Can We Believe Julia Gillards Carbon Tax Scheme?

I’ve just finished watching Julia Gillard, Greg Combet the Minister for climate change and energy efficiency and our esteemed second in charge Wayne Swan. They were on National TV trying to sell their carbon tax. I noticed while they were crapping on that they had a website, cleanenergy.gov.au as it was listed under the telecast. Don’t bother going there though because at the time of me posting this it didn’t exist. OK, the actual website should be cleanenergyfuture.gov.au! If they can’t even make sure their website goes live on time what hope have we that they got they got their modelling right.

The whole point of that telecast was to get the electorate to believe that they will be better off under the carbon tax. To help sell this idea they’re offering a lot to help sweeten the deal, things like;

  • Nine out of ten households will be compensated with tax Prime Minister Julia Gillard (25)cuts. That’s around 6 million households! I think they plan to do that by lifting the tax free threshold to 18000
  • Single pensioners will get $338 per year whilst pensioner couples get $510 per year.
  • Then there was a whole lot of malarky where they will be spending billions of dollars to ensure people in those industries that will get hardest by this tax will not be effected.
Naturally all this is because there is going to be some fallout when the carbon tax is introduced as 500 of Australia’s biggest companies will be expected to pay $23 a ton for the next three years. But don’t worry this will encourage them to change the way they operate so that they reduce their emissions. You will also be happy to know that the governments so called modelling has taken into consideration that they may pass on this extra cost to their customers.
Greg Combet speaking in November 2005, shortly...
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This is why our pensioners will get from $338 – $510 depending on their situation. But is this going to be enough. Personally I don’t believe so and I hate to think the heartache they and every other Australia will have to live through if the government has got it wrong, again. Let’s not forget the electricity fiasco or the huge waste of money funding themes such the education revolution just to name a couple.
Personally I can’t see how they can factor in all the variables into their modelling. They can’t know how much those companies will pass onto their customers and knowing them they will use favourable figures because they have to make the model look favourable to the Australian public. If say the electricity companies decide to pass it onto their customers, say the manufacturers, who will pass it onto theirPM and Wayne Swan customers, let’s say the wholesalers who will pass it onto their cutovers and so on and so on. That’s not even including all the steps in between such as transport costs and the like. Do they really believe that an insignificant amount of $500 a year will cover those costs?
They’re even introducing another authority, the Climate Change Authority, at what cost I may add, and then almost in the same breath said that it really won’t have any authority because the government has the last authority overruling anything they came up with if the government didn’t agree with it. If that’s the case why have it at all?
Honestly, the whole thing was full of government subterfuge and gobbledigook. They are like a magician using slight of hand, they try to take your attention away from what they are really doing so they can put their hand in your pocked in order to remove your wallet. One last thing we should all ask ourselves is how in hell will this carbon tax actually help the environment?
OK, enough of me raving on! If you missed the speech you can read about it on this article by Jeremy Thomson.
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