Labor's carbon tax lie

[Smurf1976]

Why should we just follow everyone else? Why shouldn't we lead for a change?

For the same reason that I, and I am 5'6" in height, would be unwise to enter any kind of physical fight with someone who is a foot taller and of muscular build. I WILL lose, no question about it no matter what the truth of my underlying argument and how clever I might think I am.

So too Australia will simply see the relocation offshore of its major industries for no environmental gain.

 

[drsmith]

Dr Smith,

You are exactly correct with the following...



I would argue that this is the precise reason why we need a tax on FF use. We need to find alternatives before we run into supply problems with the existing cheap resources. The very fact that they are so cheap stops many alternatives from gaining momentum, if there is indeed anything that can work as well as FF.

Strictly speaking, environmental impacts and supply are two different issues.

If price makes the alternatives look more expansive, perhaps we are considering the wrong alternatives or technology needs to advance to make those alternatives cheaper.

For those arguing that we should wait for everyone else to do something, the simple question is why. Why should we just follow everyone else? Why shouldn't we lead for a change?
brty

The bigger net global contributers might just sit back and watch us jump.

We need to be cleverer than that.

 

[noco]

No doubt JU-LIAR won't be happy with Tim Flannery's interview with Andrew Bolt. How Flannery has the audacity to stay in his $180,000 a year job, beats the hell out of me.


Vhttp://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/column_would_you_buy_another_scare_from_this_wet_bloke/

 

[IFocus]

We do need to be careful a carbon tax could force the price of electricity up as WA's Barnett points out.

Pity he has already umped the electricity prices in WA by 50% in two years with more to come..............

Prime Minister Julia Gillard raps Colin Barnett over power bills

If it is only $200 per year makes Barny's price rises sound cheap........bring it on

Refuting WA Treasury projections that power bills will rise by $200 a family, Ms Gillard pointed out that West Australians already knew the pain of electricity rises from sharp increases 50 per cent in two years in power bills at the hands of Mr Barnett.

 

[drsmith]

We do need to be careful a carbon tax could force the price of electricity up as WA's Barnett points out.

Pity he has already umped the electricity prices in WA by 50% in two years with more to come..............

Electricity prices were kept artificially low in WA by earlier governments.

Also, which WA state government broke Western Power up into 5 different bureaucracies ?

If it is only $200 per year makes Barny's price rises sound cheap........bring it on

It's only another straw on the camel's back.

 

[Smurf1976]

Electricity prices were kept artificially low in WA by earlier governments.

I would argue that it has more to do with huge cost increases since the industry was broken up under the guise of "microeconomic reform".

Here in Tasmania, total staff numbers jumped by alomst 50% in the industry following the introduction of these "efficiencies". It's even worse if you take out those in the engineering consulting business and just look at those actually involved in local power generation, transmission, distribution and retail. It's about a two thirds increase if you measure it that way.

And it's the same around the country. I challenge anyone to prove that the disaggregation of the old utilities has produced any benefits for either consumers or the country as a whole. Something might have become more efficient, but so many new inefficiencies have been introduced everywhere you look. A fortune has been spent to facilitate competition, and the power stations themselves run less efficiently than they used to as well. Where's the benefit? (other than benefits to bankers, politicians, traders and others who've never been anywhere even remotely near a switchyard).

I'm generally very much in favour of free markets, competition and so on. But the enforced breaking up of natural monopolies in the electricity industry just hasn't worked in my opinion. Something might have become more efficient maybe, but a lot of aspects have gone the other way. The loss of power station efficiency alone is directly adding CO2 to the air for no real benefit, it's just one consequence of the silly system the industry operates under these days.

 

[So_Cynical]

For the same reason that I, and I am 5'6" in height, would be unwise to enter any kind of physical fight with someone who is a foot taller and of muscular build. I WILL lose, no question about it no matter what the truth of my underlying argument and how clever I might think I am.

So too Australia will simply see the relocation offshore of its major industries for no environmental gain.

Yep we are way out in front when it comes to climate change

That's why Australia was the 176th signatory (3 December 2007) to the Kyoto Protocol, click the link and scroll right down to the bottom of the list...Fiji was the first to sign up on the 17 September 1998 almost 9 years before we did.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Kyoto_Protocol_signatories

 

[Logique]

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

GREG COMBET: "..No, we won’t accept responsibility for the actions of a small renegade group that broke away and had no authority to carry out-or any relationship to the main rally-and carried out in the way that they did at the doors of Parliament House.."

Background: Greg Combet in 1996 attended this ACTU rally, also outside our Parliament, and also attended by an Opposition leader - Labor’s Kim Beazley:

What happened: once inside the area [Parliament House], demonstrators used weapons including a large hammer, wheel brace, steel trolley and stanchion torn from the internal doors to break open the internal doors. Simultaneously, a second group of demonstrators used other weapons to break into the Parliament House shop but were held at the internal doors. The shop was ransacked and major damage occurred by persons who subsequently occupied the area.

Apology: none received from Mr Combet or the Labor Govt

 

[Smurf1976]

That's why Australia was the 176th signatory (3 December 2007) to the Kyoto Protocol, click the link and scroll right down to the bottom of the list...Fiji was the first to sign up on the 17 September 1998 almost 9 years before we did.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Kyoto_Protocol_signatories

What's the point of signing something if you simply carry on regardless?

I still haven't forgotten that the day Kyoto was ratified, was immediately followed by announcement of coal mining capacity expansion in Australia to meet international demand.

Kyoto is, quite frankly, a crock.

 

[drsmith]

If the following leads to tangable savings for electricity consumers, why hasn't it been done regardless of a carbon tax ?

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/nat...der-a-carbon-tax/story-e6frg6xf-1226030238830

 

[noco]

I'll bet Flannery has been severly chatised by JU-LIAR on this one but is too late, the damage has been done.


http://blogs.news.com.au/couriermai...flannery_refused_to_give_just_000005_degrees/

 

[Smurf1976]

If the following leads to tangable savings for electricity consumers, why hasn't it been done regardless of a carbon tax ?

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/nat...der-a-carbon-tax/story-e6frg6xf-1226030238830

It's not just network costs. There are inefficiencies right through the industry - generation, transmission, distribution and retail.

To a considerable extent, these inefficiencies are structural and a natural result of the present industry structure. For example, there are certainly cases of new transmission lines and even entire new power stations being built for no technical reason whatsoever other than because the transmission operator and competing power station owners aren't supposed to be co-operating in day to day operations, thus requiring massive over investment instead.

We had the third cheapest electricity in the OECD under the old "inefficient" monopoly utility model, beaten only by Canada and New Zealand which both rely heavily on (inherently cheap) hydro power. As far as generation from coal is concerned, we really were top of the heap with the highest thermal efficiency around.

I don't particularly care whether they are publicly or privately owned, but if cutting either electricity prices or CO2 emissions is the aim then I'd go back to integrated utilities simply because that model worked better than what we have today. Yes the workers work a lot harder now since there are far fewer of them, but that's offset by all the new inefficiencies that have been introduced instead.

Looking at the past 20 years of industry restructuring, the end result is that prices to consumers have risen about 4.4% per annum, well above the official rate of inflation. Meanwhile we have lost our standing in terms of costs and technical efficiency. It may well sound good in theory, but the present industry structure is clearly inferior to that which we had previously. It costs more finanically and it pollutes more as well.

Put water, electricity etc back in public hands and leave private enterprise and the markets to do the rest. I'm no socialist, but the National Electricity Market hasn't delivered and there's no need, other than "policy", to keep going down this track that is bleeding consumers dry.

 

[teabagger]

Did I hear on the news that the mining tax will afford big business a 1% tax break which will go to electricity generators, back to the mining co's but which will in turn pay a carbon tax then forwarded on to consumers.

Can only make sense to a labour Govt

 

[medicowallet]

Did I hear on the news that the mining tax will afford big business a 1% tax break which will go to electricity generators, back to the mining co's but which will in turn pay a carbon tax then forwarded on to consumers.

Can only make sense to a labour Govt

You have it wrong, the GST we pay on it counterbalances it.

 

[sails]

And the 10% of carbon tax that will be sent overseas is something else which Ms Gillard and labor are relatively silent:

More here from Yahoo News: Carbon tax billions to help poor nations

"The Gillard Government is party to a UN agreement which Climate Change Minister Greg Combet entered into in December at a meeting in Cancun, Mexico, under which about 10 per cent of carbon taxes in developed nations will go into a Green Climate Fund.

Even when Ms Gillard was denying there would be a carbon tax last August, her government had committed to spend $599 million on climate change handouts over the current three-year Budget period..".

 

[Julia]

And the 10% of carbon tax that will be sent overseas is something else which Ms Gillard and labor are relatively silent:

More here from Yahoo News: Carbon tax billions to help poor nations

Oh, how very nice. I feel all warm and fuzzy.

 

[So_Cynical]

Kyoto is, quite frankly, a crock.

Kyoto compliance is at the core of the coming carbon tax as it is and was at the core of all the global actions taken to abate GHG's

Kyoto is no crock...may not be much of an agreement but certainly no crock.

(29th-December-2010) Slowly but surely, the willingness to cut CO2 is diminishing. As this happens, the cost to any country that does go ahead with such a plan increases in terms of lost industry, trade etc.

Clearly Smurf you jumped the gun a little with this ^ post Copenhagen comment...the political will to cut CO2 and the other 4 GHG's has not diminished at all, inevitability is an unmovable unshakable force.

 

[joea]

Australians will face an $863 hike in annual households costs when a price is put on carbon pollution, new Treasurey modelling predicts.
A $30/tonne carbon price will lift house costs by $16.60/ week says Swan.

Now we all know the calculator of Wayne Swan fires out answers all distorted.
(check any current Labor Program).

So I will predict that anything that Swan calculates, multiply by 2 and it will be just on the low side.
Cheers

 

[Smurf1976]

Kyoto is no crock...may not be much of an agreement but certainly no crock.

Ratification of Kyoto has been followed by a jump in fossil fuel use.

Now, if a Protocol to reduce the use of fossil fuels results in an increase then I'd call that a failure unless, of course, the real objective of the Protocol was something other than that which has been stated.

If Kyoto was even remotely effective then we wouldn't be building new coal export capacity and the like to cope with increased demand.

 

[Julia]

Australians will face an $863 hike in annual households costs when a price is put on carbon pollution, new Treasurey modelling predicts.
A $30/tonne carbon price will lift house costs by $16.60/ week says Swan.
Cheers

The Libs will need to jump all over this before the government comes out with its compensation package, and then they will need to be reminding the electorate that that compensation will need to increase 4% p.a. to keep pace with the increase in the tax.

$863 is going to be a significant amount to people already struggling to pay their bills.

The Treasury modelling apparently also conceded that the tax would not result in Australia being able to meet its reduction targets. So, um, what's the point???