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Labor's carbon tax lie

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Yes I'd agree with that but within 12 months Libs will be in charge, what they can do to reverse the situaltion is yet to be seen, we actually need an election NOW before the damage starts to set in.
 
Good to see the papers pull together all the threads of this iniquitous carbon tax.

 
Things have settled down a bit in the power industry as the various companies and their traders (yes, generators sure do employ traders!) come to grips with who is likely to do what and plan their own actions accordingly.

Yesterday, prices in Victoria averaged $279.83 which is literally 10 times the average for last financial year. During business hours, when demand is higher, it was even worse at $$398.60. If that continued then we'd end up with a California style situation, and I suspect that traders and managers at a few retailers and others who aren't well hedged would have been in a degree of panic by late last night fearing that this maybe the "new normal".

Average prices elsewhere yesterday as follows. NSW = $97.21, Qld = $79.57, SA = $283.88, Tas = $125.21

Today however, prices have been in the vicinity of $80 much of the time (ranging from about $60 to about $120) apart from a brief spike to extreme levels (over $12,000) in SA.

For reference, pre-carbon tax average prices were about $30 although there has always been huge volatility.
 
Eager said:
So, specifically if you don't mind, how much has the cost of a haircut gone up in % terms over the past 18 months or so due solely to the large increases in the cost of electricity that have already occurred in that time?
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Eager - didn't you read Julia's post? She explained that...

the hairdresser didn't know what her increased costs would be yet...


This is the shameful thing about this tax. Many business owners simply don't know how much this tax will cost them - they can't plan for it and can't put up prices because they don't know the increases.

At least GST was a definite amount and most business people were not impacted except for admin costs as businesses registered for GST get any GST paid back in credits from the ATO.

Unlike carbon tax which seems to be a compounding thing.
 

Excuse my ignorance - but are these costs the ones that will be passed on to the consumer? So it's appearing double the power bill for average joe if I'm correct?

Also - interestingly - what is this California style situation you're speaking of?
 
MrBurns said:
Yes I'd agree with that but within 12 months Libs will be in charge, what they can do to reverse the situaltion is yet to be seen, we actually need an election NOW before the damage starts to set in.
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Damage...how about the damage done to industry due to the noalitions denial of the inevitable? Industry has on the whole accepted this was coming and prepared for it (often at some cost) but you know all this and couldn't give a toss.

In 12 months time the noalition will NOT be in charge of the Senate...realistic chances of them getting ANYTHING thru the Senate = 0
 


Let's see if your prediction is any better than failed AGW predictions...

Going by current polls your predictions are not based on reality, however, only the next election will give the real outcome.
 

The recent chorus cry of the UN climate cowboys asking for immunity from criminal charges does not give much credo to climate change. In fact - it's more evidence this whole thing is manipulated and we are syphoning money for no real benefit.

I probably wouldn't be as mad if they put the money into public transport and created underground Metro's ala US/Europe for the 5 capitals...
 
When in Office, Tony Abbott should remove the carbon tax but leave the architecture in place (set the carbon price to $0). That way we can see what the major economies do and react quickly as necessary after taking into account our own implied carbon price from direct measures (solar panel subsidies for example).
 
At the start of the Fordham interview, he asks Gillard whether she feels 'guilty' about the words she used at the last election, presumably 'There will be no carbon tax under the Government I lead'.

Inexplicably, Gillard replies that when she said those words she meant every one of them.

What am I missing here?
 

She can't tell the truth?
 
It might be deeper than that she can't tell the truth.

It might be that she can't accept the truth.

I've listened to it again and again to try and make sense of it, and she can't seem to accept the truth that by saying those words, she led us to believe that there will be no carbon leislation - call it what you like, price, tax, emissions trading scheme. Nothing but a People's Assembly.

Now she's saying "I said no carbon tax, but I didn't say no ETS, which both parties promised in 2007. But my only way to get there with the Greens in control was to start was with a carbon tax. So don't go around blaming me. You, the electorate asked for it, now you're getting it".

That's just playing us for fools, isn't it? That's just saying you should've read the fine print. Only it wasn't there in fine print. You have to forget what I said in the 2010 election and go back to the previous election (well if we did that, we'd be reviving all her comments about not sending boat people to a non-convention country).

Well, if finally delivering on the 2007 promise of both major parties of an ETS was your ultimate objective after 3 years and the carbon tax was only a means to that end which you couldn't do without, then surely you could've put this all up on the whiteboard or given it to the People's Assembly to play with and then gone to the 2013 election with the real thing - the ETS? That would have been the honest thing to do.

So Sails, I'm back full circle. She really can't tell the truth!
 
JTLP said:
The recent chorus cry of the UN climate cowboys asking for immunity from criminal charges does not give much credo to climate change. In fact - it's more evidence this whole thing is manipulated and we are syphoning money for no real benefit.
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Mate i seem to be struggling finding any genuine news story's about UN climate cowboys asking for immunity? all im finding on google is climate denial sites reporting on this...spinning it as Smoke = fire sort of rubbish.

The only half genuine report i can find online is fox news, can you find any genuine news reporting?

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/0...immunities-against-charges-conflict-interest/

The story reads as the UNFCCC legally separating from the UN so the UN isn't legally libel for anything the UNFCCC does...sounds perfectly reasonable to me, no mention of cowboys etc.
 
JTLP said:
Excuse my ignorance - but are these costs the ones that will be passed on to the consumer? So it's appearing double the power bill for average joe if I'm correct?

Also - interestingly - what is this California style situation you're speaking of?
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They are the wholesale spot market prices not retail so in general aren't directly passed through to households and small business.

But like any market, contracts between producers (generators) and their customers (retailers who then sell to the public) ultimately tend to be a reflection of what happens in the underlying market. If the spot price goes up then ultimately, so do contract rates and hence retail.

So it's a bit like saying the crude oil price did x yesterday. Ultimately, that's going to filter through to the cost of filling your car but prices at the local servo don't (usually) go up and down immediately.

The California reference relates to a situation where wholesale prices went up sharply but retailers were unable to pass this on to consumers (due to regulation in California's case). The end result being that the retailers went broke, and it came damn close to an actual complete shutdown of supply.

In Australia, there would be some retailers who aren't hedged, or who are only partially hedged, and are thus exposed to movements in the spot price. Also there are many areas subject to government regulation preventing an immediate passing on of increased costs. Given that we're talking about literally a 10 fold rise in prices as of yesterday, it's reasonable to assume that some retailers would be under huge financial stress if that continued.

A complication here is that some retailers also own significant generation. For example:

AGL, a major retailer, also owns the largest coal-fired plant in Victoria (and it's one of the largest anywhere) as well as the largest power station of any type (it's gas-fired) in South Australia. They also own much of the non-Snowy hydro generation in NSW and Vic too. They mine all their own coal in Vic and are also in the upstream natural gas business (in addition to the company's traditional role of selling gas to the public).

Origin Energy, also a major retailer, has a broadly similar generation portfolio as AGL. They directly own a number of individually small and medium sized gas-fired plants. They have contracted the output of the largest coal-fired power station in Australia (it's in NSW) and also that of a modest hydro scheme. And they've got a medium size kerosene fuelled power station as well in Qld. Origin is also an upstream oil and gas producer. A side business which the company has long been involved with from its very beginning is that of supplying LPG to consumers.

Momentum Energy is a trading name of the Hydro-Electric Corporation (also known as Hydro Tasmania and as Entura) which owns and operates about 60% (in terms of annual output) of Australia's hydro power generation and is the dominant physical producer (from any source) of electricity in Tasmania. Unlike most hydro plants, their operations are baseload as well as peaking, and they also have activities in wind power and engineering consultancy.

So a lot of the retailers do have some physical production themselves. But certainly there is trade in electricity, and the retailers aren't fully hedged. If prices remained at very high levels for long enough then it is probable that someone would go broke whilst others would make a fortune. Depending who goes broke and who doesn't (that is, what hedging they really have in place) would determine the significance of the outcome but it's certainly plausible that we end up with a physical supply crisis especially where regulations limit pass through of costs.

It's all a bit like telecommunications. There are plenty of people reselling Telstra, Optus etc services. The difference of course is that Telstra's wholesale prices don't change every half hour so there's less risk of these resellers going broke than there is with electricity.
 
That's not a bad suggestion Doctor, I like it.
 
sails said:
Eager - didn't you read Julia's post? She explained that...

the hairdresser didn't know what her increased costs would be yet...
Click to expand...
That is a typical kneejerk attack on something that I wrote, and you now look foolish because you didn't comprehend MY question.

I asked Julia if she could find out for us how much the price of haircuts had ALREADY gone up SOLELY due to the price increases of electricity that have ALREADY happened in recent years. From that, she may be able to come up with a valid correlation between the retail price of the service provided at that business, and the price of electricity (it was Julia who asked the question of the business owner specifically about electricity, and none of the other intangibles).

Nothing so far.
 
Radio National this morning reports that NZ has all but mothballed its ETS instituted by the previous Labor government. The reason cited by the present government is the unreasonable impost on business (which is passed on to consumers of course) - in the absence of action globally and a lessening of interest in AGW
Good to know New Zealand is smarter than Australia.
 
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