The Australian government asks for submissions, gets around 4500, mostly against the tax, then ignores almost all of them. It’s just another form of suppression and censorship, a sign that the elites don’t give a fig what we think.
Menzies House is calling it an utter disgrace.
“In a shocking and historically unprecedented suppression of political expression, a staggering four thousand five hundred Australians have had their voices silenced by Australia’s political elite in the Labor-dominated Joint Select Committee on Australia’s Clean Energy Future Legislation.”
It shows what we all knew all along: the submission process was a merely legal formality, a scent of democracy.
This is a new low, and based on current performance, is just what we’d expect. They can’t justify this tax, they can’t debate the science, but they can ram it through. The only way “forward” is with whitewash, erasers, and the all-purpose delete key.
So figure what was going on in the minds of the chief censors:
a/ Abject desperation: We’re doomed! (Never let the plebs know that we got thousands of well written, detailed submissions that were against the tax, so find any half-baked pathetic excuse to not publish or count most of the letters!)
b/ Callous disregard: The people who wrote this stuff would never vote for Labor anyhow and who, seriously, is going to bust us? (That is, we’re not interested in their views. And anyhow, Fairfax and the ABC won’t even mention that the submissions were canned, so it never happened. Who cares?)
The following submission was one they found useful and worthy of being published:
11 August 2011
To Whom It May Concern
Even with all the confusion surrounding the Carbon Tax, I would like to support the move the Government is making. In order to reduce our Carbon Polution (sic) you have to place a monetary value on the air we breathe. I hope this is a step in the right direction and, I hope the Government sets a model and digs their heels in to become a world leader in this arena.
My support is with the Government at present.
Yours Faithfully
Kerrie Chandler
Reader Wandzia on Bolt’s site noticed that 22 letters were virtually identical, another 22 were roughly the same letter, and 9 were non-specific or very short. So what the government wants from the people, is repetitive, inane, astroturfer “support” (see Bolt for the details).
Send me links to your submissions, I’ll publish the links…
UPDATE: There are at least 3 lists of submissions
There are at least three different government committee sites with “submissions”. To make things confusing the Dept of Climate Change accepted submissions on the draft legislation until August 22, and the Joint Committee took submissions on the final until Sept 22. But the Joint committee submission pages link to the DCC submissions page (with 267 subs published) as well as to it’s own submissions page where only 70 of 4500 are listed as published (through the word “submissions”.)
There is also an Inquiry into Carbon Tax Pricing Mechanisms by the Senate Committee. David’s submission was accept there, where 102 are listed out of who knows how many?
There is an analysis of the 70 accepted here.
Thanks to Peter Lang and Anton Lang for help sorting out the various submissions.