THE Wall Street Journal states: “The public hates it.” The (UK) Telegraph calls the tax: “one of the most unsuccessful in history” and points out that it is “unique in that it generated virtually no revenue for the Australian Treasury due to its negative impact on productivity; contributed to the rising costs that have taken the gloss off the country’s resources boom; and essentially helped to bring down Ms Gillard’s former Government.” The Telegraph, in an article titled: “Australia abandons disastrous green tax on emissions,” adds that the tax failed in “winning over voters who faced higher costs passed on by the companies that had to pay for it.” In Slate, Ariel Bogel claims the 2011 bill required “about 350 companies to pay a penalty for their greenhouse gas emissions.”
I’m quoting from an article by Marita Noon, Executive Director of Energy Makes America Great, inc. just published online by RedState.
The article goes on to quote me on the need to now repeal the Renewable Energy Target and also gives something of a round-up in terms of where other countries are with such policies…
Marohasy says: “In short, repeal of the carbon tax is a big symbolic win. But it’s mostly just window-dressing: to appease the masses. In the background, proponents of anthropogenic global warming who dominate our political class still very much control the levers of government and intend to continue to terrorize the population with claims of catastrophic global warming, while consolidating their rent-seeking through the RET.” She explained: “Money collected from the carbon tax went to government, money collected through the RET largely goes to the global warming industry.”
While Australia is, as the Wall Street Journal put it: “the world’s first developed nation to repeal carbon laws that put a price on greenhouse-gas emissions,” it is not the only one to back away from such policies. New Zealand has weakened its emissions trading scheme; Japan has retreated from its pledges to cut greenhouse emissions and instead committed to a rise in emissions; Canada withdrew from the Kyoto protocol in 2011; England, where “the bill for green policies is rising,” has “so far resisted calls to expand tax on carbon emissions”; the European Union carbon emissions trading scheme—the biggest in the world and the heart of Europe’s climate-change program—is in dire straits; and, just the day after Australia’s news was announced, South Korea—whose planned 2015 emissions trading market launch would make it the world’s second largest—hinted at an additional delay due to projected costs to businesses.
Read the entire article here or at least go and ‘like’ it.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
I’d really like to believe that Tony Abbott is intelligent, honest, committed to Australia over special interest groups, and capable of achieving reform. Some days it seems true and others one or more of those beliefs seem unlikely. Addressing the boat people problem clearly had priority – people were dying and until the new Senate came in he had no hope of moving on the carbon tax anyway. As you note, getting rid of the carbon tax is largely symbolic (I may revise this opinion when my next electricity bill arrives – it’s been a cold winter in the Mary River Valley), but if Phillip Hutchings is correct, then at least Loy Yang, the antithesis of green energy, was doing very well out of the carbon tax:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/17/the-law-of-unintended-carbon-tax-consequences/
Abbott still has a couple of years to concentrate on pulling the economy around. If he can do so, then the tax revenues will swamp any of the pathetic new taxes he has been proposing, people may forget that he broke his promise on taxes, and the electorate may give him a second term. I’m still not convinced he can do so or that PUP will let him get rid of the RET, but that would be a good next step.
Symbols can be powerful tools in politics, as we know.
And, the axing of the tax was a big symbol to the world.
But, it’s in the details where the truth lies …
From American Thinker :
“As some conservatives celebrate the repeal of Australia’s carbon tax, a dose of caution is warranted: Australia still has carbon taxation on its agenda.
This repealed legislation is apparently going to be replaced by the multi-billion dollar “Direct Action” climate change policy that Prime Minister Tony Abbott has long been promoting.
Thus, one form of carbon pricing gets replaced by another form of carbon pricing, neither of which is acceptable.”
http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/07/australia_still_has_carbon_taxation.html
In this video, titled, “What should replace the carbon tax? (14:12 long) a debate between Labor’s Amanda Rishworth and LNP’s youngest member Wyatt Roy.
Around the 4.30 mark the discussion starts in earnest, but around the 7.00 mark, Wyatt Roy articulates LNP policy very well.
And what a disappointment it is, as Wyatt speaks clearly & concisely.
http://media.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/federal-politics/what-should-replace-the-carbon-tax-5549084.html?utm_source=outbrain&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Outbrain_cpc
The war on carbon(sic) is bi-partisan and, with young Wyatt Roy the future of the LNP, the war on carbon(sic) is here to stay.
A carbon tax is an idea whose time has not yet come. The first problem was that the case for Australia going it alone was not really made. What measurable climate change was expected from all the tax raised? The second problem is the contradiction that an essentially right wing idea, that only markets or market forces and price signals can solve a problem, is suddenly being championed by the left who are traditionally wary of unfettered market forces. In fact one week Prime Minister Rudd was telling us that the GFC had proved that the market economy had failed and we were entering a new era, the next he’s dredged up a “carbon trading scheme”, straight from some long forgotten textbook on neo-classical economics. Forgive us for being skeptical. The next problem is that it was not really seriously implemented. Fuel was exempt, the dirtiest power plants were compensated, handouts were given to some but not others, airlines seemed to pay, trucking companies didn’t. For those of us whose power bills rose but received no compensation it simply became an extra tax for no discernable benefit. The last problem is that the whole thing seemed hypocritical. We can happily ship our coal and gas offshore to countries with no pollution controls and allow our iron ore plants and aluminium smelters to be fail and relocate overseas, in effect simply moving the pollution and jobs to new locations.
The only good thing about a carbon tax is that the money stays in Australia. An emission trading scheme could potentially involve billions of Australian dollars being sent overseas. The problems are too numerous to mention. Who will own the initial credits, ordinary people or the biggest polluters? What will stop the credits from some uncut jungle plantation being sold to multiple buyers across the world? Who will police the thing, who can issue new carbon credits. Will we have to buy extra credits each time we have a bushfire? What happens if Greenpeace decides to buy them all!?
Direct action and environmental legislation has worked in the past. Acid rain is not the problem it used to be. The protocols on CFC use that were designed to reduce the ozone layer seem to be working. The Yarra River no longer flows upside down. Lead has been removed from petrol. Things are not as bad as they seem.
Quote Phil:
“A carbon tax is an idea whose time has not yet come.”
A carbon(sic) tax is a fraud.
Unless you have evidence of it stopping climate from changing.
Finland introduced the world’s first carbon tax in 1990, so we have 25 years of carbon(sic) taxing, yet not one person can point to a weather event being less extreme, or didn’t happen because of the tax.
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2013/10/29/factbox-carbon-taxes-around-world
If you are going to say, “that is a ridiculous statement, as no one can can prove an extreme storm didn’t happen because of the tax, it is Doomsday Global Warming science that claims to be able to see the future extreme storms & can stop climate with a tax.
25 years of carbon(sic) taxes is a fraud and a failure.
The only time left is handcuff time for the perpetrators.
It just shows that you can fool some of the people all of the time.
To replace the carbon tax which has actually reduced carbon in the short time it has been in operation it is proposed to use “Direct Action” instead.
This is $2.55 billion fund that will PAY the big polluters to please try and cut carbon a bit.
And where will this money come from?
The tax payers of course.
So this plan is to stop a tax that will bring in money and replace it with a bribe that will take money out.
And people will really fall for this?
Hi RLP.
Re “reducing carbon”. We reduced electricity use here because of skyrocketing domestic price. And we shipped phenomenal quantities of coal to China and elsewhere to help pay for our big spend. Over there in Asia they make all that stuff you like to use (while no doubt pretending you don’t) with top shelf Aussie coal. Yep, they even make Prius cars and wind turbines and solar panels…with our carbon! (You can’t make solar panels with solar panels, or wind turbines with wind turbines. They, er, don’t really work, you see.)
It’s a bit like those rising sea levels, isn’t it? One talks about sea levels on bits of the east coast of N America and one avoids mentioning post-glacial rebound, subsidence and what’s happening to sea levels on the west coast. It’s all in the framing, isn’t it? There’s always someone dumb enough not to check and just buy into the general sense of alarm.
And we still have hopes that Tony will use Direct Action to modernise our coal power gen. Lovely stuff, coal. Shouldn’t waste a single nugget of it. Terrible shame to burn it in old clunkers.
Of course, if Direct Action money goes into mindless green schemes…what’s new? The only comfort we will be able to take is that we’re not feeding the likes of GOM, Goldman Sachs and the EU sharks with Aussie billions in an ETS. Local scoundrels will get to rip us off instead. Act local, I always say.
Robert: Even if you do not understand AGW, surely you do not believe in the good ole corporations doing the right thing and taking the cash handouts from the abortive guvmint and R$EALLY reducing CO2?
Come on, you will be telling me that you believe in the tooth fairy next.
And of course you have failed to comment on the fact that the money for the hand out will come from the taxpayer.
With voters like you, they have no worries about being elected ever again.
RLP, whose comment did you read? Or have you done a Luke and created propositions nobody has made to argue against?
Firstly, by “understand” AGW did you mean “accept”? Or were you just being manipulative? Straight out of the GetUp handbook that one.
Secondly, if you give corporations (or me or RLP) a cash handout, they just pocket it. Why would I want the “guvmint” (abortive?) to hand out cash to corporations? Huh?
And where could public money come from except the taxpayer? You need to be told that?
What we need the government to do is modernise coal power generation as a national project, much as Messmer transformed the French power industry with nukes. And while we at it, we need to diversify into nukes, and without waiting for mysterious forces to make them happen. I don’t care about The Market or User Pays. I’m not a right winger or libertarian. I’m into conservation. We are wasting coal and we are not even using our uranium/thorium. And instead of researching and trialing alternative technology with hard dollars we are pouring borrowed billions into white elephants and toys.
I think government should tax and government should spend tax dollars on great national projects. It’s just that those projects need to be beneficial and sensible. They need to CONSERVE money and resources in the long term. They must not be projects which completely suck…like wind farms and desals and Timmy’s Geothermia and those tidal thingies now rusting away in the surf.
Labor and the Greens suck in the area of conservation, which they confuse with a mass neurosis called environmentalism. We now have to hope Abbott’s Direct Action does not suck, though it almost certainly does. Fingers crossed, because there’s a lot of money about to go on free wallaby delicatessens by the look of it.
And since I don’t know anybody on this blog who likes Direct Action…why are you preaching to the choir?
“why are you preaching to the choir?” asks Robert. Because RLP is a genuine troll.
He never responds to anything, usually 1 comment per post in which he makes a fool of himself…perhaps that is why he then avoids commenting.
We are lucky to have people like RLP who care so much more than any of us…..and know SO MUCH MORE. What would we do without people like him, imagine how terrible the world would be! NOT. Stop being a sheep RLP and investigate from a sceptics perspective, only somebody seriously ignorant would not at least acknowledge there is some doubt to the theory of CAGW. Note the “C” for catastrophe, not AGW for the beneficial warming that a 1-2 c increase would bring over the next century or so.
And if you think about the carbon tax you seem to really approve of, how much do you think it would have changed the climate in 100 years?
If you really cared about people you wouldnt want to hang a productivity destroying tax that damages our competitiveness around anybody heads , least of all the poor.
Thanks Robert. Your common sense always makes me feel better.
It was decent of RPL to link AGW and the tooth fairy
RPL claims that the carbon tax has actually reduced carbon in the short time it has been in operation.
Leaving aside that it is actually CO2 that attracted the tax (not carbon). . . I would like to see RPL’s evidence that it has been reduced.
As far as I am aware. . .CO2 has continued to rise locally & globally. . .didn’t we recently tip over the 400ppm level?
As Robert & indeed Marita Noon points out. . .the tax did not deliver good results. . . and neither did it reduce CO2.
“Toby says:
He never responds to anything, usually 1 comment per post in which he makes a fool of himself…perhaps that is why he then avoids commenting.”
Well here I am back again and the reason I look in of this forum from time to time, is to see what the lunatic fringe is up to.
When you see
“And we still have hopes that Tony will use Direct Action to modernise our coal power gen. Lovely stuff, coal.”
You know that this the far side.
But keep it up guys, I come here for a laugh when I need a cheer up.
You are most welcome, RLP. I’ve never doubted that you need cheering up.
I used to live near a coal loader on Sydney Harbour. The glossy appearance and Lapsand Souchong smell when they used to wet down the piles were heavenly. Coal is chocolate sunshine, after all. God’s liquorice.
I’ll burn a light of gratitude during Earth Hour, and feel sorry for all the angry, unhappy, carping puritans pretending to do without what they can never do without – except for those sixty minutes of forced piety.
NOAA: 28,504 Low Max Records Set in U.S. in Last 365 Days
http://www.climatedepot.com/2014/07/24/noaa-28504-low-max-records-set-in-u-s-in-last-365-days/
And the Yanks dont have a tax, or did the Oz tax cool the US climate?
“Earth Hour – sixty minutes of forced piety”
Thanks again Robert.