Has Clive Palmer gone loco?

[Knobby22]

If Clive Palmer was younger, he would be a real threat, rather like Robert Menzies was to the previous Conservatives when he started the Liberal Party.
As Darkhorse says, he acts like a normal human being and talks straight.
He doesn't straight out lie and twist everything like certain other politicians.

You will find that he will be effectively running the country this term unless the Libs change leaders. Don't believe me? Just watch.

 

[drsmith]

Interesting piece in The Australian this morning.

The week beginning July 14 looks like it will be the one where the death warrant will finally be signed on Labor's carbon tax.

A NEW scheme to put a price on carbon has been scotched within hours of being unveiled, with Tony Abbott sealing an agreement to scrap the carbon tax but rejecting plans to put an emissions trading scheme in its place.

Scuttling a proposal from Clive Palmer and former US vice-*president Al Gore, the Prime *Minister declared the world was “going against” the use of trading schemes and carbon taxes to act on global warming.

However, Mr Abbott struck an agreement with the Palmer United Party leader that clears the way for a final vote to repeal the carbon tax within weeks.

The government is moving to bring on the vote as soon as possible after the new Senate takes shape on July 7, limiting the time for Mr Palmer to shift position after this week’s dramatic policy announcement.


Mr Palmer made it clear yesterday that he would not make his proposal for an ETS a condition of his support to repeal the carbon tax.

That position was also confirmed when the PUP leader held a private meeting with Mr Abbott yesterday morning, clearing the way for further meetings on *budget bills as Labor rejects $39.3 billion in savings.

The nation is now on course for the repeal of the carbon tax, the veto of Mr Abbott’s alternative* *“direct action” carbon abatement program and the rejection of Mr Palmer’s mooted ETS.

While Mr Palmer talked of *securing an ETS with a global agreement from China, the US and other major trading partners, Mr Abbott dismissed the idea.

Mr Abbott claimed there was “no country in the world” adopting an ETS in its economy.

“When it comes to carbon taxes and emissions trading schemes, the world is going against the Greens’ view,” the Prime Minister told parliament.

He said the European scheme covered only 45 per cent of emissions at about $8 a tonne, the *Californian scheme only covered 35 per cent of emissions at $12 a tonne and a pilot scheme in Beijing offered 99 per cent of its permits free of charge to industry.

Climate Institute chief executive John Connor said those claims misled voters because the schemes were “strengthening and working” around the world.

“The most misleading *statement is around California’s scheme — it will be expanded to 85 per cent of emissions next year,” Mr Connor said.

While Mr Palmer talked up his plan for an ETS with an initial price of zero and no firm start date, the idea did not win any support from Labor and the Greens as they argued for the ETS that is in existing legislation. Mr Palmer said he would not insist on his ETS as a condition for repealing the carbon tax. Asked yesterday if mandating an ETS was a condition of support, he said, “No it’s not” and noted there were separate bills as part of the package.

The PUP amendment on an ETS will be put forward in the bill to abolish the Climate Change Authority, not the bill to abolish the carbon tax itself.

On Wednesday night, Mr Palmer was asked on ABC TV’s Lateline: “You won’t make your *repeal of carbon tax contingent on any of these other things you want to see happen?”

Mr Palmer replied: “That’s right, yeah.”

The PUP leader redoubled his objections yesterday to Mr Abbott’s direct action policy, which offers several billion dollars in spending on green projects rather than using market price to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Labor and the Greens also made it clear they would reject the policy even if other climate-change policies were dismantled.

The government will also be forced to retain some of Labor’s climate programs as it fails to *secure the numbers in the Senate to modify the renewable energy target, which decrees that 20 per cent of power comes from renewable sources by 2020.

In an apparent concession to Mr Palmer, the government *delayed a bill in the lower house yesterday to abolish the Clean *Energy Finance Corporation, which now has the PUP’s support to keep investing $10bn in green projects.

Greens leader Christine Milne warned Australia was at risk of a policy gap on climate change. “If circumstances do not change, Australia will be left with no direct action plan, no carbon price and no emissions trading scheme,” Senator Milne told the Senate.

Environment Minister Greg Hunt signalled new measures to force power companies to cut *prices for consumers after the *carbon tax was repealed.

Mr Palmer has made the tougher consumer protection the only condition for his support for the repeal, stepping up pressure on the government to get the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to ensure prices fall.

Mr Hunt told parliament that the ACCC was “on the job” to make sure prices fell.

“But we are happy to take the considerations of members of this house and to go even further and to enshrine in legislation guarantees over and above what we already have,” he said. “So prices will be lower than they would otherwise have been. Electricity and gas costs will be down.”

The amendments are expected to be introduced into the carbon tax repeal package when it is debated in the Senate after July 7, the first day of sitting for new senators including three from PUP and the aligned Ricky Muir from the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party.

The government expects the repeal to be put to a vote in the week beginning July 14.

As it continues to fight for its budget, the government appointed former health department boss Jane Halton as Finance Department secretary for five years. It also reappointed Mike Mrdak as Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development secretary for three years.
.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/nat...ets-already-dead/story-e6frg6xf-1226968253049

 

[noco]

If Clive Palmer was younger, he would be a real threat, rather like Robert Menzies was to the previous Conservatives when he started the Liberal Party.
As Darkhorse says, he acts like a normal human being and talks straight.
He doesn't straight out lie and twist everything like certain other politicians.

You will find that he will be effectively running the country this term unless the Libs change leaders. Don't believe me? Just watch.

Cllive Palmer is a very clever man...he knows how to manipulate people and the media.....he has a sharp tongue which sooner or later may get him into trouble.

I live in Townsville and he has not got a very good name here with his nickel refinery.....If we have excessive rain here during the next wet season, Townsville will become an environmental disaster.....He wants to pump his toxic waste from the tailing dams into the seas off Townsville.....the waste from these tailing dams are some 150 times more toxic than raw sewage.

I find it hard to become enthused with this man probably because of his tactics of late, his money which talks and the fact that he has not laid out any policy as how he would fix the current financial problems ......He has mentioned a few things which I understand would add some $60 billion to the bottom red line.

He stated some time ago that he would not meet with Tony Abbott because he did not like the Prime Minister but he appears to have back flipped and had breakfast with Abbott this morning.

I am afraid I will have to treat him with great caution.



http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/...scuss-carbon-tax/story-fnihslxi-1226967199560

 

[Knobby22]

I live in Townsville and he has not got a very good name here with his nickel refinery.....If we have excessive rain here during the next wet season, Townsville will become an environmental disaster.....He wants to pump his toxic waste from the tailing dams into the seas off Townsville.....the waste from these tailing dams are some 150 times more toxic than raw sewage.

Don't worry, he won't be allowed to...the Federal Environment laws...oh wait Tony got rid of them.
Well hopefully the State Government will stop him.

 

[drsmith]

Nick Xenophon,

CLIVE Palmer is arguably one of Australia’s shrewdest businessmen. He’s probably worth more than his 225 parliamentary colleagues combined. For someone so successful, he’s just done a very bad deal. Not just for his party but for the nation too. It’s like he’s sold his Rolls-Royce to a stranger without agreeing on a price or even a date when he’ll get paid.

This week’s joint announcement by Clive and climate warrior Al Gore will have a chilling effect ”” not on the climate but on business investment, confidence and jobs Australia-wide.

The problem with the plan ”” to scrap the carbon tax and replace it with a mystery ETS ”” is that it is a worst-case scenario for investor confidence and jobs in Australia.

It’s actually worse than a plan to do nothing; it’s a plan that could indefinitely confuse businesses and in the meantime cause economic gridlock. This uncertainty applies not just to the energy sector but to every business and consumer that turns on a light bulb.

Those industries that have a significant energy component ”” particularly our struggling manufacturing sector ”” have even more to fear from this do-nothing approach. If there’s one thing businesses hate more than a known tax, it’s an unknown tax.

Proposing a trigger for an ETS that will have no start date, no pricing mechanism and no compensation or transition arrangements is a recipe for an investment freeze.

Back in 2009, when Malcolm Turnbull was opposition leader, we jointly commissioned Frontier Economics to design an alternative ETS to the Rudd government’s clumsy and inefficient CPRS.

The Frontier scheme could have achieved a greater emissions reductions target than the CPRS, at a much lower cost, because it avoided massive and power price-distorting revenue churn.

The Frontier scheme was dismissed by then climate change minister Penny Wong as a “mongrel”. But every dog has its day. As Frontier’s Danny Price set out on these opinion pages in 2012, he warned the former government in 2009 of a $5 billion-a-year budget black hole from declining revenues from permit sales.

A black hole compounded by an extraordinary $2bn compensation package for brown coal generators (with apologies to Dire Straits it was a case of “money for nothing, permits for free”).

Keeping the renewable energy target in place, as proposed by Clive, isn’t in itself a bad thing. But failing to discern between more reliable renewables and notoriously fickle wind power will continue to cause price distortions in the electricity market.

Any credible emissions reductions policy needs to drive investment in the lowest cost forms of carbon abatement.

As imperfect and clunky as “direct action” is, it can be modified to deliver credible emission cuts and, above all, investment certainty in the volatile energy market. With amendment, direct action can deliver decent environmental objectives provided wise heads such as the Carbon Market Institute are heeded.

Having longer-term contracts and a more robust bidding process will lead to a boom in investment in abatement technologies.

At a time when tens of thousands of jobs will be lost from the automotive sector, the Emissions Reduction Fund ”” the funding vehicle for direct action ”” could drive innovative investment in regional communities and manufacturing.

But ditching direct action as promised by Clive (and others) will leave Australia with no carbon abatement plan at all. The unambitious bipartisan target of a 5 per cent reduction in greenhouse gases on year 2000 levels by 2020 is unlikely to be met, unless, of course, power consumption tanks due to investment uncertainty killing even more manufacturing jobs.

And slashing the $2.55bn investment that direct action promises for emission reduction projects will be a huge blow for manufacturers desperate to find an alternative to car making.

Unlike others, I think Clive genuinely wants to do the right thing by the country and the environment. But he’s going about it in the wrong way. And in the process he could kill off precious manufacturing jobs in Ricky Muir’s home state of Victoria as well in Jacqui Lambie’s Tasmania.

But it could just be that the chaos created by the Palmer-Gore announcement on Wednesday is a gift for the country. The only reason Clive (or any Senate cross bencher) has any power on this issue at all is because the major parties have been too pig-headed, too partisan to agree on the problem and to work out a solution.

More than ever, Australian industry and jobs require certainty in energy policy and carbon abatement. If the two warring tribes of Canberra end up coming together to avoid the Palmer-Gore chaos, then maybe Clive has done the country a big favour after all.

Nick Xenophon is an independent senator for South Australia.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opi...-is-a-jobskiller/story-e6frg6zo-1226968080283

 

[noco]

Andrew Bolt
June 27 2014 (9:36am)


Fairfax reporter Mark Kenny co-wrote a front page story yesterday falsely claiming Clive Palmer would save the carbon tax - showing Kenny, a warmist, had just listened with his eyes at a press conference featuring warmist evangelist Al Gore:

Clive Palmer has thrown into chaos Tony Abbott’s plan to abolish the carbon tax, demanding the Prime Minister instead create an emissions trading scheme that would swing into action when Australia’s major trading partners adopt similar measures.

In fact, Palmer wants the carbon tax gone, even if his doomed plan for an emissions trading scheme on the never-never is rejected.

Mark Kenny today scrabbles out of his hole:

There are two schools of thought regarding the status of Tony Abbott’s climate change promises in light of Clive Palmer’s delphic pronouncements on Wednesday…

(O)ne theory holds that because Palmer has signed the death warrant of the carbon price, the decision is a clear win for Abbott. End of story.

The other holds that Abbott’s ...‘‘direct action’’ has been scuttled, while other crucial pieces of the Labor/Greens architecture will be left in place. Taken as a whole, therefore, his climate policy has been plunged into chaos.

The government, and frankly most people within the politico-media community, lean towards the former…

“Most people within the politico-media community” is just Kenny’s grandiose way of describing the Canberra press gallery’s group thinkers and their pet warmists, yet again out of touch with reality.

And Kenny then gives evidence that suggests the Government itself is not at all alarmed by this “chaos” it’s allegedly been plunged into:

it seems the $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation - which the government desperately wants to scrap - and the 20 per cent Renewable Energy Target, will stay. Neither is popular in the Coalition party-room but their retention will not cause the government too much heartache

“I was wrong” or “I was fooled” would have been much shorter.

UPDATE

The Australian laughs:

CLIVE Palmer must have been tempted to throw out some chicken pellets as he left. The former media adviser to Joh Bjelke-Petersen had just sold the chooks of the Canberra press gallery a chopping block and rotisserie, and they gobbled it up.

Journalists and commentators who had long campaigned against Tony Abbott and in favour of a carbon price had just been advised of a package that would kill the carbon tax, defer an emissions trading scheme into the never-never and put an end to carbon abatement through “direct action” — and they applauded…

That the Queensland coalmine developer and nickel-refining billionaire was audacious enough to think he could snow the media just by having Al Gore share his podium was bizarre enough. That so many in the media fell for it is droll and depressing in equal measure. As for Mr Gore, given his claims about the origins of the internet, he might have found 10 minutes to Google his new political ally before administering self-harm to his diminishing reputation as a climate evangelist…

SMH columnist Mike Carlton took to Twitter saying the announcement would “screw the Tories” but succeeded only in demonstrating his venom and lack of political acuity…

If that weren’t embarrassing enough, no lesser figure than the managing director of the ABC shared an identical sentiment. “Sensing hyperventilation in The Australian’s editorial room,” tweeted Mark Scott. We should welcome Mr Scott’s honesty in publicly aligning himself with the embittered left fringe of politics but we should also despair that the ABC’s editor-in-chief should misunderstand policy and politics so comprehensively…

Wednesday night on the ABC’s 7.30 Sarah Ferguson said the PUP leader was “putting himself at the vanguard” of climate policy. A couple of hours later on Lateline Tony Jones asked Mr Palmer what had caused his “road to Damascus conversion” on climate…

Almost 24 hours on from the excitement of seeing Mr Gore take the stage with a man who has an equally large carbon footprint, the overexcited media pundits started to grasp what was happening.

(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/...kenny_should_just_say_he_was_blinded_by_gore/

 

[Calliope]

Much encouragement has been given Palmer dislikers by the Law investigating his alleged misappropiation of 12 million dollars of Citic Pacific funds for his own dubiious uses. However the Law moves in mysterious ways and after 20 years they still haven't pinned anything on Ms Gillard.

I think the odds on us gettin rid of Clive, greatly favour his demise from over-eating than from our legal system pinning anything on him.

And I think the hard-working Hedley Thomas wiil die of over-work before Gillard and Palmer end up in the slammer.

There is a saying "Justice delayed is justice denied"...but in this case it is being denied to the public, not the perpetrator.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opi...follow-the-money/story-e6frg6zo-1226968229528

 

[Julia]

UPDATE

The Australian laughs:

CLIVE Palmer must have been tempted to throw out some chicken pellets as he left. The former media adviser to Joh Bjelke-Petersen had just sold the chooks of the Canberra press gallery a chopping block and rotisserie, and they gobbled it up.

Journalists and commentators who had long campaigned against Tony Abbott and in favour of a carbon price had just been advised of a package that would kill the carbon tax, defer an emissions trading scheme into the never-never and put an end to carbon abatement through “direct action” ”” and they applauded…

That the Queensland coalmine developer and nickel-refining billionaire was audacious enough to think he could snow the media just by having Al Gore share his podium was bizarre enough. That so many in the media fell for it is droll and depressing in equal measure. As for Mr Gore, given his claims about the origins of the internet, he might have found 10 minutes to Google his new political ally before administering self-harm to his diminishing reputation as a climate evangelist…

SMH columnist Mike Carlton took to Twitter saying the announcement would “screw the Tories” but succeeded only in demonstrating his venom and lack of political acuity…

If that weren’t embarrassing enough, no lesser figure than the managing director of the ABC shared an identical sentiment. “Sensing hyperventilation in The Australian’s editorial room,” tweeted Mark Scott. We should welcome Mr Scott’s honesty in publicly aligning himself with the embittered left fringe of politics but we should also despair that the ABC’s editor-in-chief should misunderstand policy and politics so comprehensively…

Wednesday night on the ABC’s 7.30 Sarah Ferguson said the PUP leader was “putting himself at the vanguard” of climate policy. A couple of hours later on Lateline Tony Jones asked Mr Palmer what had caused his “road to Damascus conversion” on climate…

Almost 24 hours on from the excitement of seeing Mr Gore take the stage with a man who has an equally large carbon footprint, the overexcited media pundits started to grasp what was happening.

(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)

I gather the above was written by Peter of Bellevue Hill, not Andrew Bolt?
It's more astute - and more funny - than the contributions of most of Australia's journalists.

 

[Calliope]

Clive Palmer, who used to be Joh Bjelke-Petersen's media adviser, has the Canberra press gallery (his chooks) eating out of his hand.

Even The Australian, one of his few critics, today devoted five opinion pieces and its editorial to his recent stage managed antics on climate change.

 

[noco]

Clive Palmer, who used to be Joh Bjelke-Petersen's media adviser, has the Canberra press gallery (his chooks) eating out of his hand.

Even The Australian, one of his few critics, today devoted five opinion pieces and its editorial to his recent stage managed antics on climate change.

Well, you cannot deny the fact, he has sought out publicity and is getting plenty of it.....He certainly knows how to manipulate people.

 

[Julia]

Clive Palmer, who used to be Joh Bjelke-Petersen's media adviser, has the Canberra press gallery (his chooks) eating out of his hand.

I disagree. "Eating out of his hand" implies unquestioning acceptance of what was said.

Certainly there has been a lot of comment which is surely as it should be when you have a piece of farce such as the joint press conference between Mr Palmer and Mr Gore.

Everything I've read and heard in the press and on radio has been written/said with a clear tone of mockery toward both Gore and Palmer, whilst acknowledging the latter's rat cunning in successfully wedging everyone. Mr Gore quite possibly is still ignorant of how he has been used.

If you can provide a link to any news reports which genuinely report this week's antics in a tone of intelligent admiration for anyone concerned, I'd be happy to withdraw this suggestion.

 

[Calliope]

Tony Jones and Clive palmer have a love affair . "God bless you, Tony. You're a great journalist".

http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2014/s4033303.htm

 

[IFocus]

Don't worry, he won't be allowed to...the Federal Environment laws...oh wait Tony got rid of them.
Well hopefully the State Government will stop him.

LOL I think the irony may have escaped Noco

 

[drsmith]

Tony Jones and Clive palmer have a love affair . "God bless you, Tony. You're a great journalist".

http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2014/s4033303.htm

I'm trying to imagine Tony Jones, Malcolm Turnbull, Clive Palmer and Al Gore in the same room all looking gooey eyed at each other.

It would last about as long as the common ground in their individual quests.

 

[drsmith]

Paul Kelly's analysis,

BENEATH the calculated and distracting farce that he created this week, Clive Palmer did what was expected of him ”” announced he would vote to abolish Australia’s high-profile emissions trading scheme, the biggest legislative reform of the Labor era.

Palmer had a weak hand that he needed to conceal. As a businessman being punished by a hefty carbon tax bill and as a politician elected on a platform to abolish the carbon tax, Palmer had limited options. He is giving Tony Abbott the victory, above all, that Abbott had to have.

Unless he changes his mind and abandons the position he took this week, Palmer will sweep Labor’s ETS from the statute books in one of the great historical reversals of the past half century, the most recent parallel being Labor’s abolition of John Howard’s Work Choices scheme.

Once abolished, resurrection of an emissions trading scheme for Australia will be a long, hard, bitter road.

Palmer’s decision significantly strengthens the Prime Minister’s hand against Labor at the next election.

It is one thing for Labor to argue for the status quo. It is a much harder call for Labor to campaign at the 2016 election for a mandate to resurrect a carbon pricing scheme, a position that contradicts its cost-of-living campaign and misjudges the extent to which its ineptitude in office has turned opinion against carbon pricing schemes.

This is exactly the sort of campaign that Abbott wants. Abolition of the ETS will confront Labor with a strategic choice: does it continue to preference an ETS policy as a defining issue with the potential to damage Labor at a third successive election following the experiences of 2010 and 2013?

Palmer’s proposal to move an amendment to create a new ETS with a carbon price of zero coming into effect at some unknown time when Australia’s main trading partners establish such a scheme is a grand hoax.

The purpose was to fool people into thinking he is an enthusiast for action. A surprising number of people were keen to be fooled.

Provided this remains an unconditional amendment ”” as Palmer says ”” then it has no leverage. Abbott will not support it. He has no reason to support it. Indeed, it would be sign of serious weakness.

The hoax ETS amendment, therefore, faces certain defeat. But Palmer will be happy that his purpose is achieved. Much of the Thursday morning coverage took him seriously and even elevated him to quasi-heroic status.

This is about self-interest, not the national interest. Palmer is freed from a carbon tax bill likely to be about $6 million annually. He tells the anti-carbon tax brigade that he is keeping his word. He teams up with Al Gore to generate the optics of a climate change activist. He tells the ABC’s Tony Jones that he has changed his mind on climate change because he is concerned “about the wellbeing of the Australian people”.

When the celebrity and atmospherics are swept away, what is Palmer’s core position? It is opposition to the climate change policies of both major parties. He is killing the Labor-Greens ETS, perhaps the most comprehensive ETS in the world, contemptuously saying “we’ll just chuck it out”. He wants to strangle Abbott’s “direct action” policy before it gets any life, again treating Abbott’s policy with contempt. Yet his own ETS proposal is a fraud.

On the test of irresponsibility, this rates pretty high. Palmer’s net position makes it harder for Australia to achieve its 2020 emissions reduction targets. He is deliberately leaving the nation without any principal mechanism to tackle climate change while saying he acts in the best interests of the nation.

Does this sound like a responsible use of the Senate’s balance of power?

Yet Palmer, to a remarkable extent, gets away with it. Indeed, he is being hailed as some form of genius outfoxing Abbott, Labor and the Greens together. For how long will Palmer’s senators allow themselves to be manipulated into these hypocritical stands? Reports that they actually stood up to Palmer are heartening if true.

Former ALP powerbroker Graham Richardson said in this paper yesterday that Palmer might be the best media manipulator he had seen in 40 years. Sadly, that tells us more about the condition of the media than it does about Palmer.

Beyond this, Palmer has given the climate change lobby some genuine second-tier gains. The Abbott government is likely to surrender the fight to abolish two key institutions created by Julia Gillard’s Labor-Greens pact ”” the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, with its $10 billion authority to underwrite renewable energy projects, and the Climate Change Authority charged with advising on future emissions targets.

Abbott’s pledge to abolish these institutions is almost certainly lost now Palmer supports them. Abbott will happily trade away these losses to get the ETS legislation repealed. But they are still political losses. They leave Labor and the Greens with part of their climate change framework in place, evidence of Abbott’s failure to implement his full mandate.

This is a victory for the renewable energy lobby and testifies to Palmer’s effort to broaden his appeal to climate change activists.

The Gillard law creating the CEFC is remarkable, warranting an entire study in governance: it seems the Abbott government has limited power to prevent the CEFC continuing to fund energy projects all the way to $10bn. Despite this, the government is not entirely without influence. It believes it can shape the investment direction of the corporation. The current plan is: no more funds for wind power, more focus on energy efficiency. The government hopes it can strike an agreement with the CEFC along these lines. The bigger result, however, is that the Palmer-Gore love-in has probably saved the renewable energy target from reform this term. This was slated for substantial and justified change by the Abbott government.

The RET has been the main driver of funding into renewables, hiking power prices, underpinning huge industry subsidies and perpetuating high-cost emission reductions. The plan of the Abbott government was not to abolish the RET but scale back its scope to a genuine 20 per cent target from current projections showing that renewables are likely to overshoot and constitute about 26 per cent of the energy source mix by 2020.

Palmer’s support for the RET reveals his electoral tactic of trying to win votes from both the Right and Left on climate change policy. It suggests the audacious effort this week by the green lobby to use the deathly charm of Gore to shift Palmer’s position has reaped some dividends.

The Palmer reversals have confounded everybody, even perhaps himself. The history of the past six years is that trying to win both the Right and Left on climate change doesn’t work. Palmer will never beat Labor or the Greens as a renewable energy champion ”” but he can now be depicted as an agent of higher power prices, unjustified taxpayer subsidies and opponent of efforts to ease cost pressures on households. The Abbott government has achieved its aim of separating the carbon tax abolition from debate about its direct action scheme.

Once the ETS is abolished Abbott will be in a stronger position to argue the merit of direct action. Funding of the $2.5bn Emissions Reduction Fund, the heart of his policy, has been approved as part of the budget.

If the direct action proposal is defeated in the Senate ”” as seems likely ”” Abbott and Environment Minister Greg Hunt, will adopt plan B, one of several alternative funding mechanisms under review. They have no option but to get something in place. The entire intent of their opponents is not mainly to stop direct action but to prove to the nation that Abbott has no working policy.

The deeper historical lesson from this week is the failure of progressive politics over the past six years to secure and solidify an ETS. Labor and the Greens had a golden opportunity to achieve this ”” and they blew it. The almost certain repeal of the Gillard government’s ETS will become an abject humiliation for both Labor and the Greens.

When Gillard finally managed to legislate an ETS, her hope was that a future Labor-Greens Senate majority would preserve it from Abbott’s attack. That hope was undone at the 2013 election. Much of the future debate will focus on international action. Palmer’s effort to draw a formal link between an Australian ETS and comparable action by our trading partners is the exact position adopted by Nick Minchin when he led the assault on the Rudd scheme in 2009.

The reality is that the US Senate will not authorise any “cap and trade” scheme for a decade. That may be a conservative estimate. The climate change lobby talks up the extent of global action. But what counts are national ETS schemes. Judged by this criterion, Abbott remains in a powerful position to argue that the global momentum does not yet exist and will not exist for some years to justify the resurrection of any Australian ETS.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opi...e-of-uncertainty/story-e6frg74x-1226969413134

 

[Julia]

Paul Kelly's analysis is always worth reading.

For some amusement value, I liked Chris Kenny's article on the Palmer/Gore affair.

T-Rex and Bambi show highlights big flaws in our debate

The Australian
June 28, 2014 12:00AM

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Chris Kenny
Associate Editor (National Affairs)
Sydney
https://plus.google.com/109048141924596048134

ON the Sunshine Coast, a 7m fibreglass Tyrannosaurus Rex might have shed a tear; the star exhibits of the Palmersaurus dinosaur park could hardly compete with the freak show in Canberra.

Striding heavy-footed into the Great Hall of Parliament House was Clive Palmer: owner of Palmersaurus, coalmining interests, a nickel refinery and the Palmer United Party.

Alongside him was one-time US vice-president Al Gore who, but for the hanging chads of Florida, might have been president. Instead, he has sought relevance as a climate change evangelist.

Like T-Rex and Bambi, this was not a natural pairing. Palmer has railed against the very existence of climate change, complained about his carbon tax bills and promised to abolish a price on carbon.

Gore had been conned into thinking he was aiding Palmer’s conversion to climate action ”” Bambi helping T-Rex become herbivorous.

Palmer cultivated the impression of change, talking about “our ability to adapt to change and to keep an open mind” on issues.

“Air moves around the world,” he revealed, live on national television.

But Palmer was not for turning. He was delivering on his promise to kill the carbon tax and, for good measure, would try to block Tony Abbott’s “direct action’’ plan.

The outcome could ensure Australia has no scheme to meet its emissions-reduction target of 5 per cent less than 2000 levels by 2020. Palmer chewed Gore up and spat him out.

For all the amusement, these theatrics shone a light on serious shortcomings in our national political debate.

Climate policy has run like an active fault line through our polity for a decade, playing a crucial role in three elections and the demise of five political leaders. Because the major parties have not brokered a mainstream compromise, the balance-of-power forces have exploited the fissures.

In the new Senate, a series of bills and negotiations could put in place a climate settlement that could last beyond three years ”” longer than any climate arrangement in this decade of contention. Palmer’s intervention has been little more than a stunt.

The position today is what we expected it to be a week ago ”” Palmer helping to repeal the carbon tax but seeking to extract some ill-defined political benefits.

Much of the media, however, fell for Palmer’s spin. Given that the ABC, Fairfax press and much of the Canberra press gallery ”” collectively we call them the love media ”” are passionate about pricing carbon and visceral in their loathing for the Prime Minister, they tended to report what they wished for rather than what happened.

The love media has welcomed (in the ABC’s case, courted) Palmer as an irritant in conservative politics, so his arrival with climate guru Gore triggered a nirvana of intersecting ambitions.

On Twitter, The Sydney Morning Herald columnist Mike Carlton was: “Amused that the Queensland populists always screw the Tories: Bjelke-Petersen ... Hanson ... now Palmer. Karma?”

And ABC managing director Mark Scott also missed the point, suggesting Palmer’s intervention might cause “hyperventilation” at this newspaper (even though The Weekend Australian has long argued for an emissions trading scheme in concert with our trading partners).

There was a patent lack of political comprehension at senior levels of the media.

ABC TV 7.30’s Sarah Ferguson said Palmer was “putting himself at the vanguard” of climate policy and The Age splashed across its front page: “Palmer in carbon tax blow to PM.” Even the love media’s online site of choice, Crikey, later pronounced: “Fairfax got it wrong.”

The green Left had gone with its heart rather than its head. Palmer has always opposed the carbon tax and promised to repeal it. So on the main policy issue there was no change.

The government will not haul up a “Mission Accomplished” banner until the vote occurs in the Senate in a few weeks; the new senators are not even sworn in yet, let alone herded on to the right side of a division.

But the only condition Palmer has put on repealing the tax is a no-brainer for the government.

He wants legislative guarantees that the tax cut will be passed on to consumers by the electricity retailers.

This was a promise the government had already made and was prepared to deliver through Australian Competition & Consumer Commission oversight.

It will now be reinforced in the legislation in a move that is more political sop to Palmer than policy improvement.

If this transpires, as expected, then the government will have delivered its central election promise and Abbott will be well satisfied.

The other measures to be settled are much less significant. Palmer talked about an emissions trading scheme to be triggered when our trading partners act. This has been a widely held and rational position on carbon pricing since the Shergold report was delivered to the Howard government in 2007.

Legislating a scheme and rating it at $0 would be a harmless stunt because a price signal without a price is not much of a signal. And, truth be known, if China, Japan, South Korea and the US all shifted to economy-wide an ETS there is little chance Australia would stand apart, no matter the complexion of our government.

But this is on the never-never.

It won’t happen in the foreseeable future. Palmer knows that, as does Abbott, even if the love media has convinced itself of looming global action.

Crucially, Palmer has not made this a precondition for his carbon tax repeal. His intervention has been spin, not substance.

As former Labor cabinet minister Craig Emerson says, it is part of his positioning as the anti-politician politician. “A keen and willing media played into Palmer’s hands,” says Emerson.

“Now lots of low-committed voters who don’t follow any details will conclude that Palmer is a jolly green giant, a champion of the envir*onment.”

Palmer also declared that he wants the renewable energy target retained. But it has long enjoyed bipartisan support.

For all the economic arguments against the RET and for all the upward pressure on electricity prices it entails, it remains politically popular.

For this reason, and because of massive investments already made, it is a difficult scheme to abolish or wind back. So there is no clear indication that Palmer’s stance will have changed the policy trajectory at all.

We await the findings of a government review into the RET for a fully informed debate but a key question will be whether Palmer’s commitment is to the existing 20 per cent RET or the 41,000 giga*watts by 2020 that is a manifestation of that target (diminishing demand projections suggest that capacity would push the renewable share above 25 per cent).

As public transparency about electricity pricing increases, the popularity of the RET is likely to subside and to the extent that Labor, the Greens and Palmer keep the target unnecessarily high, they will own the higher power bills it delivers.

Palmer is also insisting on the retention of the Climate Change Authority. Having scrapped the Climate Change Commission, it is no skin off the government’s teeth to keep the CCA. The Coalition can refocus its advice on to carbon farming and direct action, and it costs only about $6 million a year to run. A bigger economic headache will be Palmer’s insistence on the retention of the Clean Energy Fin*ance Corporation.

Essentially a bank financing low-carbon initiatives, it is supposed to be funded by carbon tax proceeds but if run diligently can return profits.

Its early efforts have been encouraging so, again, the government won’t be too perturbed if it can’t be dismantled.

Rather, in the absence of a dir*ect-action scheme, it may steer the CEFC towards projects, such as solar replacement, that help deliver the emissions target.

Direct action is the swing in the tail of this week’s walk with Palmer*saurus.

When the green Left applauded the Palmer-Gore intervention, they were applauding a plan that rejects direct action. Yet once the carbon tax is repealed the political pressure will flip from Abbott to the Greens and Labor.

The funding for direct action has already been passed by the Senate. Having lost a price on carbon, would Labor and the Greens really combine with Palmer to leave that money unspent and scotch Abbott’s plan to purchase domestic carbon abatement?

For the Greens, this would mean they had combined with the Coalition to kill Kevin Rudd’s carbon pollution reduction scheme, forced Julia Gillard into the self-destructing political disaster of the carbon tax, then combined with Labor and Palmer to eliminate direct action.

Voters may see that the Greens are to climate action what an asteroid strike was to the dinosaurs.

Still, Abbott then may fund carbon abatement directly through state government boondoggles.

After initially welcoming the Palmer-Gore show, the Greens started to realise late this week how it had stomped through their patch and trampled climate action.

“He wants to develop a new coalmine and coal port,” it dawned on Christine Milne. “He operates a nickel smelter.”

The Greens would realise that as the sun sets on climate action it also rises on a new era.

The next time the Senate sits, Labor and the Greens will not hold the numbers to block bills.

Along with the Palmersaurus party, senators such as John Madigan, Nick Xenophon, Bob Day and David Leyonhjelm will be crucial. The previously predictable Greens balance of power will be well and truly extinct.

- The Weekend Australian

 

[drsmith]

For some amusement value, I liked Chris Kenny's article on the Palmer/Gore affair.

I especially liked this line,

Gore had been conned into thinking he was aiding Palmer’s conversion to climate action ”” Bambi helping T-Rex become herbivorous.

Sums it up to a T.

 

[drsmith]

Uncle Clive at his Press Club presser today has played another card and in doing so, got another headline,

Clive Palmer has dealt a major blow to the Abbott government's deficit repair job by announcing his party will oppose more than $9 billion worth of savings measures linked to the repeal of the mining tax.

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-polit...nked-to-mining-tax-repeal-20140707-3bi5w.html

More interesting though from the above article is the following in relation to the carbon tax repeal in the Senate,

Mr Palmer confirmed he would support the repeal of the carbon tax, but would oppose the abolition of the Climate Change Authority and Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

The government's first attempt on Monday to force a debate on the repeal of the carbon tax this week failed.

Labor and Greens senators voted for the matter to stay with a Senate committee until it tables a report next week. The government's push for the repeal of the carbon tax to be the first order of business for the new Senate was defeated 36 votes to 32.

Palmer United senators voted with Labor and the Greens for the repeal to be kept in committee, despite Mr Palmer saying on Sunday his party would back the government's calls for a vote.

But the government was undeterred and on Monday afternoon the Senate was debating a second attempt to force a vote after Senate leader Eric Abetz moved a motion to suspend standing orders.

It will be interesting to see what his senators do in relation to that motion.

My bolds.

 

[Logique]

G'day Doc.
I don't think Palmer should flirt with his political form. For mine this is clumsy politics. Clive needs to understand that sometimes you can be too clever for your own good.

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-polit...nked-to-mining-tax-repeal-20140707-3bi5w.html

The Palmer United Party leader told the National Press Club on Monday he supported the removal of the mining tax but would not vote for many of the associated savings measures. These include scrapping the Schoolkids Bonus and superannuation rebates for low-income earners.

Scrapping the Schoolkids bonus – which delivers payments of $820 per high school child and $410 per primary school student to families on Family Tax Benefit A - would save the budget an estimated $5.2 billion over four years based on figures from the Parliamentary Library.

 

[drsmith]

G'day Doc.
I don't think Palmer should flirt with his political form. For mine this is clumsy politics. Clive needs to understand that sometimes you can be too clever for your own good.

The abolition of the mining tax is still unconditional on his policy page.

Media Release

OZ Minerals sackings direct result of Mining Tax: Clive Palmer

The loss of 61 jobs at one of OZ Minerals’ mine sites in South Australia is a direct result of the mining tax that was first introduced by the Kevin Rudd government in 2010, federal leader of the Palmer United Party Clive Palmer said today.

Mr Palmer said these job losses are proof that the mining tax is taking a toll on the Australian economy.
“This is exactly what I predicted would happen when Rudd first introduced the idea of a mining tax when he was Prime Minister the first time round,” he said.

“I predicted, on the record, that the introduction of a mining tax would result in economic ramifications, reduced exports, and mass sackings in the mining sector as well as a decrease in government revenue.

“This is no longer a prediction, it is fact and OZ Minerals’ recent announcement of job losses is an example of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government’s inability to deliver policies that are in the best interest of Australia.

“Yes, it was Julia Gillard’s government that implemented the mining tax, but do not forget that it was Rudd who sowed the seed.”

Mr Palmer said he predicted the disaster and now the mining industry is facing the disastrous effects of the mining tax.

“Every businessman understands that the solution is not in increasing taxes, rather it is in stimulating the economy through proven business philosophies and creating wealth,” he said.

“Both of the major parties’ policies revolve around increasing taxes, that is what they have done in the past and it is what they will continue to do well into the future if Australians continue to vote for them.

“The Palmer United Party’s will not increase taxes and will abolish the mining tax, the Party is also focused on generating wealth throughout the country.”

The Palmer United Party has endorsed more than 130 lower house candidates and will field candidates in all lower house and upper house seats at the 2013 federal election.
ENDS

For further information please call Andrew Crook 0419 788 431

http://palmerunited.com/policies/

It's in the PDF under all policy releases.

Many of his policy statements/media releases appear to date back to last year's federal election campaign.

Perhaps he's since forgotten that Labor is less of a friend to him than the Libs.

My bolds.