It’s only been a week, and already the door is open to the emissions trading monster. The Nationals may have got Turnbull to agree in writing last Tuesday that he would not change the Abbott policies, but writing things on paper is not enough, apparently it needs to be carved in stone.
If the member for Goldman Sachs still wants the fake “free” market solution — the one he threw away his leadership for in 2009 — he can keep the current coalition plan but use foreign credits to meet the targets. The global carbon market is the $2 Trillion dollar scheme to enrich financial houses, crooks and bureaucrats. It’s a whole fiat currency, ready-to-corrupt. The vested interests in this are knocking at every door. They’d be mad not too. But what kind of world do we want to live in? We don’t have to reward the do-nothing unproductive sector and the corrupt.
A carbon tax is a pointless waste, and the worst kind of carbon tax is a global trading scheme.
If Australians don’t want to be sold out in Paris, they need to protest now. I suggest writing to The Nationals, Libs, Nick Xenophon and media outlets.
Six reasons a carbon trading tax is worse than a direct tax:
- It’s not a free market but a sick imitation. A free market cannot be based on a ubiquitous molecule produced by all life on Earth, the oceans, and a lot of its rocks. It breaks all the rules of free markets. Most of the players can’t pay, and their behavior won’t change. The government alone sets the supply and the demand; their market is built on loopholes, exemptions, and special rules from the start. Dark green crony capitalism. The Abbott Direct Action plan is much more a true free market.
- Fake markets feed corruption, bureaucrats, and bankers. Do we really need more of them? An ETS draws productivity out of the real economy and feeds parasites and cheats.
- We lose sovereign control. The price of the EU market is set by bureaucrats in Brussels. How many carbon credits will they give away to friends this year, and which pandering group qualifies to sell them? If we buy or sell EU carbon credits we give sovereign control over the cost of our energy (and economy) to people we have no say in electing, who are not accountable in any way, and do not have our best interests at heart.
- It’s forever. We create “property rights” worth billions. Most taxes can be voted out. A trading scheme tax can’t be unwound without paying massive dollars in compensation. See point 2.
- It’s not efficient. It has an overwhelming auditing burden. A global market based on items we can’t “see” or really want needs constant overbearing auditing to stop cheats (e.g .See corruption in Russia and Ukraine, August 2015). Corruption is already rife in the EU carbon market, what chance does it have in the third world? Countries without rule of law, democracy, transparency and a free press are riddled with corruption and just not ready or capable to maintain a fake free market. Hands up who wants to make the corrupt even wealthier and more powerful in those places? It’s yet another force working against honest businessmen in the third world. Say No for the sake of the poor.
- Money goes overseas for nothing. There is no useful product sent back to Australia in return. At least if we sequester carbon in our soils and plants we get something, even if it’s terrible value for money.
If we want solar panels and wind panels to work, just fund the damn research ourselves. Then we own it, and might be able to sell something useful one day.
Here’s Turnbull testing the waters to see how much liberals, nationals and voters protest
Turnbull suggests changes to climate policy are possible
Turnbull, who has also sought to allay concerns from the Nationals and conservative members of the Liberal party that he would overturn the Coalition’s existing climate policies, repeated his support for the government’s post-2020 emissions reduction targets and the other measures Hunt had assembled “with great care”.
But he also kept the door open to tweaking the policies if, as many observers predict, they will be inadequate in the longer term. “There will be changes to policies if they don’t work as well as we think, or we think others can work better. None of this is written in stone, but I don’t have any plan to change those policies because everything we see at the moment suggests they’re working very well.”
Turnbull did not specify the sorts of changes that could be considered, but the Coalition’s “Direct Action” policy could be “dialled up” into a baseline and credit emissions trading scheme by toughening the safeguards mechanism and allowing credits to be purchased.
Nick Xenophon (independent senator) was pushing for the purchase of cheap carbon credits just last month.
Tony Abbott understood the danger of foreign carbon credits, but few other liberals seem too:
A proposal to make radical changes to the government’s Direct Action policy so cheap international carbon permits can be used in Australia threatens to exacerbate cabinet divisions over environmental policy.
Although Mr Hunt’s office was adamant Senator Xenophon’s proposed changes were his own and did not come with the government’s seal of approval, behind the scenes the two have been co-operating and Mr Hunt is personally supportive, according to sources.
Business groups have been lobbying for the change, which would allow them to meet their abatement targets far more cheaply by simply buying permits on the international market.
But support for the change within the Coalition party room is far from certain, because Mr Abbott has previously voiced scepticism that international carbon permits do little to help the atmosphere because many come from countries like China where regulation and oversight is weak.
He described international permits as a “get-rich-quick scheme for foreign carbon traders” while in opposition.
Mr Hunt’s support of the Renewable Energy Target has already put him in opposition to Mr Abbott and the majority of cabinet, who wish to see it scrapped or drastically reduced.
Mr Abbott favours winding up the RET and grandfathering existing large-scale projects, while Mr Hunt wants to modestly scale back the RET.
None of the ministers wish to preserve the RET in its current form, despite industry continuing to warn any change – scale back or abolition – will be devastating to current projects and torpedo more than $10 billion in promised investment.