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Resisting Climate Hysteria

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Well no, the people voting for the Greens voted for the Greens (consistently flattening the Nationals in numbers, but only this one time carrying the balance of power, because we have a stupid electoral system). Whoever was in power after that election had to do that by being in a coalition with the Greens or independents. Do you think the Greens, as it happened a necessary part of the ruling faction, should have no say whatsoever?

It wasn't a Labor government. It was a Greens / Labor government, a coalition, as our constitution allows for when there's no clear majority.

The way our democracy works, if one party does not have a majority, a ruling coalition must be made by grouping multiple parties together, or another election has to be held. Abbott famously said he'd do just about anything to get a coalition (his **** was on the table), but didn't manage it. Labor and the Greens did.

If Abbott and the Greens had come to an accord, or Abbott and the independents, they would have had power, and yes, Abbott would have had to give something to the Greens or independents in a deal to allow for that.

There was literally NO way anyone would come to power in a coalition that had been declared before the election. Gillard and Abbott both tried to form a new one, but only Gillard succeeded.

In any case, as I said, the idea that Labor was considering a carbon price was not news.

Gillard - read the article I linked - clearly thought there was a difference between a price on carbon, and a tax. That very article reiterates her promise not have a tax, in the same breath she promises to try to introduce a price.

Now sure, lots of people said that a price is a tax, and maybe that's the case, but it's pretty clear that - yes - she intends to implement a price on carbon. And - again, read the article - this is obviously not the first time she's talked about it. The "news" as presented is that she'll definitely try to implement it in the next term, not that she's just thought up this "price" idea.

Hell, even if this was the first time she HAD thought of it, a headline in the national newspaper on the eve of an election is hardly skulduggery.
 
What the hell? I have two accounts....

That's me, up above, in case the wordy gabble gabble wasn't obvious.

SmellyTerror is usually my gaming tag. No idea why I signed up here with it. I'll blame vodka!
 
Weatsop said:
What the hell? I have two accounts....

That's me, up above, in case the wordy gabble gabble wasn't obvious.

SmellyTerror is usually my gaming tag. No idea why I signed up here with it. I'll blame vodka!
Click to expand...

Vodka is dangerous stuff!

I have now suspended the "SmellyTerror" account. Please continue posting as "Weatsop".
 

That's kind of a separate question, of course the Greens holding the balance of power had the right to barter for a carbon tax but that doesn't mean that Labor had to give in to this demand. They just as easily could have refused and if the Greens weren't willing to renege then another election would have been held.

Abbott rightly wasn't willing to agree to a carbon tax that he knew he had no mandate for, Gillard should have done the same.

I think you missed this one

I've explained to you that her announcement the night before the election to The Australian that she would consider it a mandate to price carbon as very misleading as up to that point she had denied she would price carbon. It's one thing to hold the personal belief that we should price carbon and its another to legislate for that belief which you seem to be implying that we should have known because of this belief she had. If Abbott legislated for every personal belief then abortion would be banned, ABC would be privatised and the GST would be raised. It also could be argued that Gillard was very selective about her choice of tabloid to publish this last minute change as it could be argued that the majority that read The Australian wouldn't vote Labor regardless.


Like I said before, many of us made a postal vote/ early vote and this was a huge back flip that many missed the opportunity to vote on. From the public reaction and the subsequent backlash I think many don't see it your way even if you did somehow read her mind that she was going to introduce a carbon tax even though she stated she wouldn't.
 
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Amongst all the rubbish that has been sprouted regarding "no increase in temperatures over 18 years" and the BOM fudging the temperatures in Australia has anyone actually noticed the physical effects of rapidly increasing temperatures on our agriculture?

For one highly practical example look at how increasing summer temperatures are causing grapes to burn and the picking season to shorten by almost a month.

And in case you think this report is an outlier check out the other papers..


http://earthhour.org.au/sour-grapes/
http://www.cropcare.com.au/Assets/41/
https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/countryman/a/20968918/heatwave-burning-issue-for-vineyards/
http://www.theland.com.au/news/agriculture/general/news/wine-grapes-fruit-burnt-by-sun/1424866.aspx
 

It does seem to matter whether it is extreme cold, extreme heat, extreme drought extreme wet weather, the alarmist will always blame it on Global warming....it is the biggest con job I have ever seen in my life time.

Dead grapes.....dead sheep.....dead cattle....dead fish....millions of dead birds, you name it?.......$hit happens.
 
overhang said:
Abbott rightly wasn't willing to agree to a carbon tax that he knew he had no mandate for, Gillard should have done the same.
Click to expand...

Well we don't know what he would have agreed to. The independents were saying he was willing to sell his ****. If the Greens had been willing to back him for a carbon price, you really think he would have said no?

Since he promised no new taxes during the last election, over and over, and here we have new taxes, I'm not sure why he gets a free pass. In fact, he promised no new taxes, more spending, and a higher deficit, all at the same time. Seems to me he was willing to promise just about anything.

I think you missed this one
Click to expand...

Once again, the reason this thing gets my goat is that Labor DID talk about putting a price on carbon, even as Gillard promised not to bring in a tax. It was a stupid way to talk about it, but that's what they did. I'll say it again: Gillard was talking about a price as a DIFFERENT thing to a tax. The article I linked to said the same thing again. Look:

"I don't rule out the possibility of legislating a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, a market-based mechanism," she said of the next parliament. "I rule out a carbon tax."
Click to expand...

See how she says it in the same breath, right there?

Feel free to find her ruling out a *price* before the election. You won't find it. "Up to that point" she had NOT said she wouldn't bring in a price. In her mind, going on whatever Labor focus-group idiocracy that came up with it all, a price wasn't a tax.

Which is a dopey way of discussing things, since plenty of people will argue that a price is a tax, and that's fair enough. She was guilty of (pretty standard) polly double-speak where they try to get an each way bet, and ended up in a position where she was doing something that could reasonably be considered to be the opposite of what she said. That she'd lied.

But it took on SUCH a massive life, that half-a-lie, built on top of changed circumstances (not a Labor government, but a coalition). That's what doesn't make sense. We seem to accept all sorts of "changed circumstances" decisions from PMs, but THIS one is apparently the worst of all time.

Again, Tony Abbott has clearly and blatantly lied repeatedly, and no-one seems to give much of a damn. He has done the exact opposite of what he said, on multiple occasions. Where's the angst?
 
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Some people who don't smoke, die of lung cancer.

Some of the smokers who die of lung cancer didn't get it from smoking.

But smokers are much more likely to get lung cancer. When a smoker dies from lung cancer, the chances are they got it from smoking...

...we will never know which extreme weather events come from global warming. But we do know that weather is doing a lot more damage than ever before, and that this was predicted a long time ago based on global warming modelling.

If global warming isn't causing the increase, WHAT IS?
 

If you read my posts you will notice I never accused her of lying but have stated she mislead the electorate.
From this link
According to Professor David Stern, an energy and environmental economist at the Australian National University, "a fixed emissions price is effectively a tax when the government sells permits to firms."
Click to expand...

Dr Ben McNeil from the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales agrees the fixed price stage of the ETS is effectively a tax.
Click to expand...
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-18/julia-gillard-carbon-price-tax/4961132

You can be clever with words all you want, just like Tony is trying now with the fuel excise but at the end of the day most the electorate considered it a tax. As far as Abbotts lies go I don't know why it hasn't had the same attention with the media as the 'carbon tax lie', personally I'm quite furious with his lies and even reading today where the ABC & SBS are expected to receive a further 200-300 million in cuts when we were promised they would receive no cuts, you won't read about that in the Murdoch press though.
 

I'm not being clever with words! Labor was DUMB with words. They promised not to do a thing, while also saying they'd do that thing.

I'm not disagreeing with the substance. What I'm saying is that she said she WOULD bring in a price, and NOT a tax. Whatever you and I and everyone else thinks, clearly she thought there was a distinction. She thought that people didn't mind a price, and did mind a tax.

So now we say "a price is a tax". Fine. Good.

So she effectively promised a tax, while promising no tax. It's semantically impossible.

It's like, I say "I'm not going to hit you, but I am going to slap you". Can you really be that surprised when I slap you? Even if the slap was a bit hard, and hey, a slap really is hitting.

...is it really a surprise? If I slap you are you all shocked - hey! You said you wouldn't hit me!

Somehow we all edited our memories of those "price" discussions afterwards. We all got this collective idea that price was never mentioned.

But look, Rudd went to his 2007 election with a carbon tax/price as a central part of his platform.

Turnbull lost his job when, bless 'is innocent lil' socks, he was stupid enough to "respect the mandate" that Labor had to bring in that carbon price, that Labor had promised, and been elected to implement. He got rolled by our current PM, who now of course bleating about how the opposition has a sacred duty to "respect the mandate" - about, of all things, the bloody carbon price.

All of that narrative somehow got written out.

Gillard SHOULD have implemented it before the 2010 election - she should have help Rudd, or done it herself. THAT'S what she did wrong. Her party got elected with it as a central part of the platform. And then she gets re-elected with the Greens as coalition partners - damn, surely it would have taken massive gall to fail to bring in a price after all that? Surely!?

But no. We hate her because she finally did the right thing.
 
But of course going along with a price on carbon is agreeing we have pollution induced climate change.

Jeez, we wont have that, so we will vote it away.
 
Weatsop said:
I'm not being clever with words! Labor was DUMB with words. They promised not to do a thing, while also saying they'd do that thing.
Click to expand...
That was more directed at Gillard who has been clever with words.
Have you got any link apart from that article which we have all seen from election day that she would put a price on carbon? The longer version of the video I linked before is here, you'll notice that the question gives Gillard the perfect opportunity to say that she won't introduce a carbon tax but will put a price on carbon but she doesn't do that at all and just says a bunch of jargon that there will be no new coal power stations and that they want to help renewables. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EyW7oFk6n8&t=2m12s
It's like, I say "I'm not going to hit you, but I am going to slap you". Can you really be that surprised when I slap you? Even if the slap was a bit hard, and hey, a slap really is hitting.
Click to expand...
No It's like a power company coming out and saying they won't put up the price of electricity but then put up the price of the service charges, it has the same effect to all of us but they didn't lie as they didn't increase the cost of the actual power component.


Gillard should have taken it to the election and been very clear about it, she should have said continually when asked that she wont be implementing a carbon tax but will put a price on carbon that will then after a few years become an ETS and that she would also use it as a wealth redistribution tool to compensate low income earners for their increased costs by a welfare package. She failed to do any of this and instead we were left to rub our heads about her last minute "I will put a price on carbon"
 

Whether it is price, a tax or a levy, it makes no difference.

If it walks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck, then it is a duck.

Giilard said and she meant, "THERE WILL BE NO CARBON TAX UNDER THE GOVERNMENT I LEAD" FULL STOP....She relented to the Greens just to stay in power.
 

Ugh.

Do you understand what a semantic bull**** argument is? It's where you ignore what a person was trying to say, and instead try to shift the meaning of their words to get something new.

Labor had been talking about a scheme that would lead into a free-market price on carbon. This would not be set by the government, but by the market. That's what they meant by "price" as opposed to "tax".

Do you REALLY not understand the distinction? How many taxes are determined by the free market? Name some.

She said she WOULD introduce a price. AFTERWARDS everyone said a price is a tax, and yes, their scheme, instead of dropping us straight into a market-based price (which would have been quite high back then) instead introduced a fixed-price for the first few years, to give industry time to transition over.

She did what she promised. In the event, she actually made it ***easier*** for industry by bringing in a watered-down version - the very same fixed-price mechanism that people could call a tax. And there. Gotchya. Instead of a much harsher price, which she had promised, she brought in a transitional fixed price, that people could call a tax (even though it was scheduled to turn into a price at a fixed time).

Can you HONESTLY not see how you really need to ignore what they were trying to say, and instead do a bunch of semantic rules-lawyering, to get the idea they lied about this?
 

Overhang, I do respect you, but here's what I think: most people in Australia got sucked into the "spin" of some talented liars, and like ALL people presented with contrary evidence, you are simply down-valuing the evidence, rather that reassess your view.

Look at the first link you presented, to Fact Checker.

The verdict

Ms Gillard had strong grounds to argue the carbon price was not legally a tax, but she would have faced credible counter-arguments to the contrary.

It remains debatable that she made the wrong choice.
Click to expand...

You OWN link tells you that she could reasonably be right in saying a price is not a tax.

But most of all, your second video - above. At the end, what does she say? She's going to work towards "putting a cap on carbon pollution".

What do you think a cap on carbon MEANS?

Given that we'd discussed a cap and trade system of carbon pricing, given that a cap and trade system of carbon pricing was exactly what the Labor policy was meant to transition to, what do you, personally, think "putting a cap on carbon" means? Knit it a beanie? Perhaps a jaunty beret?

Did the journos gasp at "cap on carbon"? Did they ask what it was? Or did they seem to know what she was talking about? Almost as if it had been discussed before?

You posted a video that shows Gillard promising to price carbon. You thought it did the opposite.

When the truth is so twisted that the opposite of reality becomes part of the national memory of an event, that is pretty much the definition of spin.

It's galling to think we got played so well. Some very talented liars got their shot thanks to some very pissweak language from Labor. But there can be no doubt that Labor DID talk about a price on carbon before the election. Stop posting things you THINK reinforces what you think happened, and actually look at the evidence.
 

Weatsop, no matter how hard you try to wall paper over it or paint it like a pretty picture Gillard still said,...........
"THERE WILL BE NO CARBON TAX UNDER THE GOVERNMENT I LEAD"

It could not have been any plainer.

You are the one that does not seem to understand what she said.
 

You really don't understand, do you? Are you even trying?

She said she WOULD bring in a carbon price, and WOULDN'T bring in a carbon tax.

YOU say a price is a tax. Tell me then, what could she do and NOT lie?
 
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