of power or social influence.
Global warming was a global IQ test with results permanently recorded on the internet. The Australian Labor/Green socialist alliance failed, now and forever.
Unfortunately the climate scientists have not been put out of work, but I have unearthed a like project that may well occupy their time:-
“The first man I saw was of a meagre aspect, with sooty hands and face, his hair and beard long, ragged, and singed in several places. His clothes, shirt, and skin, were all of the same colour. He has been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers. He told me, he did not doubt, that, in eight years more, he should be able to supply the governor’s gardens with sunshine, at a reasonable rate: but he complained that his stock was low, and entreated me “to give him something as an encouragement to ingenuity, especially since this had been a very dear season for cucumbers.” I made him a small present, for my lord had furnished me with money on purpose, because he knew their practice of begging from all who go to see them.” [L. Gulliver]
May God bless AUS.
An “… emissions trading scheme, ” eh?
Better watch this first, Shortem (oops — I typed an “m” instead of an “n”).
Ponzi Schemes Explained (AP)
All CO2-l1e profiteering is DOOMED TO FAIL.
(and that includes all the windmill scams, too… just — a — matter — of — time)
In the end, the truth comes out.
Truth wins. EVERY time.
“our Greens leader said a couple hours ago:”
Senator Milne: ” The fact of the matter is we are on track for four to six degrees of warming. That means people will not survive. Part of the world will be uninhabitable. There will be one million deaths per week for the next 90 years if it gets to 4 degrees.”
Milne’s soul source of informaiton about climate science seems be a film by someone who does not understand the basics of science.
Don’t these idiots even bother looking at the data before trying introduce/stop legislation?
Great day here in Oz.
Of course I now have to endure all the lefties telling me that I’ve sentendced my children and grandchildren to death.
Of course, with the tax gone, those who supported it could always cut their own emissions voluntarily. *crickets*
” Opposition leader Shorten in Australia has pledged to bring the tax back if his party is re-elected. ”
These guys really don’t learn, do they?
They got elected by promising NOT to introduce a carbon tax , then did. That dishonesty lost them two priministers and the next election. Do they really think that saying they will reintroduce it will be more popular than lying and saying they won’t?
They could save themselves a whole lot of heartache if they just looked at what global temperatures have been doing for the last 20 years.
I haven’t followed it closely but the Coalition had to do some sort of deal with a number of the deranged self-seeking imbeciles in the Senate to get this through, so there may be some bad news (at least for us Australians) as well as the good news.
Still, it’s a massive step back towards some basic level of competence in government.
About bloody time! (Third time lucky)
At 11:14am (Canberra time), a huge sigh of relief rose from all over Australia as the lunatic Carbon (Dioxide) tax passed into history. The tax has had zero effect on CO2 levels, as the current reductions in the gas emissions were due to closures of Australian industry following poor Labour Party policies over the last six years, as well as increased efficiency of the remaining struggling industries. Even if the tax had had the advertised effect, it would have (theoretically following IPCC figures) lowered World temperature by only 1/4000 of a C degree.
Attempts to re-introduce a CO2 tax or trading scheme will now be political poison for the Labour Party and the Greens.
Not so fast. The price on carbon (Tax) maybe scrapped but I understand the framework for an ETS is still in place, which was waht was in Palmers proposal (Unless that changed recently). So as one commenter above stated, the door is still open to some form on “price on carbon”.
Priceless!!
Brent Walker says:
July 16, 2014 at 8:06 pm
Although Sarah Hansen-Young tweeted “sorry” to her future grandchildren https://twitter.com/sarahinthesen8/status/489582985679613952
Surely if you actually believed the calamity you were preaching you would not be cluttering the world with your own future CO2 emitters. SHJ seems stuck in the cycle of hypocricy.
Finally.
Patrick, that will be separate legislation and that will need more support from the lower, which means it has no chance of passing.
I can even see Labor unions protecting their jobs by adopting the chant – Carbon Bill had no chance and never Will, and if Bill Shorten persists in his dream or raising a dead tax, his opponents will move on his position as opposition leader, the chant will be “Carbon Bill” has no chance and never will! l as they move to shorten his term as leader! An extension of the Gore effect?
It’s sad. I see posts at various social sites with comments from friends along the lines of them apologising to their kids for the scarpping of the carbon tax.
“classicalhero7 says:
July 17, 2014 at 1:22 am”
Ah ok. It was just something I overheard on a newscast with bully boy Palmer. I have been a little distracted lately so may have missed the context.
The fact remains that when former Australian Treasurer Wayne Swan called The Carbon Tax “Landmark economic policy” or words to that effect, the jig was up. It had nothing to do with the environment, it was all about wealth re-distribution. Carbon Tax…RIP…
Australians all, let us rejoice.
My pseudonym should read Old Ranga from Oz. Slap bang in the middle of a Greens-held electorate in the middle of Melbourne. If I thought Anthony would let me get away with it, I’d add “Up yours!”
Humility demands that when we skeptics are called upon in 2020 to run the world that we too will screw it all up, get cocky, and jump off of the wrong bridges.