Australian Political Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has today stunned observers by reversing his position on a carbon tax – ruling out any future reinstatement of a carbon tax.
According to The Sydney Morning Herald;
“We will not have a carbon tax, the Australian people have spoken and Labor is not going to go back to that,” Mr Shorten told reporters in Sydney on Saturday.
Despite turning his back on a carbon tax, the Labor Opposition Leader continues to back the introduction of a “market based mechanism” for tackling “carbon pollution”.
One of the core platforms of the current Abbott government, which helped propel him to electoral victory last year, was the promised abolition of the deeply unpopular carbon tax.
Until recently, Labor advocated reinstating a carbon tax, pending the negotiation of a market based pricing mechanism, but they now appear to be backing away from carbon pricing, however tentatively – possibly due to the deep unpopularity of the carbon tax, and to internal pressure from their union supporters, some of whom are concerned about the impact of carbon pricing on jobs and pay.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/10/08/aussie-renewable-target-everyone-gets-an-exemption/
Abbott’s Liberal National Coalition government, and Coalition state governments, have been keen to keep voters focussed on how much carbon pricing cost them in their daily lives, by passing well publicised cost reductions back to consumers.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-21/public-transport-fares-to-get-cheaper-in-queensland/5758504
h/t to Eric Worrall
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However in the same breath he said he will put a market based price on carbon – which is just another name for a carbon tax.
Gerard
But the voters won’t hear it that way and Shorten knows it. As said in other posts, he’s trying to have things two ways – keeping in with the Greens, who are following what he says closely, and not falling out with the general public (who are bored stiff with the issue and no longer follow the fine tuning).
Yes indeed. Bill Shorten is two-faced.
Beige Bill. Will be any colour his audience wants. So forceful he could wrestle a wet lettuce leaf.
Not really.
A carbon credit scheme is what Gore and all the real money want, anyway.
They need a relatively safe place to park their money.
They’ll make trillions world wide.
Governments will make a bundle in taxes
Wall Street and the Chicago Carbon Exchange are dying for it.
It’ll make billionaires out of millionaires over night.
Plus the UN gets trillions to feed their murderous dictators and keep the wars going.
What’s not to like?
Suppose there is a hung parliament again, with a couple of greens holding the balance of power. Back comes the carbon tax.
oh I doubt that,
the greens are highly unlikely ever to get many seats after past actions.
people have woken up
They hold one seat in the present parliament after they did exactly that. If they can hold an inner city seat from one capital city they can hold one from a second.
I live where they vote for Clover Moore. I wouldn’t say many people have “woken up”.
As with Gillard, Labor have the Greens over a barrel. There was no reason for Gillard to give them a carbon tax, & she knew it. She wanted a carbon tax, & introduced it for her own reasons.
The Greens have absolutely no where else but Labor to go. Just like the Democrats before them, voting with the Liberals would spell their death.
Labor need some sort of AGW charge to keep the academics, & the bureaucracy, who do believe in it, on side. Without them, Labor is nothing, as they are the backbone of the unions & lefties.
Anyone who believes Labor are on the workers/little people’s side is a bloody idiot, as the drink driving add told us.
Spot on, Has been, Gillard was warm to the idea without any need for the Greens to prompt her. But it gave her a convenient escape route to spin the line ‘ that she had to govern with the greens support’, even though, as you point out, the Greens will never vote with the coalition on any major issue. After politics she continues to spin her lies – and she has history in this regard with her odious involvement in setting up an illegal union slush fund with her former union boyfriend. Wouldn’t know truth if she fell over it.
In the US; we unfortunately have another 2 years of this fiasco to look forward to.
Obama’s Executive Orders can be cancelled.
As long as congress doesn’t pass a law we’ve got a chance.
It’s really simple. If someone leaning (veering, tilting, running) left tells you they’re done with the whole Carbon Tax thing, they’re lying. Check around and find out what they’re actually doing while drawing your attention elsewhere.
Taxing air has been a fantasy ever since there have been taxes, and elevated to Holy Grail status by the Beatles – Revolver – Side 1 Track 1.
So now we know the carbon tax is dead in Australia.
However the carbon trading idea still lives. Carbon trading is worse than a carbon tax.
Soon we’ll see the rise of the Australian carbon market, just watch.
Good for Australia, good for the world. Pushing back against climate hysteria and climate kooks is the way forward.
Lifted today, directly from the Liberal Party (current government) of Australia’s website …
“Cleaning up our own environment
“We will take direct action to reduce carbon emissions – and establish a 15,000-strong Green Army charged with the clean-up and conservation of our environment – so that we can all enjoy a cleaner environment and a more sustainable future without the impost of the carbon tax which is causing real economic damage to our economy and affecting the living standards of Australian families.
“Reducing carbon emissions inside Australia, not overseas
“We will take direct action to reduce carbon emissions in a practical, affordable way inside Australia, not overseas. We remain committed to a five per cent reduction in emissions by 2020.
“We will establish an Emissions Reduction Fund of $3 billion to allocate money in response to emission reduction tenders to projects designed to reduce carbon emissions.
“All money spent will be on Australian green projects, not foreign carbon credits, keeping more jobs in Australia.
“We will support projects such as the exploration of soil carbon technologies and abatement, putting carbon back in soils and providing for a once in a generation replenishment of our farmlands.”
Yep! … sure looks like the exact opposite of a carbon tax. This mob recognises that there’s nothing wrong with carbon …??
“15,000-strong Green Army charged with the clean-up and conservation of our environment -”
“We will establish an Emissions Reduction Fund of $3 billion…”
$3,000,000,000 for 15,000 people is $200,000 per person…Can I have a job?
Fool me once; shame on you. Fool me twice; shame on me. What was it that the last Labour Prime Minister said just before her election?
Bill Shorton, Labor Party Leader, 2014: “We will not have a carbon tax”
Julia Gillard, Labor Party Leader, 2010: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApCwoj35d3M
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
The real test as to the burying of the carbon tax and related schemes, will be how the Greens fare in the Victorian state election this year. If they are wiped out as they were in the Tasmanian elections that will send a strong message that the voting public see the green propaganda for what it is, destructive and divisive..
There is a lot of pressure on to get young voters registered in the hope that they will supply a more progressive response, but has the no warming pause finally sunk in with that age of voter who have gone through the school system with teachers urging them to question and challenge conservative social values and to demand everything as an entitlement owed to them.
Are they a me generation, but with no concept yet of any social responsibility to work and contribute? The greens will be thundering the usual meme asking them to save the world – will it work, possibly in the short term, maybe not.
That’s just the ALP playing semantics. They’ll still want a price on Carbon
That’ll be the ALP Playing semantics – they’ll still want a price o Carbon
Mr. Shorten, you cannot rename taxes and command economies as “market” solutions. A market is a natural thing. It takes place when “buyer” and “seller” voluntarily agree to exchange goods and or services to the mutual benefit of both. When your government regulates and mandates, there IS NO MARKET, there’s only the law and the coercive police powers of government, and the either compliant or non-compliant citizen, who faces the tax collector, fines and jail, if they don’t pay. Without stretching the point too far, I ask you think about the poor dumb-ass Venezuelans who voted for Hugo Chavez and now have no toilet paper because their government thinks it can run an economy.
Getting the youth to understand this hoax will not be easy. They teach the UN’s ‘Learning for Sustainability’ here and all the kiddies are thoroughly indoctrinated. I actually wrote to the Minister for Education requesting that they eliminate it and received a very confused reply back from them.
No thinking person in Australia would believe Shorten for a second.
Here in the US, democrats are quite nervous about what will happen in California once their carbon taxes really start ratcheting up in the coming years.
– How much longer can Dems deny their tax and spend ways really are sending businesses fleeing?
A: once the unions realize their jobs are disappearing faster than they can steal from taxpayers, they will pull the leash on their Democrat dogs, who will bite the environmentalists. The eco-greenies in Sacramento only think they have political clout. They only have as much as is convenient to Cal’s unions.
Labor against a carbon tax – nothing new there. That was their position in 2000-2010 and now again in 2014.
Correct.
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/02/lies-are-ok-if-you-believe-says-richardson/
“Lies are OK if you believe says Richardson”
“After the 2010 election, Julia Gillard had broken her core election promise that “there will be no carbon tax under a government I lead”.”
Step by little step, a clear weakening of position is emerging. Canada are out, as now is Australia. China, India, Brazil and Russia were never in. America has a daft President and EPA but even they’re struggling to get meaningful policy into law.
Only the EU is in hook, line and sinker, yet Germany is realising its green folly, the UK public is wide awake to the nonsense and a high-ranking EU environment bod’ recently said it wouldn’t make sense for Europe to go it alone. Nothing binding (of consequence will be signed at Paris 2015.
Be aware this is moving about as fast as it will ever go until the dam really does burst. Existing politicians have too much face to lose by reneging on ‘Green’. My bet is salvation will come from a politician or party that hasn’t been involved in policy these last 10 years or so.
They will claim all current policies ‘are nothing to do with us’, and that will trigger a wholesale collapse in AGW policy. It’s coming.
This only means they will not call it a tax.
Precisely, Alex
The ALP still want a “Price on Carbon”, just not as a direct carbon tax.
Probably as a trading scheme of some sort…. but still .. essentially a tax.
Shorten is not fooling anyone, except those who want to be fooled.
The Liberal Party is giving a lot of lip service but so far, best as I can tell, the carbon tax has not been repealed. The carbon tax appears to have been pushed into the future.
Paul
The Carbon Tax HAS been repealed. See documentary evidencefrom the Department of the Environment:
http://www.environment.gov.au/climate-change/repealing-carbon-tax
They’d lie to their own mother. Nothing Labor says is worth spit.
Tell me again; how many times did they back stab their the party leader last time they were in power?
With the abolition of the carbon tax most folk appreciate a small reduction in their electricity bill. and it would be extremely foolish electorally to try and install some carbon pricing scheme. Both Mr. Shorten and the Greens leader Ms. Milne are on the public record as believing in climate change (global warming). I would like to know what they would do as there isn’t a valid correlation between warming and levels of carbon dioxide, and I don’t think that humans can influence solar activity.
The Australian news seems a reason to be cautiously confident that there is a self-correction against the theory of global warming in the parts of society critical of climate focused sciences.
It surprises me in the 21st century that there are still political parties who have the word ‘labor’ in their title? Why would any political party have ‘labor’ in its title unless it views the world darkly through the feeble intellectual eyes of Marx & Engels?
John
Why include the word “Labor”?
To hide the fact that they are applying the teachings of Marx and Engels.
Note the spelling of “Labor”. The American spelling, adopted by the Australian Labor Party in 1890, when the Americans were the heroes and the ruling Brits the villains. Post WW11 the Americans became the villains, as they prevented the military march of Communism from taking over the world, while the great British universities handed most of the Western world’s classified information over to the USSR.
In Australia today, the Marxists have come very close to gaining control, through having been allowed too much influence in our education system. It appears that the same might apply in the US. A very large part of the electorate is programmed to accept lies such as the global warming scam.
Australia is starting to do all the right things:
http://americandigest.org/bz2svlyigaekwj9_jpg-large_1_.jpg
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