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Emails are flying, submissions are flooding in. It’s a nation in uproar. The implications of what Henry Ergas wrote are setting off a wave of fear and anger. People are using words like “sickening”, “shocking” and describing Gillard’s actions as “vindictive” and a “treacherous spoiler”, and using the word treason. There’s a plea: “God help us!”
Here’s a few samples of what has been CC’d to me.
UPDATE: I should have added that I put the first email up to show just how deep the sense of betrayal runs. I don’t think Gillards actions represent a grand well thought out plot. This is scrabbling desperation to notch up a “success” (the country be damned). Even she advised Rudd to give up the ETS. A weak government is the most dangerous kind.
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Dear John,
Please drop everything and listen to this:
Professor Henry Ergas reveals the hidden deadly dangers in the Carbon Tax legislation to Alan Jones.
The vindictive implications for Australia are worse than horrendous.
Listen here and be shocked to the core.
The shameful and treacherous group (loosely described as the […]
If the current egregious insanity makes you angry, join us on Sunday at Langley Park. If you have No Confidence in the current Australian Government. Let them know! It doesn’t have to be this way.
ELECTION NOW! RALLY THIS SUNDAY, 18th SEPT 2 PM
LANGLEY PARK on the PERTH FORESHORE (Terrace Rd near Hill St)
MC’d by 6PR’s HOWARD SATTLER
David Evans and I will be there. Hope you can come too and bring all your friends.. – Jo
Read more for the details….
5.5 out of 10 based on 2 ratings
Too frightening for words. Henry Ergas has a bone-chilling warning.
It takes time to get a feel for how spectacularly insidious the Australian carbon tax could be.
Firstly there’s the anti-democratic nature of it: apparently Gillard is doing things that are considered utterly beyond the pale in other nations. Ergas suggests that by granting “property rights” she is threatening to make the cost of removing her legislation all but insurmountable. (For all the world, it appears she’s determined to stop the opposition offering the people the choice to remove the carbon tax. Could it be, that for the sake of an advantage in the next election campaign she’s tossing the country down the nearest black hole?)
Secondly, the Australian Carbon Tax is a freakishly large sacrificial offering: Australians will be hit for $391 for every man, woman and child, and that’s just the first year (according to the government estimates). Compare this to the EU. There in the land-of-exploding-economies, each good citizen has had to fork out the vast grand sum of (wait for it) … one dollar fifty cents each (yes, $1.50). And, it gets worse, (how do you satirize this?) — that’s the cumulative total since the EU […]
You wouldn’t wish a wounded government on any nation. They’re too dangerous.
The timing could hardly be worse. We’re about to force our nation to spend far more on its energy than it has too, while our competitors are decidedly not doing that, and the world faces a economic meltdown of the “generational” type. We’re the last cab off the rank in a race to nowhere and most of the competitors have moved on to other events.
“Far from saving the worker, the ALP have become the unwitting schmucks who screwed the workers to help the banksters”.
In a desperate bid to score a “bounce” in the dismal polls, Gillard is pushing through the carbon legislation next week.
The 15 minutes of fame or a face saving “legacy” will last only until the rest of Australia wakes up to just how monumentally stupid, utterly pointless, and expensive and ineffectual this tax is. And they are waking up. The rise of skepticism in the polls is a one way street, a monotonic increase. No one is shifting into the believer camp.
Only an idiot would think a tax can change the weather.
Far from making skeptics “give up”, […]
We all knew a fall was coming after the debacle with the Malaysian swap of asylum seekers for refugees.
The Australian:
Tony Abbott’s record lead over Julia Gillard: Newspoll
After a devastating decision in the High Court last week wiped out the Prime Minister’s Malaysia Solution for asylum-seekers, Labor’s primary vote has stuck at a record low of 27 per cent.
The Coalition’s has risen to 50 per cent – the highest since John Howard was prime minister at the time of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.
The Greens dropped from 14 to 12.
5.5 out of 10 based on 2 ratings […]
There’s not much point in me posting scientific information at the moment. Let’s face it, the political situation Down-under has reached new peaks of grand maladroitness and irascible incompetence, and most of the comments will want to unpack that.
Julia Gillard. Source Herald Sun. Photo: Lyndon Mechielsen
Bolt is forecasting that Gillard will be gone by the end of September. Today 500 people protested outside Albanese’s office, incensed that he called the Convoy inconsequential. (He created a lot of enemies with that one comment.)
For those of you overseas, sorry if it’s all so Australian-politics dominated, but really, there haven’t been that many democratic governments who have bollocksed up so many things, for so many people, in so short a time. This is history in the making. The cattle trade, insulation installers, building groups, asylum seekers (shutting down a working system, announcing East Timor , then Malaysia), Green loans, and cash for clunkers. And now of course, just in case there is a single business group left undamaged, they want to tax-the-rest to change the weather.
When the Rudd government took over in 2007 there was a chunky$20 billion dollar surplus, now there is $82 billion in debt and […]
Morgan poll.
The latest Morgan Poll:
In the first Australia-wide voting intention poll conducted since Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced the details of the Carbon Tax the latest telephone Morgan Poll conducted over the last two nights, July 13/14, 2011 shows the L-NP 60.5% with a record winning lead over the ALP 39.5% – the worst Two-Party preferred voting result for Labor since the first Roy Morgan Gallup Poll conducted in May 1942.
The L-NP primary vote is 52.5%, nearly double the ALP 27.5%. Support for the minor parties shows the Greens 10.5% and Others/ Independents 9.5%.
Stephen Harper, estimates that if this were repeated uniformly across all electorates at a general federal election and writes to me that “Labor would be reduced to a rump of just 29 seats. ..and if things get two percent worse (62.5/37.5 2PP) Labor would be reduced to just 17 seats out of 150.”
7.8 out of 10 based on 4 ratings […]
You don’t need to study any numbers to know it doesn’t add up. The statistical chicanery in a patchwork tax, with a complex compo plan, and offsets, subsidies, and a$10 billion renewable energy* Christmas wish list is as complex as a climate model. But this time no one is saying “it’s settled”, and is seriously expecting to get their extra 20 cents a week.
Lost among the bedazzling array of numbers are one pair of figures that put the central dumbness of this plan on display.
Australians will pay about $10 billion* a year in carbon fees, overachieving their European competitors who only paid $2.6 billion over, wait for it, six whole years. On a per capita basis the numbers are stark. While Europeans chip in 96 cents a year, Australian’s will be told to pay $500.
The bottom line — figure this — is that we as a nation have “decided” to voluntarily^ pay somewhere from 2 – 5 times as much for our energy, and there are no cheap “technologies” on the horizon unless someone somewhere discovers them (and they’ve been looking for decades). Julia Gillard tried to compare this to other major economic moves like floating the […]
Here in Australia we are in a eerie twilight world: it’s obvious skepticism is thriving, and plain that those pushing the carbon tax are desperate. Yet this is a train-wreck in action.
The current government popularity is as sunk as sunk can be. On a daily basis, commentators ask how long Gillard will survive, or how the Labor Party could be doomed or posit yet another explanation for “the downfall”. “Change or Die” says party elder, John Faulkner. Yet paradoxically, it is just because the government is so desperate that it can’t “afford” to bury the dead-lemon policy called the Carbon Tax. A weak government is a dangerous one.
It’s like a barking mad virus has run amok
Two weeks from now, the Greens get control of our Senate (possibly for six years), but the House of Representatives is as knife-edge dysfunctional as ever. With legislative seats so closely tied, we’re left with three so-called independents who — in theory — might be talked into voting against the Carbon Tax. In practice, it’s virtually an impossibility. On the day that Tony Abbott delivered his searing budget reply, Windsor was seen to sympathetically put his arm around Gillard’s back and […]
Another leading commentator — this time Michael Stuchbury in The Australian — see the Carbon Tax as a dead dog.
ARE these the signs that Labor’s climate change policy is heading for a second disaster? Big unions and big business are in revolt as the mining boom’s strong dollar squeezes the rest of the trade-exposed economy. Households are up in arms over surging power bills.
And since the shambles of the late 2009 Copenhagen climate summit, Labor hasn’t doused worries that its carbon tax would put Australia in front of the world, a critical risk for a carbon-intensive economy.
This treble of jobs, cost of living and international competitiveness engulfs Julia Gillard and Greg Combet as they attempt to reverse Kevin Rudd’s humiliating 2010 retreat on his emissions trading scheme. It is replete with political and policy failures, some of which are only now becoming evident.
…
Facing a revolt among steel industry members, Australian Workers Union secretary Paul Howes last week vowed to oppose Labor’s carbon tax if it cost just “a single job”, even with unemployment below 5 per cent. Remember this is Wayne Swan’s union, which was mostly responsible for replacing Rudd with Gillard.
Tim Blair […]
The zeitgeist of the anti-tax revolt in Australia is beginning to gather momentum.
In the last month I’ve met a dozen mining and business leaders, 6 elected members of parliament, and I’ve spoken to 450 pastoralists in remote Australia. Each time the theme is the same: businesses are afraid of the tax, but they are also afraid to speak against it. The phrases I’ve heard specifically are “it’s a vindictive government”, and “they have long memories”. At least one of these business leaders was CEO of a household-name multi-billion dollar company.
It’s the same with business associations and committees. They’re wondering if they should focus on hammering out a better deal in the cat fight for compensation or take the “riskier” position and oppose the carbon tax outright.
For Labor the dark winds of discontent are gathering pace.
Things have gone distinctly pear shaped in the last week for the Labor carbon pricing plan. Polls are punishing the Labor party (it’s the lowest results for them in 15 years); the most powerful union leader in Australia (normally a Labor supporter to the end) has threatened to oppose the tax “if one job is lost”; Andrew Bolt is speculating on just […]
It’s fairy-land economics out there. In a big economic advance, the Labor Party realized that they can solve world poverty: the secret is to take money from the big producers, and hand it to anyone and everyone — it will not only keep our national economy productive and efficient, but millions of people will be richer! Why we didn’t do it 50 years ago!*
Millions to be ‘better off’ under carbon tax
Think of the possibilities! If it works on a national scale, why not go international — how much richer would we all be if we buried our five cheapest sources of energy in a pit under Maralinga, forced everyone to use the sixth, seventh, and eight best sources of energy, AND we took the profits from the most efficient successful operations around the globe (known henceforth as “polluters” (sic)) and gave them to all the world’s poor and needy?
Where do Gillard and Combet think the “Big-Polluters” get their money from? Would it be from:
(a) giant Swiss-bank-accounts held by Nazi war criminals, (b) ancient Saxon wishing wells, or (c) pots at the end of the rainbow?
Do they think the big-polluters pull money out […]
What a week downunder, just in case you missed it.
We’re a nation, up in arms. With three months til G-Day (when the Greens control the Senate on July 1) and the tax-based-on-a-lie likely to become legislation, the heat is on. Protests and smears are running strong. Forces are being mobilized, and people are being polarized. Yet the public is abandoning the carbon tax, and the parties who promote it.
As the mass rally movements begin the Big Scare Campaign fans responded with smears to paint the rally-goers as extreme fringe, loonies and nutters. The fringe in this case turns out to be 4 out of 5 people. Who are the “deniers”? When asked, do you support the carbon tax? One hundred and thirty thousand people said NO.
83% of the Channel Nine poll don’t want a carbon tax.
The Labor Party sent out biblical climate speaking notes to all it’s ministers — the floods and droughts are coming, oceans will rise up and wash away your home, there will be burning bushes, and the storms will kill your firstborn (or words to that effect). And they howl about Abbot running a fear campaign. Wait for the […]
We all have better things to do, but when the people who represent us call the greatest plant nutrient “pollution”, and label the volunteers “stooges” while calling their paid hacks “independent”; when they look at a color chart and say yellow is really red (and they call us “deniers”); we know things are running off the rails.
When they ask us to pay billions to change the weather, then we know the quicksand has come. And when even they admit if we succeed beyond our wildest dreams that the results will be too small to measure (how many thousandth of a degree will that be, Julia?) sometimes we just have to do something don’t we?
We can act now or pay the cost for years to come. Each time we let them get away with an untruth they grow stronger. Each time we ignore the Orwellian perversion of our language (Is it carbon (sic) pollution (sic)?), we feed the parasites who want our freedom and our money, and that hurts us, our children and the environment.
The big protests around the country start on Wednesday next week. We want an election first. The tax affects every transaction in the […]
Things are hotting up in politics downunder. The immovable force meets the polls. Twenty years of PR catches up on the PM who didn’t do her homework. As Tim Blair says: It’s a meltdown, Labor is seething. Bring Your PopCorn.
“There is evidence the public’s general confidence is being shaken by sudden policy shifts and uncertainty about a minority government; there is growing disquiet, even dismay, among business leaders that dealing with the government on the basis of compromise with a commercially viable outcome is being overtaken by ideological demands.” The Australian
Everything had the semblance of order until Julia Gillard announced the Carbon Tax. Sure the order was only superficial, and we knew dark forces of chaos ran underneath. The policies were based on corrupted science, self-interest ran amok, and the hung coalition was cobbled together with seats that would never have voted green. The government was running the knife edge.
It took 17 days deliberation to arrange the “deal” to form government, and it was said at the time that a hung parliament might be a poisoned chalice. If Julia Gillard promised the independents or greens that she would break her promise to the voters of “No Carbon […]
UPDATE: Oakeshott and Windsor go with The Labor Party.
Why? Because more than anything they want a long stable government. They like both packages from both parties, but the deciding factor appears to be that they think the Coalition would be more likely to call an early election because they’d be more likely to win it. Figure that. They’re admitting the Labor minority government is weaker, and that’s why they’re backing it.
Putting long-stable-government over better-government, or more popular-government is pure self-interest. The independents feel they would hold more power in a three-way-split Labor party minority, and that their power would last for longer.
And Oakeshott might get a Ministry. (Not that that has anything to do with it…)
See Bolt.
So the plan now as the world faces the Global Financial Crisis part II is that anyone who disagrees with any government proposal needs to run active campaigns to make sure these two independents know exactly why those proposals are counter to Australia’s interests.
Steve Fielding will save us from the-Argentinian-path until July next year. After that…
…
EARLIER: One of the three independents has announced he will back the conservative coalition. That makes the tally effectively 74:74. […]
With one day to go before the Election, Julia Gillard announces that she is prepared to make one of the most significant changes to our economy by putting a price on carbon, and that if she wins she will assume she has a mandate for it.
She’s had weeks to announce it, put it up for discussion, and convince the voters it’s a good idea. Instead she quietly slides it in at the last minute, allowing no time for dissenting views. This makes a mockery of a “mandate”.
When it’s something as serious as a committee of lucky-dip-citz’ with no official powers: that deserves a proper launch and three weeks consideration. But an economic move that affects every transaction, our international competitiveness, the energy sources we built our civilization on; That’s trickled into an interview with 24 hours to go. Righty-o.
7 out of 10 based on 3 ratings […]
Our PM’s rapid descent is described as due to the failure of the carbon trading scheme tonight on the 7.30 Report. To make it so much more pointed, on top of that, there’s the suggestion that Rudd is driven by anger, and that his latest attack on the Mining Industry (with the massive new tax scheme) is about beating the same forces that succeeded over him on the Emissions Trading Scheme.
Author and journalist David Marr spoke with the 7.30 Report‘s Kerry O’Brien about the psychological make-up of the Prime Minister and his collapse in public approval.
Apparently it all boils down to the carbon trading scheme that failed.
The point he started to unravel was not the Global Financial Crisis, an ongoing war, or the weak outcome of his feted hospital plan, it was about the carbon scheme:
9.5 out of 10 based on 2 ratings […]
Kevin Rudd, 7.30 report May 10, 2010
Kevin Rudd let slip yesterday that he has a vision for bigger-more-malignant ETS than the one he dropped.
“We need to make sure that the Senate becomes, shall I say, positioned in a manner which is able to deliver that change to Australia’s domestic laws,” Mr Rudd said at a news conference with the Maldives president.”
We missed the bullet in December. As a nation we came within a butterfly-wing-flap of sacrificing ourselves to the carbon-Goldman-Sachs-socialist-nightmare. But it could still happen, and it could be worse. The national orbit has swung again slightly, like a pendulum with an elliptical chaotic path. With Rudd destabilized, so are we all collectively far from center.
Australia could be headed for an election where climate change is still a central issue, or worse, it won’t be, and the nasty surprise will spring afterwards.
9.5 out of 10 based on 2 ratings […]
It’s either a seismic shift in power here, or a farce of Grand Proportions. Either way, if you haven’t heard about the Australian Super-Tax, it’s one of those full-moon-moments in Western Democracy when “one plus one equals minus thirteen”, and the guy earnestly telling you this is also running the country. The sheer Spectacle of Stupid is something to behold.
Guess what the rules will be next year?
For the first time, our government has announced a war against a whole Australian industry: mining (the same sector that rescued us from the global financial crisis and produced 37% of our total exports in 2009).
Australian Prime Minister Rudd desperately needs a big win to go to the next election with, and desperate men are dangerous. He was taken in hook, line and stinker by the Big Carbon Scare — bet his reputation on the big bluff, and crashed and burned. He doesn’t want to look like a complete loser (and who does) so he grabbed the easy wedge; attack the rich foreigners, grab the fast cash, pretend to be Robin Hood. Et Voila! The Resource Super Profits Tax*.
This is not so much about climate (sorry) but it is […]
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