Finally a Labor guru gets it right – Bill Kelty says “Carbon tax to blame”

It’s taken a week, but at least one Labor adviser has finally got a better answer as to why the Labor Party suffered a record loss. As long as Labor “spins” its mistakes, not only does it not learn any lessons, but it gives the public no reason to trust that it has changed. Labor suffers so much from not having open ongoing debate. If Kelty (and others) had said this two years ago, they would not be in such a hole now.

The Australian

…the party’s breach of trust with voters over the carbon tax was a bigger cause of its defeat than the disunity cited by senior ALP figures.

Mr Kelty, who is backing Bill Shorten in the mould of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating to become the next ALP leader, said the seeds for last Saturday’s loss could be traced back to the failure of Labor to explain to voters why Kevin Rudd was dumped in favour of Julia Gillard in 2010.

“To be honest, I think they lost the election in two points of history,” Mr Kelty said.

Spin has a price:

“They didn’t ever explain the change of leadership from Rudd to Gillard. Therefore they didn’t lose the next election, but they didn’t win it either. So there goes that first downward trend. People couldn’t understand why it wasn’t explained to them.

Kelty is still mincing words a little. It’s not that people “saw” it as a breach of trust. It was a breach of trust.

“Second, when Julia Gillard actually announced the Greens policy (of introducing a carbon tax), people saw it as a breach of faith, a breach of trust. When people have come to a view that they don’t trust you, when you have broken a commitment to them, when enough people believe that, it gives them a great opportunity therefore not to be interested in politics, they just wait until the next election.”

Though this is certainly right:

“All the other things don’t matter. When that essential covenant of trust between the electorate and those who are elected is broken, it’s very, very hard to rebuild.”

The point the Labor Party is still a long way from getting is that they have been gullible fools and wasted countless billions for believing that science is done by consensus, and can’t be corrupted or distorted by massive one sided monopolistic funding. They were duped into thinking that “denier” was a term of science, and that simulations of the climate produce “evidence” that tells us something useful about the real climate. They soaked up stories of big-oil funded deniers, while staying oblivious to the big-bankster and big-government interests that were 3500 times larger.

But at least if the ALP had been honest in 2010 and said they would bring in a price on carbon, they would have found out the other reason why the carbon tax is still poisonous. The average punter just does not believe that a tax can change the weather.

9 out of 10 based on 51 ratings

53 comments to Finally a Labor guru gets it right – Bill Kelty says “Carbon tax to blame”

  • #
    Peter Miller

    You have to be really dumb to believe a tax can change the weather, that position is reserved for the goofy greenies and left wing politicians.

    However, this may be first step in the left realising the pointlessness and stupidity of carbon taxes, but unfortunately politicians of the left have a tendency to be serial liars, especially about all matters to do with climate.

    Take the UK’s David Cameron for example, a rabid greenie and a principal supporter of the world’s most insane national energy policy, one almost guaranteed to produce sky high electricity prices and power black outs.

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      Mattb

      lol is he related to the David Cameron who’s the leader of the right wing Conservative Party and is Prime Minister?

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      • #
        Peter Miller

        The one and the same.

        Goofy green on the non-problem of climate change and a fan of deforesting the US eastern seaboard to burn in UK power stations at a hideous cost, a wind farm fanatic, and a believer in closing viable coal fired power stations for no reason.

        Fiscally irresponsible in promoting bureaucrat heavy foreign aid programs in rapaciousThird World countries -definitely not conservative, but perhaps just your sort of guy?

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        Graeme No.3

        Whether he’s rabid greenie or merely a stupid greenie seems immaterial. He is though a strong supporter of “the world’s most insane national energy policy, one almost guaranteed to produce sky high electricity prices and power black outs”.

        There are predictions that the coming winter in Europe will be long and cold. The sixth in a row. Should they come true thousands and thousands will die from the cold, made worse by the collapse of the electricity systems. Those tens of thousands of wind turbines will stand idle (as they have done for long periods in the previous 5 years) and all those solar panels will be useless. The conventional electricity generators have been dismantled or mothballed to the point that the “back-up” won’t be there. The result will be misery. The UK only just made it through the last winter thanks to nuclear energy from France.

        The result will be the almost complete collapse of belief in “Global Warming/Climate Change” and a backlash against the Greens in the one continent where they are a significant force. Certain it is, that whoever is the Prime Minister in the UK next summer won’t pay any attention to their blather. So the only hope for the Greens is for these predictions to be as wrong as any made by the IPCC and its hanger-ons, and a mild winter.

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    • #
      Other_Andy

      “Take the UK’s David Cameron for example, a rabid greenie and a principal supporter of the world’s most insane national energy policy….”

      David Cameron is a ‘modern’ metrosexual and a ‘conservative’ in name only.
      You’ll find that in the Cameron household, Samantha wears the pants.
      Samantha Cameron is the ‘greenie’ and (Is-has been)a Greenpeace member.
      She is a supporter of any fashionable cause taken up by the bored ‘established elite’ craving attention.
      She is the one that has been pushing David into ‘green’ policies, gay-marriage, etc….

      Apart from that, her father makes a mint from wind-energy subsidies.

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    • #
      jorgekafkazar

      “…David Cameron for example, a rabid greenie and a principal supporter of the world’s most insane national energy policy…”

      Can California count as a nation? It’s certainly big enough. And for insanity, it’s hard to beat California’s Global Warming policies.

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  • #
    oldbob

    Cameron still has some way to go before he gets it that the game is up. With any luck it might not be much longer though as a recent Daily Mail (UK’s biggest circulation tabloid) article on the Arctic sea ice recovery, combined with Nigel Farage (UKIP leader) stuffing this same article up Barroso’s a*** in the EU “State of the Union” meeting has registered with thousands over here that “something ain’t quite right “.

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  • #
    J Martin

    Although I am not an Aussie, may I offer my heartfelt thanks to Julia Gillard for her turncoat performance after her statement “there will be no carbon tax” that she so very publicly made. This single act ensured the defeat of the Oz Labour party and with it a return to sanity and sound management. Which my many relatives Down Under might enjoy.

    Meanwhile I have to take my chances in the windmill obsessed UK hell bent on economic implosion, though it seems that some reality might recently have started to dawn on some of the elected lunatics in the UK house of commons.

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    • #
      Anton

      Don’t grumble about the economic implosion. It’s the only way that the bloated Welfare State will be taken down.

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    • #
      Richard

      Theoretically, of course, labor didn’t “bring in a carbon tax”. They “put a price on carbon”. So it wasn’t a lie … really. Yeah. Right.
      Did they really think that the Australian people were dumb enough to fall for that? Probably. Their born-to-rule mentality and mind-blowing disregard for the truth, their total ignorance of even the concept of integrity, their stunning attitude of criminal behaviour being acceptable practice and “nothing wrong”, their total disdain for their supposed constituency – the workers, and their shocking contempt for decency and civilised behaviour puts them beyond the pale.

      And they expected that we would vote for them.

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  • #
    TAboat

    Ah yes, but Tony’s CO2 reduction scheme is all good? Or else his deception of the electorate in not intending to do anything while having a policy saying he will is ok?

    Cognitive dissonance lives here.

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    • #
      Yonniestone

      “Or else his deception of the electorate in not intending to do anything while having a policy saying he will is ok?”
      Well it’s just fine by me, I mean lies and deception have been used in war since time began and the warmists have based their entire existence on just that.
      Hey look over there!

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    • #

      As Tony & Jo have pointed out, the “CO2 reduction” could be achieved by upgrading older power stations to USC standard, as a supplement to selling our best coal to China to burn in theirs? We could all agree on that? Well, no, some of us wouldn’t, but it would head off an accusation of hypocrisy if it all got dumped.

      Not too early to start lobbying your MHR. I have, along the lines of “ALP policy is crap, Direct Action is also crap, just a bit cheaper, but here’s another way ….”

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    Jon

    I would like to say that it’s more like that it is global Marxism that is the “cause”

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  • #
    pattoh

    Irrespective of “Old Guard/New Guard/mud guard” factions, Bill Kelty forever parked himself in the Richo “whatever it takes” camp with his seditious actions writing to buyers in trading partner countries threatening industrial blackmail if the Coalition won in the 1990s.
    His actions then were a perfect example of how far political self- interest is from real national interest. Statesmanship is not a commodity which comes with a set of steak knives & a 30 day money back guarantee.( as advertised at Summer Bay)

    Nothing matters more than keeping the gravy train on track & rolling your way.
    His recent comments are all about rounding up the boys to get the train back on track not about the interest of the nation.

    This shameless self-interested corrupt psyche appears to be fundamentally entrenched in the thinking, motives & actions in segments of our political structure.

    Before you fire up Matty, I am certain it pervades all bands of the political spectrum.

    Hopefully if the new government makes good on its pledge to have an inquiry into the AWU scandal, the HSU scandal, Eddie “Fastbucks” Obied & Co. etc. etc. ……

    The cold hard light of day will probably swell the ranks of MV’s fans.

    Paranoid, cynical pessimists only ever get pleasant surprises.

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  • #
    Greg Cavanagh

    Bob Hawk was sitting in the tally room on (I think it was) Sky TV. (I watched it streaming video). Bob said on the night “the party lost this election”.

    And Labor didn’t lose the election on trust. They lost it because they were petulant children having a fist fight over someone elses luchtime sandwich that they stole in the first place.

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  • #
    Safetyguy66

    Its 0641 Sunday and Im so sick of hearing about Julia’s essay on the news, I have to vent.

    Bill Kelty has got it right.

    Meanwhile Julia continues to display the same depth of infallible narcissism that caused Australian voters to turn away from her in increasingly embarrassed droves. According to Julia it wasn’t the carbon tax or even the complete and cynical betrayal of trust, as a desperate grab for power that was wrong with carbon pricing, it was the name “I erred by not contesting the label “tax” for the fixed price period of the emissions trading scheme I introduced”.

    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/13/julia-gillard-labor-purpose-future

    So now in typical Julia fashion, she cant even say that name, CARBON TAX. Let alone admit that a myopic focus on seizing power in a dirty deal with the biggest economic vandals in Australian political history, the greens was the genuine cause of that part of her demise.

    Without doubt another major factor (as one small example of her monumentally poor judgement) was her sickening pseudo intellectual smugness at every turn. Never at any stage did Julia admit even a small error while she was in power. Whenever anything was turning out badly, it was always someone else’s fault. With the carbon tax it was the thing that Julia genuinely believes in her heart of hearts lies at the root of all her ills, the base stupidity of the Australian people.

    “Yesterday she insisted the carbon tax was the right thing to do. “It’s the equivalent of saying ‘eat your vegetables’, I suppose,” she told Sydney radio.”

    http://www.news.com.au/national-news/labor-still-running-at-record-low/story-e6frfkvr-1226083148770

    You see Julia is omniscient, she has never made a mistake in her life. Even now she re-writes history in a practice session for her new position with Adelaide University.

    http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/ex-pm-julia-gillard-appointed-honorary-professor-of-politics-at-university-of-adelaide/story-fni6uo1m-1226716414854

    This is perhaps the perfect Job for Julia, because now she can stand in front of a group of politically naïve teenagers, day in, day out and re-write history until her heart is content. More importantly she will be able to tell every terminally boring story with a an ending where she is always right, which in her reality is what actually happened anyway. If perception is truth, Julia’s inwardly focussed personality will ensure her perception of history becomes their truth.

    Julia’s ability to view things in a way that absolves her of any responsibility knows no bounds. She laments the way in which she was removed from power and spits vitriol at the process and the people behind it, stabbing the party and people in back as she was always want to do with comments like;

    “Losing power is felt physically, emotionally, in waves of sensation, in moments of acute distress”

    Well now you know how it feels as a voter (even though you would be incapable of admitting it). Being told one thing then being presented with another, is disempowering, it is in fact so disempowering that people remember it for years, then act on the bitterness, check you poll numbers prior to your well deserved ousting.

    But Julia’s bitterness is as deep as it is, because she still doesn’t get it. Julia believes that anyone who fails to notice and reward her intrinsic genius is an idiot, unworthy of a vote. This is a pretty typical left/green position on most topics anyway, but Julia has distilled her bile to a degree its like the political equivalent of Alien acid blood…

    “Caucus and party members should use this contest to show that Labour has moved on from its leadership being determined on the basis of opinion polls, or the number of positive media profiles, or the amount of time spent schmoozing media owners and editors, or the frippery of selfies and content-less social media. Rather, choosing a leader will now be done on the basis of the clearly articulated manifestos of the candidates, the quality of their engagement with caucus and party processes and their contributions to the collective efforts of the parliamentary party.”

    So according to Julia, popularity in a contest decided by voters counts for nothing. Provided you have mastered the “Yes Minister” factors of tripping the light farcetastic on the party room floor, you should be entitled to be leader until your no longer “amused” by the novelty. So deep is her introspection, she genuinely believes the opinions of the Labour caucus will win an election over disaffected voters.

    Julia bemoans the process that removed her from leadership, while never for a split second acknowledging that it was the exact same process that put her in power in the first place. She accuses her party colleagues of being concerned only with saving their own seats after rolling a Prime Minister with the words “this is a good Government that has lost its way” referring almost exclusively and specifically to the same opinion polls, social media and general media malaise that she dismisses as being unimportant when it was her on the receiving end of it. She describes her axing as “brutal and cynical” yet was more than happy to brutally and cynically assassinate her predecessor in the same way when it suited her.

    I am reluctant to even touch on her borderline psychosis regarding gender. However I will say this, sex mattered a lot during her prime ministership, it was one of the most important factors in her success and her downfall. The only problem is that importance existed (as per usual) only in the mind of Julia. I predicted when Tony made his acceptance speech that he would accept his new job by declaring himself proud to be the 28th Australian Prime Minister. Julia sat alone at home (something telling in that too) sincerely expecting Tony to accept as the 27th Male Prime Minister.

    With this essay (that’s a compliment) Julia has completed her descent into delusion. She exists now only in a parallel universe where women are simultaneously powerful omniscient creatures with the answers to every problem we have ever and will ever encounter as a society and as the downtrodden victims of male ignorance, paternalism and testosterone fuelled despotism.

    Amanda Vanstone let Julia and women like her have it on her radio program recently. In reference to Angela Merkel Amanda noted that what she loved and respected about Angela was that through her entire public career she had displayed a wide variety of political styles, but that the secret of her success and international respect was that unlike “some female politicians” she never plays the victim card when things arn’t going her way.

    Julia blurred the lines between being the Prime Minister of Australia and being a vulnerable little girl (which she is way to smart to be believable as). She appeared in a fashion shoot in Womens Weekly within 6 weeks of taking power, then lamented her lack of gravitas by pulling the misogynist card when things got tough.

    I am so glad to see the back of her, I can barely describe it in words. She has single handedly ensured that no woman will be PM again in Australia for at least 2-3 generations and it is her bizarre and self destructive focus on the differences between men and women that has ensured no political party will be rushing to test that water again anytime soon.

    Bye Julia, go stand at the front of a partially filled lecture hall and talk to the last handful of people forced to listen to your nonsense. When you get really lonely you can hang out with like minded omniscients at the Emily’s List functions where you can all get together and talk about how unfair life is.

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  • #
    Roy Hogue

    When people have come to a view that they don’t trust you, when you have broken a commitment to them, when enough people believe that, it gives them a great opportunity therefore not to be interested in politics, they just wait until the next election.

    Yep! I can speak from personal experience. When George H. W. Bush (Bush the first) broke his, “Read my lips. No new taxes!” pledge it cost him my vote for a second term. And then he nailed the lid on the coffin by standing up when I was in bad financial shape because of a bad economy and saying to the effect, “What are you complaining about? The economy is fine.”

    I daresay that many other voters felt the same betrayal I did.

    The people’s confidence in your leadership can’t be wasted. It will catch up with you, just as it’s beginning to catch up with Barack Obama, just as it caught up with labor. And yet neither one seems to be up to the task of self examination. Makes you wonder doesn’t it?

    I’ve just come back from lunch with a friend and we had an interesting discussion about exactly that subject, confidence in our leaders. His analogy was pretty brutal — if in combat the leader on the ground doesn’t gain and keep the confidence of his men he’s very likely to get shot rather than let him continue to get men killed by bad decisions or worse, failure to decide at all.

    And that’s about all there is to say about it.

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  • #
    scaper...

    Well, who would of guessed? Lifted this from Bolt’s place.

    Looks like the end is nigh…of the scam! It’s been a hard fight but there is more to be done. No taxes, no more qangos and no Direct Action. Enough resources have been wasted on the climatic road to nowhere.

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  • #
    Rafe

    star commentStill waiting for an adult in the ALP to mention in public that there might have been something wrong with their policies, instead of blaming their performance on the Murdoch Press, internal divisions, bad communication, a “good government losing its way” and a dysfunctional campaign by Kevin Rudd.

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    • #
      Roy Hogue

      It may take a long time. Obama and his supporters are still blaming Bush.

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      • #
        MadJak

        That’s allright, I’m sure JuLiars supporters are still blaming sexist male voters for her demise.

        If there’s one thing for sure, the worst ALP election result in over 100 years had nothing to do with sexism – unless it was sexism from ALP femonazis angry at the Dear leader doing to her what she did to him.

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        • #
          scaper...

          Actually, I prefer the tag, neo-feminists.

          A neo-feminist believes she is superior to males but when challenged, goes to the fall back position…”You can’t treat me like that, I’m a woman.”

          Absolutely pathetic!

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    • #
      Safetyguy66

      Precisely, one of the Lib Senators was door-stopped on the way in to the Libs meeting on Friday and he said “its nice to have adults back in the house again”.

      Labour simply doesn’t get it…

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  • #
    handjive

    The point the Labor Party (and Lib/Nat Party) is still a long way from getting is:

    In two weeks, one third of the remaining traces of the climate hysteria will evaporate within a day

    The climate models fail.

    “Gavin Schmidt pretty much admitted it was the case, too.

    In the Real Climate article linked to in the previous sentence, he tries to obscure the simple fact that 114 out of 117 models overestimated (usually wildly) the warming in the last 20 years.
    That’s 97% – an amusing explanation of the 97% consensus.”
    .
    Also, in the above link, Gavin talks about Feynman and the scientific method.

    At least when the UN-IPCC climate scientists said the arctic would be “ice free by” September 2013, it was actually a scientific statement, i.e. it was testable & falsifiable.

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    […] Finally a Labor guru gets it right – Bill Kelty says “Carbon tax to blame” « JoNova. […]

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  • #
    manalive

    By its continuing embrace of the carbon tax/ETS, Labor is deserting its traditional base and contesting with the Greens, the support of the ‘new class’. The two constituencies, which can be summarised as inner city and outer suburbs, are incompatible.
    If a carbon tax/price/ETS is to work as intended, it must ration an essential amenity and factor of production (electricity) by artificially increasing the price which must harm Labor’s traditional constituency through power bills and unemployment.
    So called ‘compensation’ for the lower income groups merely pushes a greater burden up the income levels which politically must be compensated in turn until it becomes an absurd and costly statist roundabout with an expansion of the ‘new class’, which is of course the real intention.
    An ETS is particularly insidious.
    It would constitute a monstrous concentration of power affecting every productive activity or even everyone’s life (I don’t think I’m overstating it) under guise of a ‘market mechanism’, a centralisation which doesn’t necessarily stop at Canberra.
    I don’t think it will go away and it’s a bit of a worry.

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  • #
    Peter Whale

    Trust is dissipated in just one blatant dishonest act and it takes many truthful acts to restore it to some degree. Always remmbers that the lies were also propagated by the MSM and that should be uppermost in ones mind. The newspapers that pursued the global warming agenda should be ignored and left to go bankrupt do not give them a penny.

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  • #
    ianl8888

    Yes, Kelty was more or less honest here

    But his comments were not published in Fairfax or the ABC, nor even referred to

    The gatekeepers of the MSM left are not for turning … so be it. They are actually the real opponents of rational thought and action based on empirical evidence. It amuses me that the bulk of their “news” is all about the ALP, ie. the losers, tearing themselves into hysteria. This leaves Abbott able to implement government without distraction 🙂

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  • #
    Matty

    Having done the hard yards Abbott now on Easy Street. Both potential leaders of the new opposition commit to carbon pricing – still waiting for the spaceship?? Still standing there while the electorate veers away. If climate was pure politics they would dump it in a heartbeat but it’s pure religion so it’s unconscionable – for the time being. A very messy split looming in the Australian Labor Party, Abbott might as well just go fishing, he doesn’t need to worry about this mob for a while. Incredible.

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  • #
    GrahamP

    We need a few more leaders like this, because until the ABC etc change their tune I fear, despite some very useful exposure recently by Jo et al, the “man in the street” will continue to believe the 97% consensus line.

    from here http://iceagenow.info/2013/09/nigel-farage-savages-agw-european-parliament-video/

    We may have made one of the biggest, stupidest, collective mistakes in history by getting so worried about global warming.” — Nigel Farage.

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    • #
      Graeme No.3

      Farage is a brilliant speaker and has been proved right on several matters, but the entrenched and un-dismissable european bureaucracy will not budge. The only way out for the EU is for it to break up, but the actions and policies of those bureaucrats is going to cause that anyway.

      Unfortunately in the UK Farage’s party UKIP is dismissed as raving loonies or right wing extremists. Its recent success in local elections may point to better times ahead politically for them, and their climb will be helped by UKIP being the only large party not supporting “the world’s most insane national energy policy, one almost guaranteed to produce sky high electricity prices and power black outs”.
      IMHO David Cameron’s position is in grave danger as any long or repeated blackouts will result in him being dumped as sitting PM.

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  • #
    bobl

    Meanwhile Gillard writes a sop piece and says that she kmew about climate gate and gave us a carbon tax in spite of her guilty knowledge that the science was compromised by green activism, and tells us her biggest regret is that she didn’t lie about the carbon (dioxide) tax being a tax. Her greatest regret is that she didn’t spin and lie MORE. Last time i looked the consensus was that Labor spun and lied too much!

    This to me feels pathological, I got an uneasy feeling when I read this that we were governed by a sociopath, one entirely disinterested in the well being of others. Good riddance.

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  • #
    RoHa

    “The average punter just does not believe that a tax can change the weather.”

    Of course not. You can only do that by royal decree.

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  • #
    skeptic4557

    The carbon policy Julia Gillard took to the 2010 election was a citizens’ assembly, designed to work through climate change issues with the Australian community and develop consensus on how to respond. She won that election, so Labor can claim to have a mandate, albeit an old one, for that particular policy. She broke that undertaking, introduced the Carbon Tax and then Labor lost the recent election with the winner’s main policy to repeal that Tax. If Labor wants a policy stand, how about they allow the repeal of the Caron Tax they lied about, on condition of establishing the citizen’s assembly that they promised. Then we might finally get the long overdue debate as to the existing evidence, if any, about AGW. I could be convinced if someone could actually point to the proof and not some over hyped, model based prediction that has already failed every test. The beauty now of course is that any assembly might be constituted of some people who have an open mind on the issue and not positions already fixed in concrete. Every dollar spent unnecessarily is a dollar that could go to cancer research, disability support, pension increases, paying down debt ..the list is endless.

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    RoHa

    The failure to explain why Rudd was dumped was certainly a serious breach of faith with the voters, but perhaps the reasons for it were simply not the sort of thing the Australian public is supposed to know about. Ostensibly it was a combination of the general unpopularity of Rudd combined with opposition to the proposed mining tax. (Heaven forfend that the Australian people should get direct benefit from exploiting Australian minerals! That’s the sort of thing oil sheikhdoms do.)

    But there might have been murkier aspects.

    We know that Rudd had pulled out of the Destroy Iraq Project the US was running. We know that Labor traitors were running to the US Embassy to blab about what was going on in the Australian government. We know that Gillard arranged a US military base in the NT.

    We know that Rudd had the balls to stand up to Israel about the misuse of Australian passports. We know that Gillard’s partner worked for Israel.

    (And we know that Bishop defended Israel and blabbed about ASIO/ASIS procedures in the process. Nice to know our new Foreign Minister’s primary loyalty is to a foreign state, and how much she can be trusted with state secrets.)

    It isn’t a particularly wild speculation to suggest some of these were factors in the dirty work at the crossroads. I doubt we’ll ever get the full story, though.

    Incidentally, how much of Australia is Indonesia going to buy? The bit that China hasn’t bought yet?

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    Neville

    It is not a matter of not believing we can use a tax to change the climate.
    We know we can’t change the climate or temp just by using simple kindy maths.
    Hasn’t anyone looked at the non OECD’s co2 emissions lately? Geeeezzzzz.
    So we reduce our 1.2% of the planet’s emissions by 5% by 2020 and reduce the temp by how much?
    Give me strength and yet the idiot Labor and Green parties still believe in taxing co2.

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    Stu

    Sorry, I might be a little confused here — at what point did science become decided by popular vote?

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    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      … at what point did science become decided by popular vote?

      When people started saying, “97% of scientists agree …”

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    Stu

    It is not a matter of not believing we can use a tax to change the climate.

    Still, that’s what you’re arguing against. I’m sure you’ll clarify though.

    We know we can’t change the climate or temp just by using simple kindy maths.

    That’s not even a coherent sentence, let alone a coherent argument.

    Hasn’t anyone looked at the non OECD’s co2 emissions lately? Geeeezzzzz.

    Nirvana fallacy.

    So we reduce our 1.2% of the planet’s emissions by 5% by 2020 and reduce the temp by how much?

    [Citation needed]

    Nirvana fallacy.

    Give me strength and yet the idiot Labor and Green parties still believe in taxing co2.

    Incoherent. Again. Is this what passes for cogent argumentation around here?

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    Tel

    Personally, I don’t think it is as simple as saying, “Carbon Tax to blame”.

    It was their whole approach to the Carbon Tax, firstly in 2007 Kevin Rudd was beating up what an important issue Global Warming was, and that was before Climategate and people mostly believed in it, so then what he could have done was bring in a plain and simple Carbon Tax, across the board, with no tricks and started out at a low price on day one, where they can gradually increase the price to see what effect it has.

    But instead they get the banks involved and go for this massively complex ETS with trading desks and property rights and that got the Greens offside so then they were battling to get it through the Senate. If they really thought they were saving the world, they would have been able to compromise…

    Then they changed leaders and we got the infamous, “No Carbon Tax” statement, followed by a Gillard government where she did bring in a Carbon Tax after all, but called it by a different name, and still made it complex and confusing while telling everyone it was really something else. By this time, a lot less people believe in the whole Global Warming schtick anyhow, and the economy is looking a lot worse so we can’t afford it anymore. The moment was gone, but the ALP wouldn’t give up. Their whole attitude was dishonest, clumsy, arrogant, and badly timed.

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    Lars P

    This is no minor issue, it is one of the liberal problem and the problem of political correctness. This makes them not able to tell the truth how it is: “It’s not that people “saw” it as a breach of trust. It was a breach of trust.” Unless you tell the things by name, you are not able to face it and take the proper action.

    From this point of view: if people “saw” it as a breach of trust – > the action would be to correct and inform people how to see it.

    So how do people react when you tell them, black is white and from this angle it really looks white if you put more light on it? Just look at light spot, istn’t it whiter? Well how? some let themselves being duped, those who want to believe, but the majority will run away.
    Only if one faces the facts can one take the real actions to correct.

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    Cookster

    Off topic but I think this is too important to ignore. Not sure if Jo has dealt with this already but a story has just been posted in The Australian about rumours of the IPCC realising they got their assumptions of climate sensitivity wrong! With the ever lengthening pause in global warming the “industry” might finally be forced to accept the model assumptions may need adjusting as the gap between projected and actual warming becomes indefensible. Is the house of cards finally about to fall? No doubt they will all privately be thinking of their exit strategies. The next IPCC report for policy makers will probably reflect the needed wiggle room needed while still saying the need for action is still strong.

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    Dennis Jensen can keep in check how much is spent in CSIRO on the GLOBAL warming propaganda

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    • #
      Gee Aye

      how? He is not in any position of power.

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      • #

        I would be absolutely certain that as all of this legislation is undergoing the process of change, that Dennis Jensen will be one of the names high on the lists of MP’s as all of this ‘stuff’ is farmed out to the Committee process.

        Tony.

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        • #
          Gee Aye

          true, committees will input into decisions and it would look odd not having a scientist, I mean “the” scientist, on a committee concerning science. This is not the same as having an influence though. He’ll need a champion in cabinet.

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            Backslider

            committees will input into decisions……This is not the same as having an influence though.

            Interesting contradiction…. not that it matters to me.

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