Who to trust on climate change - Gillard or Abbott?
Piers Akerman – Saturday, July 09, 11 (08:33 pm)
JULIA Gillard’s carbon dioxide tax makes absolutely no sense at any level, political, economic or environmental.
It is as thoroughly illegitimate as the Gillard government’s own blatantly false claim that it has a mandate to implement it.
Or think about it this way: In a non election year in which the deficit is $50 billion and the government has promised a surplus in two years, the government needs a source of revenue which will achieve it. That means no compensation for the poor. That means each dollar for the UN must mean another dollar for the surplus and another to keep the creditors happy. It also means the government is lying now about its plans. I note that when the government claimed it made a mistake in saying the tax would not happen, it had already drawn up plans to execute it.
Sat 09 Jul 11 (10:30pm)
Sun 10 Jul 11 (08:45am)
I absolutely agree with your remarks, and have been trying to get this over to various people I am in contact with. However, lots are reticent to even express an opinion, one way or another. This is extremely worrying, as we seem to be developing a “Stasi” mentality, as adopted by East Germany where you couldn’t trust anyone, even your family.
What a disgraceful government we have, together with certain members of the media, Get-up, Greens etc. Thank goodness for Piers Ackerman, Andrew Bolt and a few others who keep hitting back.
Sun 10 Jul 11 (08:54am)
Some figures for you “Stripped $2 Billion from families by freezing payments”
net debt is over $100 Billion, over $10 Billion more than Keating left, Over 3 & a half years this Govt has increased debt by $150 Billion, 12.3 Million taxpayers in Aus & every taxpayer owes an extra $12,000 plus on this Govts credit card, In the past year alone they have borrowed $135 Million dollars a day & in the next few years Australians will be paying $18 Million dollars a day in interest payments on those borrowings, am sure I heard they are close to the debt ceiling of $200 Billion & want to increase it to $250 Billion !!
Since Labor came into their shared power arrangement Electricity has gone up 51%, Water 46%, Gas 30%. etc
Note you also live in NSW & would be aware that since July 1st there have been further cost of living increases in Electricity, Gas, Water etc etc etc I lost count after the guy on the radio reading them out hit $423 worth of extra payments (then didn’t hear anymore as I was banging my head against the wall because the money tree in the backyard died).
Also Nobody seems to have taken into account the extra GST Bonus that will come with this “ Carbon Tax we have to have” our last Electricity bill alone had an extra GST amount of $30 plus dollars, over & above the preceding bill.
Glad we were’nt the only ones that noticed the “Carbon Tax we have to have” had obviously been well & truly on the drawing board before it was announced.
Even if this Govt achieves a minute surplus the Net Debt is still going to be in the Billions…
As each day passes we have firmed our opinion that “The Greatest Moral Challenge to our kids & possibly Great Grandchildren is THIS GOVT”
Toll on teens lost in sexual Cyberia
Miranda Devine – Saturday, July 09, 11 (08:00 pm)
WHEN Facebook pages rating the sexual prowess of teenagers at schools came to light last month, parents were shocked by the malicious sexual slander.
But for teens in the know, Rootrater and dozens of other gossip sites are just the everyday cyber-reality of our toxic hyper-sexualised culture.
I feel adults and teachers have a duty to extend their community to include teens online, not be entirely separate from them. I loved the movie and play Grease as a child but something that was obvious to me,when highlighted, was the lack of reality of Grease, being a world without parents. Such a world would in reality not have children. Yet our modern day world has a way of taking adults away from children in their daily life.
It isn’t up to children to include adults, it has to be the other way around. Children want to be part of community, and also want independence too, but they want to achieve independence, to fight for it, and the surrender they experience in todays world is frustrating for them.
Of course education authorities are scared silly of the idea of children and adults being in contact online. But the worst aspects of it, the fringe of it, is what we see now. The healthy aspects we don’t see that much of because responsible people are taking too much care .. or don’t see the need.
Sat 09 Jul 11 (10:26pm)
Carbon Sunday Labor’s path to oblivion
Miranda Devine – Sunday, July 10, 11 (10:21 am)
IS this what Labor grandee John Faulkner meant when he urged Labor to embrace “progressive movements” after the last election?
Allow the Labor party to be taken over by a ragtag bunch of greens and kooky independents, with policy endorsed by the shadowy left-wing activist group, Get Up, which uses apparent blackmail to enforce its wishes on a reluctant populace?
While simultaneously betraying the workers on which Labor built its brand, in the once loyal coal, steel and manufacturing electorates which will be crippled by the carbon tax?
All the while destroying the economic underpinnings which made this country great?
That isn’t the path to political revival but electoral oblivion for Labor, and social disruption for the country.
Here’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal:
Writing admiringly that “The autocratic Chinese leadership gets things done fast,” Robert Herbold compares the U.S. to China and, in the process, reveals a disturbing infatuation with autocracy (“China vs. America: Which Is the Developing Country?” July 9). Does Mr. Herbold truly believe that the U.S. government’s refusal to block “pornography and antigovernment points-of-view from our youth and citizens” is an offense, much less one comparable to Beijing’s routine imprisonment of political dissenters and its suppression of free speech?
And downright obscene is Mr. Herbold’s ignorance of history. Praising Beijing’s latest five-year plan, Mr. Herbold giddily announces that “This is the 12th five-year plan and it was announced in March 2011.” He then snarls: “Can you imagine the U.S. Congress and president emerging with a unified five-year plan that they actually achieve (like China typically does)?”
Thankfully, I cannot.
During the first half of the 60-year period governed by the five-year plans that Mr. Herbold so admires, not only did Mao’s policies trap hundreds of millions of Chinese people in dire poverty, the Chinese government slaughtered or starved to death between 49 and 77 million of its own citizens. During the past 30 years, China’s economy has indeed grown, but not because of any five-year plans. It has grown because of privatization and the freeing of markets – decentralization of decision-making authority of the very sort that Mr. Herbold evidently regards as ineffective, contemptible, and sissified.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Recently I posed this far-out scenario as a means of stimulating careful thought about economic progress and the way that progress is measured using conventional concepts and national-income-accounting categories.
Turns out that my scenario isn’t as far-fetched as I assumed. (HT to the more-than-a-dozen people who’ve sent me links to this video) Wow. Wow! Wow ten-thousand times over!
Watching this remarkable technology, I can’t help but reflect on the importance ofMatt Ridley’s point that progress is fueled by ideas having sex with each other; the resulting creativity makes optimism rational.
Here’s a letter to the editor of Economist.com:
How distressing that you and three-quarters of your readers believe the proposition that, as you put it, “an economy cannot succeed without a big manufacturing base” (Economist Debates, June 28-July 8).
While Jagdish Bhagwati argued splendidly against this proposition – and against Ha-Joon Chang’s defense of it – an elementary flaw in your proposition was only barely alluded to, namely, the ambiguity of the word “economy” as used in your proposition.
We might agree that prosperity requires that a great deal of manufacturing occur somewhere. But as long as there is “a big manufacturing base” in theworld economy, what need is there for “a big manufacturing base” in the economy of each political entity classified as a nation? If a nation has such a substantial comparative advantage in services that it satisfies with imports so many of its demands for manufactured goods that no manufacturing takes place within its borders, where’s the harm? Answer: nowhere. What Prof. Chang, you, and most of your readers see as harmful is a mirage created by the fallacy, in a world with trade, of mistaking a nation for an economy.
Consider Professor Chang’s own household. It is, I’m sure, fully specialized in services; it manufactures nothing. Yet the ‘Changese,’ as we may call Mr. Chang and his family, consume countless manufactured goods produced by the non-Changese. The Changese acquire these manufactured goods in exchange for their services. Does Mr. Chang fret over the fact that the Changese economy has no “manufacturing base”? I’ll wager not. So why does he insist that for each political entity called a “nation” to prosper it must have its own manufacturing base?
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Ezra Klein writes on Twitter:
The job numbers should change the debt ceiling debate. Economy needs more support now, austerity should wait. They won’t.
Funny, I see things in a different light. Seems to me that there is no evidence that having the federal government borrow lots of money and spending it has been very effective. Certainly, the predictions of the effect of that spending by its proponents have been very inaccurate.
I’m with the Hayek character from the rap video:
We brought out the shovels and we’re still in a ditch…
And still digging. don’t you think that it’s time for a switch…
From that hair of the dog. Friend, the party is over.
The long run is here. It’s time to get sober!
Having the government return to the level of spending of say, 2007, isn’t austerity. It doesn’t even imply that there will be a reduction in overall spending. My dogma says that when government spending grows dramatically via borrowing and the money is spent on mostly unproductive stuff, that actually discourages consumer spending. Reducing government spending might encourage confidence in the future and encourage employers to hire more workers. It happened in 1945. That confirms my belief in my dogma. I wonder what the Keynesians are holding onto to confirm their worldview.
From The Bolt Report today
Andrew Bolt – Sunday, July 10, 11 (06:04 pm)
My editorial on the carbon tax fraud. I then interview Professor Richard Lindzen, who says Gillard’s tax wouldn’t work, even if man really was warming the globe. Which he doubts.
(The YouTube version of just the Lindzen interview is here, for those who can’t access the full video.)
Gerard Henderson on GetUp and the stifling of debate. Plus we name the Hypocrite of the Week.
Carbon Sunday
Andrew Bolt – Sunday, July 10, 11 (11:36 am)
Vent here while venting is still legal.
The Climate Change Committee deal here.
UPDATE
Some initial, quick thoughts:
- $4.3 billion over four years is going to be spent above what the tax raises to buy off the public with tax cuts and handouts. That’s one wild way to sell a tax, spending more than it raises.
- the compensation must soon run out if the Government doesn’t want to broke. The deal says that after three years, companies can buy offsets overseas for up to half their emissions. This means that costs here will rise, but the revenue to compensate for these rises is sent overseas.
- The Government claims this package will reduce emissions by 160 millions tonnes by 2020. But the immediate tax and spending levels cannot do that. This target can be achieved only with a dramatic raising of the tax. No figure is given for how much of our emissions will be cut by the tax as it.
- The Government refuses to nominate employment effects on the specific industries involved.
- No figure is given for what effect this will have on the world’s temperature.
- Julia Gillard cites in her support Margaret Thatcher, who indeed did warn in 1988 that we should worry about global warming. What Gillard fails to add was that by 2002, Thatcher had developed second thoughts about the alarmists, writing that global warming “provides a marvelous excuse for worldwide, supra-national socialism”.
- The Government is spending $2.7 billion extra over the next financial year alone - before the tax even gets imposed - to buy support throught tax cuts and handouts.
- It’s a magic tax:
Cost increases: Households to see average cost increases of $9.90 a week. However, they will also receive assistance of $10.10 a week on average.
- Gillard announces also she’ll buy out a 2000 Megawatt power station over the next decade at a price not revealed. That’s billions to actually reduce our power supplies, not increase them.
UPDATE
Ludicrous, and all to merely pretend to change a temperature:
HOUSEHOLDS will be given nearly $1.5 billion in cash handouts before a carbon tax is even introduced as the Gillard government tries to sweeten the impact of Australia’s biggest economic transformation since the introduction of the GST.
They’ll also get tax cuts - worth $300 a year to most families earning under $80,000.
But households’ costs of living will jump by about $10 a week, with electricity prices rising by an estimated 10 per cent or $3.30 a week.
The cost of air travel will also rise, with aviation fuel to be subject to the full impact of a $23 a tonne carbon price.
In a move to protect critical industries, the coal and steel sectors will receive $1.6 billion in special assistance, on top of free pollution permits.
How desperate are these people? Here’s the Treasurer:
``The reforms have a net cost of $4.3 billion over the next four years, but the bulk of this, $2.9 billion, is in the first year as you would expect with a reform of this magnitude,’’ he said.
UPDATE
Reader Jenny:
It’s not as bad as it looks Mr Bolt, apparently my husband who is an Engineer will get a yearly $3 tax rebate and after much deliberation today about how he should invest the money, he decided coal might be dodgy so he’s opting for a packet of footy cards because he’ll get 5c change and if he gets a star wildcard he can retire early.
Turmoil in Malaysia
Andrew Bolt – Sunday, July 10, 11 (05:45 am)
This is remarkable on its own terms - but for the Gillard Government it may also represent the end of its hopes for a Malaysian refugee swap:
Malaysian police fired repeated rounds of tear gas and detained over 1,400 people in the capitalon Saturday as thousands of activists evaded roadblocks and barbed wire to hold a street protest against Prime Minister Najib Razak’s government.
At least a dozen people were hurt in the demonstration for electoral reform in downtown Kuala Lumpur. There were no reports of serious injuries but some analysts said the police action was excessive and would dent Najib’s image.
Green tax in pocket, the Government spends, spends, spends
Andrew Bolt – Sunday, July 10, 11 (05:22 am)
With all these exclusions and these giveaways, this carbon dioxide tax increasingly seems to be a mere revenue raiser for a government out to redistribute wealth:
PRIME Minister Julia Gillard will use today’s carbon scheme launch to unveil sweeping reform of personal income tax, tripling the tax-free threshold to let most Australians keep at least the first $18,000 they earn each year.
The Sunday Age can also reveal that fuel for heavy vehicles outside the mining sector will not be subject to the carbon tax, helping to explain why Treasury modelling tips food prices to rise by just 80¢ a week....
Overall the scheme is expected to cost consumers a little under $10 a week or $520 a year - including $3.30 a week more for electricity and $1.50 for gas…
Labor wants to reframe the debate on the carbon tax by entwining it with personal income tax reform based on key elements of the blueprint authored by former Treasury secretary Ken Henry last year.
So huge sources of carbon dioxide such as farming, petrol and many heavy vehicles are excluded. Big emitters get compensated. Lots of people are given more money to buy more stuff, like electricity.
Something doesn’t compute, if this really is about stopping apocalyptic global warming.
Still it will at least make it likelier that we run out of electricity:
The Sunday Age understands that Treasury modelling also predicts the scheme will begin to drive dramatic changes in the electricity-generation sector - forecasting that it will not be commercially viable for any new coal-fired plants to be built in Australia.
Small detail, that.
Then there are those other small little sacrifices -small, for the rest of us, that is:
IT is the town that “built Sydney”, supplying cement for the Harbour Bridge and other landmarks, but Kandos in the state’s central west is the first casualty of the carbon tax.
The town’s cement plant will close in four months after Cement Australia said the carbon tax would exacerbate pressures on the business.Some of almost 100 workers to lose their jobs have family links with the mill spanning almost a century, with their fathers and grandfathers working there before them.
Another small detail:
It was also revealed the scheme will likely cost about $4 billion more than it raises from tax receipts in its the first four years.
Bolt Report reschedule
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, July 09, 11 (05:13 pm)
Our Perth edition will be shown at 9am, not 10am, because of Julia Gillard’s tax announcement.
Everywhere else stays on 10am, but my 4.30pm edition will have an update on the package with Terry McCrann.
I’ll also be back at 9pm on Sunday night for a carbon dioxide tax special, with Hugh Riminton hosting, and John Hewson and Erwin Jackson - two warmists.
It will be like Insiders all over again.
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