…a new report shows that the problems of the EU ETS are systemic and unresolvable. Keeping this failed system in place would further delay real action for reducing emissions in Europe. The report “EU ETS myth busting: why it can’t be reformed and shouldn’t be replicated”, has been published by several signatory organisations from the “Time to scrap the ETS” declaration. It looks at a number of claims made in defence of the EU ETS and shows why they are not valid.
Amusingly, for any readers foolish enough to swallow the Liberal Party’s baloney about their “Direct Action” alternative “solution” to the “problem” of man-made climate change, the report calls for … wait for it … direct action alternatives to emissions trading.
Meanwhile, the EU carbon price has collapsed, after a vote to try and reform the EU ETS failed to pass. This has ugly ramifications for the already hideous Federal budgeting performance of the Labor party:
The EU’s carbon price sank to 2.55 euros ($A3.24) in trading overnight, as legislators rejected a proposal to save the market from collapse.
The federal budget currently assumes a $29 carbon price in 2015, when Australia’s carbon trading scheme is linked to the EU carbon market.
True to form, and apparently unable to recognise that they are deep deep deep in a hole of their own making, the pig-headed public trough-swillers in the Labor party choose to keep right on digging:
Climate Change Minister Greg Combet told the ABC: “We will continue with our plans to link with the European emissions trading scheme from 1 July 2015, which is still over two years away.”
Sigh.
The bankers, speculators, traders, and assorted financial parasites will be pleased.
In the rigged casino of global financial markets, Volatility = Profit potential
Your humble blogger recently sought legal advice from a prominent constitutional barrister, specifically concerning clauses 109A and 110 of the Clean Energy Act 2011.
Like the mortgage-backed derivatives that blew up the world financial system in the GFC, carbon-unit-backed derivatives are simply the next form of wholly unregulated, unmonitored, shadow banking artificial “money” creation that has had bankers licking their lips in anticipation from the moment the(ir) draft legislation was released:
14 July 2011, Business Spectator — Australian banks are eyeing opportunities to cash in on the proposed carbon tax by developing new financial products and services that capitalise on a market seen to be worth billions of dollars annually, according to a report by the Australian Financial Review.
Australian financial firms that have experience in European carbon markets, such as Macquarie Group Ltd, Westpac Banking Corp Ltd and ANZ Banking Group Ltd are particularly keen to establish their presence in the Australian market….
I have now been informed by the eminent barrister referred to above, that I am right.
If it is judicially accepted that the Clean Energy Act 2011 is a bill “imposing taxation”, then the two cleverly worded little clauses buried within 1,000+ pages of legislation that I have long identified as those that specifically allow the shadow banking industry to begin creating and trading (unlimited quantities of) carbon dioxide derivatives, are, in the barrister’s opinion, in breach of section 55 of the Constitution:
COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA CONSTITUTION ACT – SECT 55
As we have seen previously, there are numerous other areas of the legislation whose constitutionality is highly questionable and thus contestable, under section 55 and other sections too.
Unfortunately, I am advised that private citizens have no legal standing to mount a challenge against the legislation in the High Court.
[EDIT: For the reason that private citizens are not directly subject to the legislation. This perhaps answers the question many have asked, as to why the government still refuses to release a definitive list naming who exactly are the “biggest polluters”. If those who will have standing to challenge the legislation in the High Court do not have confirmed proof of this, it would appear that they could not prove legal standing in order to file an injunction to prevent the bankster scam starting up in the first place. Doubtless this key information will not be made known until after the government has sent out billions in “compensation” bribes to households in May, and parked $10 billion in the banksters’ Clean Energy Finance corporation in such a way that it cannot be retrieved.]
Those in the best position to mount a legal challenge, who do have standing before the High Court, are the State governments.
Having campaigned heavily for our vote on the back of a solemn promise to “fight” the carbon tax if elected, Barry O’Farrell and Campbell Newman have now shown their true colours.
As two-faced standard bearers.
For the predatory, parasitic banking industry that they depend on to help finance their election campaigns, thanks to our rigged and decrepit system of governance that means political parties do not get their hands on the public cash in proportion to their share of the popular vote, until after the vote count has been determined at each election.
For a political leader to promise not to foist a predatory bankster scam on the public, and then do it, is an unforgivable crime against basic human decency and integrity, and, an unforgivable violation of public trust.
But to present yourself as a saviour, and plead for our vote with a promise to fight a predatory bankster scam, only to weasel out of actually doing anything to fight it once elected, is, in the firm opinion of this citizen blogger, a far worse crime.
Indeed, I would go so far as to say that on this issue, Julia Gillard is arguably one rung higher from the bottom of the rancid sewer that is politicians’ “integrity”, than Barry O’Farrell, Campbell Newman, and any other politician who has deceitfully gained political capital by falsely presenting themselves as an opponent of and a fighter against the banksters’ CO2 derivatives scam.
UPDATE:
Speaking of constitutional expert Greg Craven, here’s an excerpt from a column he has written for The Australian today –
“MEAN” is never a good word. There are mean dogs, mean great-aunts and mean parking inspectors. They all bite professionally, and enjoy their work.
Take X-rated state election results. Kristina Keneally was the bad premier of a bad government, but the last act of public vengeance rivalling her defeat was the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Anna Bligh was the fairish premier of a decrepit government, but she copped worse.
Federally, in terms of a normal electoral cycle, the Gillard government should now be contemplating whether a third term will be merely tough or downright heroic. Instead, ministers stockpile cyanide pills along with press releases.
It is easy to dismiss all this as the result of poor leadership, bad policy and weak personal hygiene. But the reality is that Australian politicians everywhere are now faced with a terminally jaded electorate, less inclined to pass judgment than automatic sentence of death…
#^&%(^$! oath.
UPDATE:
By Abbott’s own words, Liberal Party premier of NSW Barry O’Farrell and Liberal party premier of QLD Campbell Newman stand condemned.
THE passage of the carbon tax has received a boost, with legal advice to NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell suggesting that a High Court challenge to block the tax would fail.
On Friday, Mr O’Farrell said NSW would consider joining a potential bid by Queensland to block the July 1 implementation of the carbon tax in the courts.
But The Sun-Herald understands Mr O’Farrell has already abandoned any thought of leading an assault on the Gillard government. Sources confirmed advice had come back that a legal challenge would be likely to fail in proving the carbon tax was unconstitutional.
So, advice that you are “likely” to fail is sufficient reason to not fulfill your pre-election promise, hey Bazza? Sounds like a convenient excuse from a twisting and turning liar to me.
The reluctance of NSW to challenge the controversial tax is likely to slow momentum for a High Court bid. Victoria, like NSW, has said it would consider joining a Queensland bid.
The West Australian Premier, Colin Barnett, has stated publicly that his advice is that a bid would fail. The Queensland Premier, Campbell Newman, said he would not act without at least one other state with him in alliance.
The fix is in.
Unsurprising. And just what this blogger predicted.
A PROMINENT Australian legal expert says he believes the Gillard government’s carbon tax is unconstitutional and that the three largest states stand a chance of successfully overturning the legislation in the event of a High Court challenge.
The University of New England academic and practicing barrister, Bryan Pape, has provided legal advice to conservative policy think tank, the Institute of Public Affairs, that says the carbon tax legislation — due to come into effect on July 1 — could be challenged on several grounds including that, ”the Commonwealth cannot tax State property: Legally carbon dioxide emissions are State property”.
The advice goes on to say that, in Mr Pape’s legal opinion, ”the Commonwealth cannot impose a carbon tax and other related penalties within the same Act. The Commonwealth cannot introduce a carbon tax within its external affairs powers”.
Mr Pape — a specialist in taxation and administrative law — made headlines in 2009 when he mounted a High Court challenge over Labor’s $42 billion stimulus package, arguing that the $900 payments to individuals exceeded the federal government’s taxation powers.
“These greenhouse gases are property owned by the States and it is impermissible for the Commonwealth to impose any tax on any property of any kind belonging to a State,” Mr Pape said.
The full bench of the court ruled in favour of the Commonwealth by a margin of 4-3.
”The IPA commissioned a legal opinion because state governments have sat on their hands and let the Gillard government introduce a tax that they could potentially stop,” he said.
”Only the High Court can decide the constitutionality of the carbon tax, but there are clear grounds to challenge it according to one of Australia’s top administrative law minds.”
Mr Wilson said the full text of the legal opinion would not be released ”pending a possible legal challenge.”
”A copy has being provided to the Premiers and Attorneys-General of the states with the best legal standing for a potential challenge – New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia,” he said.
The legal advice will arrive on the desks of state premiers as they prepare to travel to Canberra this week for Friday’s Council of Australian Governments meeting, where, for the first time in 4½ years in office, Labor will be outnumbered at the negotiating table.
Long past time that others joined the fray to pressure State premiers such as Barry O’Farrell and Campbell Newman to make good on their pre-election promises.
He also suggests the Commonwealth can’t impose a carbon tax and related penalties within the same piece of legislation nor use the external affairs powers of the constitution.
Barnaby Joyce has written an article for the Australian Conservative, posing a question that regular readers all know the answer to (my emphasis added):
David Murray, outgoing Chairman of the Future Fund has blasted the carbon tax as the worst piece of economic reform he has ever seen.
So if the unions don’t like it, big business doesn’t like it, manufacturing doesn’t like it, farmers don’t like it, the electorate pathologically hates it, well the question then is who actually wants it? And how powerful is that minority? Where is the constituency that wants this tax? In Warrego on the weekend, out of 20,000 votes, the Greens received only 325. Maybe this is an example of how toxic these types of green policies have become.
The Labor party have tried to change the name to make the tax more palatable. First it was a tax to deal with global warming, then it was a tax to deal with climate change and now it is a tax for clean energy. What’s next? The happy pet tax? The peace in our time tax? It’s all the same, it’s an insane and very economically dangerous bureaucratic rip off.
Remember the knee-jerk government action on live cattle exports?
It just gets better:
High dollar, carbon tax to hit cattlemen
Australian beef producers risk becoming globally uncompetitive, if they are not already, a forum in Darwin has heard.
The Northern Territory Cattlemen’s Association (NTCA) 2012 annual general meeting and beef forum was told costs for beef producers were drifting higher and were not sustainable.
NTCA president Rohan Sullivan told about 300 cattle producers at the meeting that the cost of slaughtering cattle in southern Australia was about $340 per head, compared to just $150 per head in the United States, and $30 per head in Indonesia.
Mr Sullivan said the introduction of the carbon tax would likely add another $20 to that figure for Australian cattle farmers, and also add to export transport costs.
“We need something else, because the current situation is not sustainable,” Mr Sullivan told the meeting.
“Australia risks becoming globally uncompetitive, if it isn’t already,” he said.
Mr Sullivan said General Motors was recently promised more than $200 million over 10 years by governments to keep going in Australia, while Indonesia will be given $20 million to develop its cattle industry.
Australian cattle producers should also get assistance, he said.
“A slip lane on the Stuart Highway and supporting our infrastructure don’t seem too big an ask,” Mr Sullivan said.
He said the issue of wild dogs was also becoming a big issue for producers.
“There was a report the other day from a member of the academia to reintroduce dingoes into some areas to control foxes, cats and that are overrun with herbivores – I wonder if that includes sheep and cows?” he said.
During the past year Northern Territory cattle producers have also had to face challenges from the one-month live export ban on the sale of cattle to Indonesia, and bushfires which tore through much of Central Australia, Mr Sullivan said.
But that’s ok, right?
Who needs a healthy, thriving, locally-produced food industry?
Let’s just ban the building of dams, wipe out the cattle industry, sell off prime agricultural land for mining … and our best agri-businesses to the Americans and the Chinese.
As we have seen in last week’s post on the too-high AUD, and again in today’s post on the mining tax, it seems that it is only after a problem is created, only after diabolical, and/or idiotic, and/or treasonous legislation is actually passed into law, that the legislation starts to receive any serious scrutiny and criticism from the “experts”. And, for that criticism to be prominently and neutrally reported by the mainstream media.
From AAP via Business Spectator:
Murray launches attack on ALP policy
The outgoing chairman of the Future Fund has launched a stinging attack on the Gillard government ahead of his departure next week.
It would raise costs within Australia and reduce the export competitiveness of energy-related commodities.
Speaking on ABC radio, he also fired a shot at the mining tax, saying it was “clumsily” designed and introduced.
“The timing at the top of the terms of trade was not good,” he said.
UPDATE:
Ummmm … hasn’t the government been tirelessly claiming that households will not be worse off under the CO2 derivatives scam, because of the “compensation” package?
The unions disagree:
Unions want wage increase to offset carbon tax
A group representing the Australian Services Union and Queensland Public Sector Union plans to factor in the cost of the carbon tax during bargaining negotiations with the Queensland government later this year, arguing the tax will raise the cost of living for their members, according to a report by The Australian.
“They are compensating 60 per cent of people for some of it,” Union secretary Alex Scott said, according to The Australian. “That’s far from full compensation. We want to make sure we don’t go backwards in terms of cost of living.”
The prospect of carbon tax costs factoring into union wage negotiations has sparked growing concerns among employers over fears the new tax will cause a ripple effect that will raise the cost of production and labour beyond expectations.
UPDATE 2:
From the Australian:
OUTGOING Future Fund chairman David Murray has condemned Labor’s carbon tax as “the worst piece of economic reform I have ever seen in my life”.
Mr Murray, who has also lashed the Gillard government’s mining tax, warned the tax would undermine the nation’s competitiveness and damage the economy.
“If you want me to tell you my view, it is the worst piece of economic reform I have ever seen in my life in Australia,” he told ABC radio this morning.
A joke I remember well from school is that of the Japanese Wing Commander briefing his pilots before a mission in about 1945. In emphatic language he lauds the virtues of Japan, the Emperor and the war task, then orders that the pilots load their planes with bombs, fly low into the rising sun and on into the sides of US ships. The Wing Commander then asks ”any questions?”
”Only one,” comes the reply from a bandana-wearing pilot in the front row ”most honourable Wing Commander, have you gone completely crazy?”
I am waiting for some bandana-wearing Labor parliamentarian to ask the same question of Julia Gillard after she has ordered her troops to reload their planes with the carbon tax and fly it into the side of the electorate.
She has just seen the most precise example of an electoral annihilation in Queensland. The exit polling indicates that cost of living, trust and the carbon tax were issues foremost in voters’ minds. My own survey on the polling booths affirms these findings.
What was the PM thinking when, after this disaster, she announces a rededication to this ludicrous cause? Anyhow, my colleagues and I will back Gillard’s stubbornness over discernment and capitalise on the Labor party’s inability to do the bleeding obvious and drop the carbon tax.
Tony Windsor claims that the Queensland election was a victory for independents; well of course Tony, how did the front pages miss that story? Only two out of five were re-elected; one sits in a safe Labor seat (Gladstone) and the other suffered a 10 per cent swing against him. On average the independents suffered an 18 per cent swing against them, even larger than the 15 per cent swing against the Labor party, but in WindsorWorld this is a job well done.
Hubris is our greatest foe. The Katter Australian Party, or its next reincarnation, will harvest a resentment vote on the aspirations of those whose lives or rights may not change enough for their vote to lock in where they last placed it. Labor will be still trying to ”get back to its core” but this will prove near impossible with Julia Gillard casting a clumsy shadow over all Labor grassroots philosophy.
The LNP has a massive task in front of it. It must start paying back debt; it has to put a broom through the areas of the bureaucracy that are not willing to go on the journey that the public vote has overwhelmingly asked for; it has to still invest in key infrastructure or the state business plan will not be able to raise the money to pay the debt.
Importantly it has to change the culture about how it sees itself and how the world sees Queensland. It has to brush the cobwebs from tourism venues that seem to be still living in the ’80s. It has to realise that the wealth, coal, cotton, cattle, grain and the troublesome coal seam gas start in the regions and the people in the regions know this.
The LNP has made a good start by scrapping more than $650 million in programs that aim to change the temperature of the globe. Trying to change the climate from a room in George Street is absurd. We may as well send Campbell Newman to South Korea this week to help the world dispose of nuclear material, and there would be more chance of success there than in changing the climate.
It is simply not the Queensland government’s core business. Every dollar spent on these woopy ”green” programs is a waste of taxpayers’ money if there is no relationship between the spend and a real outcome.
A fundamental lesson of the Queensland election for all political parties is don’t get too carried away saving the world when it is quite evident that is not the league we play in; leave that to the US, China and the 100 million population league. Instead, concentrate on roads being safe, nurses being paid on time, the public books to be kept in order and living costs to be kept under control.
It would be peculiar if Australia took the lead on regime change so it is doubly so when you try do it on climate change.
It’s time for governments to stick to their knitting.
Barnaby is right.
I particularly and enthusiastically applaud his astute observation that Australian political parties should not “get too carried away saving the world when it is quite evident that is not the league we play in; leave that to the US, China and the 100 million population league”.
Indeed.
We are a pissant little country; a big-arse island continent, with a tiny population.
A pimple on the bum of the world.
Nothing wrong with that.
Except when idiot, corrupt politicians decide to squeeze the pimple, thinking that they are “saving the planet”.
It is high time that Australian politicians – and Australians more generally, for that matter – gave our relative overachievement-in-sports-driven national hubris the big punt, and instead embraced the humility that would enable us to avoid being taken on the kind of mad “frolics” that Senator Joyce wisely resists.
"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
Barnaby Is Right 
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