Hobart City Council has obviously done their sums on the effects of the carbon (dioxide) tax and hundreds of other council will have to do the same and lift their rates to cope.
No doubt every other council in Australia will in due course have to follow suit.
If nothing else, it puts to rest this "500 biggest polluters" nonsense. Since when was the Hobart City Council, which serves only part of what isn't exactly a large city to start with*, a "major polluter"?
What exactly is HCC doing to create all those emissions? They've got some offices, halls etc, a landfill site (from which methane is already captured for power generation), an aquatic centre, asphalt production plant and a fleet of trucks for road maintenance etc. They don't do anything really dramatic, the asphalt plant is the only thing they run which could be described as a factory, and HCC's emissions would be far less than any of the many larger councils in Australia would no doubt have.
What else? Well I suppose someone's going to argue that the Taste of Tas food festival is using too much LP gas or that the council's outdoor work crews had better stop using petrol / diesel powered tools because of CO2. Or maybe it's a hot food van at Salamanca market burning too much gas, or maybe it's those fairy lights in the trees down there using all the power. This is getting a bit ridiculous.
Worth noting that HCC has long been keen on "green" energy things, having used sewage as a means of heating a major swimming pool complex for many years (don't panic, it's a completely closed system using compressed gas heat exchange - there's no chance of the sewage ending up in the pool even if a pipe did break).
Even more interesting is that there's a few Greens on the HCC. Yep, Greens noting that the carbon tax is going to cost rather a lot. Hmm...
*HCC serves approximately 50,000 people or about a quarter of the Greater Hobart regional population. It's a pretty small operation compared to many local government authorities in the other states - not exactly a "big polluter" one would think.