Carbon tax
My standard tariff electricity bill has increased from $417.00 to $585.00 for the summer quarter over the years of the Anna Bligh reign. Same usage with an increased rate – all courtesy of the Queensland ALP.
Thanks Anna!
Now Julia (there will be no carbon tax under a government I lead)Gillard is going to make electricity more expensive and uses this throw-away line to justify her back-flip.
Gillard at the Media conference where she hands over power to destroy our economy to the Greens
“I also want to be clear about what it does. It has price impacts. That is the whole point. Consequently, things that generate a whole lot of carbon pollution will be more expensive … so that people adapt and go to low pollution alternatives,” she said.What low pollution alternatives? There is no economically viable low pollution alternative available now, nor will there be for decades to come.
She also criticised some tabloid newspaper reports that the tax would push up electricity prices by up to $500 a year.Speculation at this stage but I bet it will be close to the mark. As detailed above, my bill has increased almost $200 a quarter due to ALP ineptitude so $500 a year is believable with the insane Greens in the picture. She is getting a lot of flack for the fact that she promised not to do exactly what she is doing but I can see her point. Before the election she needed all the votes she could get and certainly didn’t want to get rational thinkers off-side. After the debacle that was the election result she now has to march to a different drum – a Green one – to stay in power.
Gillard at the Media conference where she hands over power to destroy our economy to the Greens
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Carbon Tax…
As Henry Ergas wrote in the Australian yesterday:
“Indeed, in terms of Australia’s national interest, it is difficult to think of a policy more harmful than such a unilateral tax.
This is because a high share of Australia’s emissions are accounted for by export-oriented activities: some 33 per cent, compared with 8 per cent for the US. These activities include mining, where large fugitive emissions occur as resources are extracted.
Given the ready availability of alternative sources of supply, including Canada, the US and Brazil, a unilateral tax on these exports cannot cut global emissions: it merely alters their location. But it would reduce Australian incomes…
In its defence, supporters of unilateral action … deny our tax would be unilateral, pointing to carbon abatement policies elsewhere, notably Europe… But … our export industries do not compete with the European economies. So whatever their carbon policies may be, they do not make our action any less unilateral in its consequences.”
Gillard’s stupid decision to ram her head completely up Bob Brown’s proctologist’s speciality and announce an unnecessary and useless CO2 tax beggars belief.
Labor’s twittering fools and their Green masters claim “new employment opportunities for Australians.” Well as the Spanish found out, the only employment opportunity a unilateral carbon tax in Australia will create will be the opportunity for Australians to move to China or India to work for slave wages in industries which once operated here.
The CEO of BlueScope Steel was devastatingly accurate on Sunday when he explained that not only will the tax not reduce Australia’s CO2 emissions, but it will increase the total global amount of CO2 emissions and other real pollutants.
Our steel manufacturing businesses (what’s left of them) will become even more un-competitive and will be ‘exported’, with other heavy power using industries, to India and China where no CO2 tax is imposed and far less stringent environmental laws apply.
The utter devastation visited on great swathes of India and China will consume what’s left of their environment whilst the smug ‘planet savers’ chatter enthusiastically about their carbon credits and airline travel-offsets over their morning lattes. Meanwhile people like those depicted in these images [http://www.chinahush.com/2009/10/21/amazing-pictures-pollution-in-china] will suffer disease, injury and premature miserable deaths hidden from the chatters’ view behind China’s “steel rain”.
Kev,
These politicans are all painted with the same brush. I recall a certain John Howard stating he would not introduce a goods and service tax. These politicans have two agendas, 1.get in power and 2 stay in power. The Mad Monk does not excite me.
Is there a better choice than Liberal, Labor or Green???
Peter
Your comment would only have relevance if Howard had brought in the GST after the 2004 election after saying he wouldn’t during the campaign. He actually brought it in after he had campaigned on the GST during the 2008 election. He told the people he was going to introduce it, won the campaign and did introduce it.
Julia Gillard said she definitely wasn’t going to bring in a carbon tax knowing she wouldn’t get elected if she mentioned it before the election and then back flipped when the electorate couldn’t do anything about it.
In effect she said No to get in and then Yes to stay in. Howard was open about his intentions before hand and implemented them after being returned because he thought it was a better and fairer system.
Not the same.
As a matter of interest I don’t care who said what – the problem is she is trying to implement a tax that will not impact on Climate change but will impact on the national GDP and on the punters budgets.
I think it’ll cost her.
Aside from the issue of having an utterly untrustworthy PM, the carbon tax will increase global CO2 emmissions by shutting down Aust industries and forcing us to use CO2 intensive transport methods to import the products that we used to make here.
This issue is likely to mean that I don’t see another ALP federal govt in my lifetime, if it doesn’t literally destroy the ALP and I don’t imagine it will leave the greens looking healthy either. When Tony gets in next election, expect him to use the repeal of this tax as a DD trigger to clear the greens out of the senate.
No you’re wrong Kev – IT WILL COST US!
“DD trigger to clear the greens out of the senate.”
He won’t have to worry about clearing out the so-called independents – they are ‘gorn’ as a league commentator would say.
Kev
“Thanks Anna!”
Using the same logic, if you were living in WA, you’d be saying “Thanks Colin”.
In Queensland –
“Electricity prices have been consistently increasing in QLD with three major price hikes since the deregulation of the electricity generation sector in 2007. The Queensland Competition Authority issued a draft ruling in December 2009 under which electricity prices could jump another 13.8 per cent from the middle of this year. If passed this could be the fourth major price hike incurred over the past few years.”
In Western Australia –
“After a decade long freeze on electricity prices following the break-up of Western Power, electricity consumers in Western Australia have been slugged with a 22.5 per cent increase in domestic prices in the past 12 months. Prices are expected to jump a further 15 per cent in July 2010 as tariffs are bought up to the true cost of electricity in the state.
The state government has not announced further increases beyond July, but in January last year the Office of Energy said a 76 per cent rise would be required by the end of 2010-11 to bring household prices in line with costs.”
(Source – http://getasolarquote.com.au/electricity-price-hikes-per-state/)
Increasing tariffs have little to do with the political affiliations of the governments in power. They are a result of a range of factors including the need to upgrade failing infrastructure, the increasing demands on this infrastructure through use of domestic and industrial air conditioning, and the selling-off of public utilities.
Interesting isn’t it, that the selloff of public utilities (bipartisan policy around “free” markets and competition) has increased prices rather than lowered them. “Increased efficiency” was the spin used to justify the practice.
You might be surprised by the electoral reaction to the commitment to a price on carbon. There are a lot of disenchanted Labor voters who supported the Greens in 2010 because of Rudd’s backflip on AGW.
“There are a lot of disenchanted Labor voters who supported the Greens in 2010 because of Rudd’s backflip on AGW.”
and still the only way the greens got anywhere was through preferences from the big parties, nothing on the ‘strength’ of their primary vote – don’t expect that to ever happen again after dumping them worked for the Libs in Vic.