A 30% over-valued, speculator-driven Aussie Dollar white-anting whole swathes of the non-mining economy, with the RBA’s blessing.
A government and opposition united in not wishing to do anything about it.
A World’s Biggest (and highest price) CO2 Derivatives Scam set to hollow out what’s left.
A minority government defying the will of the people in implementing it, and an opposition powerless to stop it.
Sounds great, right?
After all, we are going to “lead the world” in the “greatest moral challenge of our time” … despite no global warming in a decade … right?
And all the other lemmings are going to follow us off the cliff, as enthusiastic human sacrifices to the Green cargo cult … right?
Uh … no:
Japan has become the latest major world polluter to rule out introducing a carbon price or carbon tax in the near future, as it struggles with power shortages and a rising yen caused by the euro crisis.
Senior Japanese diplomatic officials in Tokyo have told The Australian there is “no chance” of the country adopting a scheme similar to Australia’s carbon tax or emissions trading scheme in the foreseeable future.
Japan, the world’s fifth-largest carbon emitter, joins the US and Canada in backtracking on the introduction of a carbon price.
Our impending national economic suicide is becoming lonelier by the day.
Europe?
They went over the cliff years ago.
Now we’re just watching the entrails gush out, and the blood spatter.
At least we can feel all noble and holy though … right?
UPDATE:
The AFR reports that electricity generators are warning of price blowouts in excess of that predicted by the Green-Labor-Wind-Shott gubbermint –
The head of Australia’s largest power generator has warned that electricity prices will rise more than the federal government predicts under an option to ration output in order to stay profitable under the carbon tax.
The comments by Macquarie Generation chief executive Russell Skelton highlight warnings by the power industry that distressed generators will start to manipulate the price of power in the National Electricity Market in order to stay afloat.
The price threat also casts doubt on the government’s tax cuts and welfare payment rises for consumers.
The compensation package is based only on the Treasury estimate of a 0.7 per cent rise in prices due directly to the carbon tax in 2012-13.
Figures released by the government yesterday show some generators will need to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to buy permits in advance to cover emissions when the scheme starts on July 1.
“We expect to go from a profitable business to an unprofitable business partly as a result of the carbon price,” Mr Skelton told The Australian Financial Review.
…
“Most of the analysis and modelling done indicates we will not be able to pass through somewhere between 20 to 40 per cent of the cost [of the carbon price],” he said. “If you have a $500 million bill you have to absorb 20 per cent, so there is $100 million right there and our projected profits this year are $100 million.”
As a result, Macquarie is considering options to stay profitable which include reducing output to increase the price of power on the National Electricity Market. “We have done it in the past to respond to varying market circumstances,” Mr Skelton said. “To the extent wholesale prices increase, you would expect it would increase the price to consumers.”
Submitted by collaborator and stylist, Zeg.
G’day,
Geez, you really do want to believe her this time. I mean there is nothing healthy or good for our democracy to see such factional in fighting in any Governing party. Alas I naively believed her when she said that “there would be No Carbon Tax under a government I lead” because I just thought that once she said it and it was on the public record that she would not be so bold or stupid as to break that pledge….. well as they say the rest is history and so is she and her party come the next election because you just cannot believe that she will be able to command and control a caucus in which one in three members have lost faith in her leadership, plus the fact that she has lead such a disastrous government so far and that the people have not forgiven her for stabbing their PM in the back. Rudd may not have been any better a choice to lead this country, I still remember all of the mistakes that he made but one thing is for sure, he was the people’s choice and deserved the chance to fight it out with Abbott….. that is democracy!
Godspeed
Zeg
Twitter – @Zegcartoonist
Blog – http://zegsyd.blogspot.com/
Disclaimer: The views expressed in the above article are the author’s own. They should not be interpreted as reflecting any views held by Senator Barnaby Joyce or The Nationals
Professor Sinclair Davidson at Catallaxy Files spots a tiny inconsistency:
The newspapers are full of the problems facing the aluminium industry. The basic problem as I see it is that the government has adopted a policy – the carbon tax – that should see the industry closing down (or at least massively reduced in size) but doesn’t want to admit to it. The AFR reports Bill Shorten explaining why the Treasury modelling doesn’t really show the industry collapsing (emphasis added).
Employment Minister Bill Shorten also rebuffed concerns based on the carbon tax modelling.
“It’s how you use that modelling – and that modelling depends upon the rest of the world doing nothing,” Mr Shorten said. “And the reality is the rest of the world is moving to lower emissions, greater carbon efficiency.”
An equilibrium global permit price emerges to clear the global permit market.
…
The modelling assumes an eventual shift to a lower cost coordinated international policy framework, recognising that this is ultimately in all countries’ best interests. By 2016, a more coordinated international policy regime allows countries to trade either bilaterally or through a common central market. As a result, a harmonised world carbon price emerges in 2016.
That must be the exact opposite to what Shorten is saying.
Indeed. But then again, as regular readers of this blog know, Treasury modelling is a farce anyway. So maybe that is why it does not bother Bill Shorten to blatantly lie about the critical base assumptions used by Treasury in their CO2 derivatives scam modelling … since the predicted outcomes (just like global warmists’ “models”) won’t be anywhere near reality anyway.
This propensity to lie seems to be endemic amongst Labor’s leading politicians.
Perhaps I should have titled today’s earlier post, “Labor’s Deficit Of Moral Hygiene”.
Illustration by Zeg | Click to enlarge
Wonderful thing, this carbon dioxide derivatives scheme scam.
Even more wonder full … the Treasury department’s modelling of it.
Bend over and grab your ankles Australia. Here comes your Clean Energy Future power bill.
From the Australian:
The carbon tax will push up electricity prices by about double the 10 per cent nominated in Treasury modelling for some of the nation’s biggest industrial power users.
The biggest electricity users will face power price rises of about 20 per cent, sparking warnings that it will severely damage elements of the nation’s manufacturing sector…
National Generators Forum chairman Trevor St Baker said industrial power users would face higher proportionate electricity price rises compared with residential power users. This is because many big power users have contracts at lower rates than those paid by residential users.
Some of the biggest power users pay about 10c a kilowatt hour, while many others pay from 12c to 17c/kWh. Residential customers pay about 21c/kWh.
Treasury argues that power companies will pass through about 85 per cent of the carbon price, equating to a price rise of 1.95c/kWh for all users.
Oh, well that’s alright then. Just don’t mention that the Australian Energy Market Commission has reported that residential power users can expect a 37% increase in their bills (more below).
This would equate to a 19.5 per cent electricity rise for a big user with a contract price of 10c/kWh and about 13 per cent for a user with a contract of about 15c/kWh.
“The reality is that the little Victorian factories and factories all over the country are going to be affected,” Mr St Baker said. “There needs to be a circuit breaker. These are people who are employing people in the most marginal import-competing jobs. And they are all going to go overseas.”
…
Queensland Nationals senator Ron Boswell said the carbon tax would impose another cost on manufacturers on top of the high dollar. He said many businesses would be caught unawares by the increase in electricity prices when the carbon price takes effect from July 1 next year.
“The cost is bigger when you add the cost of renewable energy,” Senator Boswell said. “Renewable energy could take the increased costs up to 30 per cent.”
There goes the (manufacturing) neighbourhood.
Meanwhile, now that the carbon “tax” legislation has been rammed home by Green-Labor and the “Independents”, the lamestream media has gone all quiet on the true consequences.
As Keith Orchison at Business Spectator notes (emphasis added):
Given the supposedly “white hot” community views on electricity prices – which we were assured back in March was the voter mindset as NSW went to the polls and which we may see play a role in the upcoming Queensland election – there was surprisingly little mainstream media follow-through in December on an important report delivered to the Council of Australian Governments’ energy ministers committee.
The critical point in the report prepared by the AEMC [Australian Energy Market Commission] is that we can expect a rise of 37 per cent in power bills across the country between 2010-11 and 2013-14. In other words, a householder paying $1,500 a year for electricity today can expect to be forking out about $2,050 in 2013-14.
On the AEMC’s estimates, the two states with the most consumers – NSW and Queensland, with 4.5 million residential account holders between them, half the national total – will be the ones to see the highest prices rises: 33 per cent south of the Tweed and 32.2 per cent north of the river.
The AEMC breakdown of costs sees networks (transmission and distribution) contributing half of the increases across the country with wholesale energy prices (including the impact of a carbon charge) adding 40 per cent.
No Keith.
The lack of mainstream media follow through is not surprising at all.
They are the sand that the mainstream masses have their heads buried in.
Their job is done.
Terry McCrann (Herald-Sun, Daily Telegraph) is the only mainstream economics commentator in Australia that I’m aware of, who has consistently called out the Great Global Warming Swindle for what it is.
Seems the pathetically transparent spin from Combet et al following Durban, has inspired Mr McCrann to new heights of excellence … in calling a spade a spade.
Following is a brief excerpt from his brilliant column in yesterday’s Herald-Sun. Be sure to follow the link to read the whole thing.
I think Mr McCrann is a little bit McCranky about all the BS:
The great climate change gravy train rolls on
The great climate gravy train rolls on and Julia Gillard and Bob Brown’s great big carbon tax just got bigger. Much bigger.
Phew. The dedicated delegates had to sacrifice a weekend, stay up all night and pump out even more carbon dioxide, but they were able to pull victory right out of the jaws of disaster, figuratively at five minutes after midnight.
There they were facing the end of their world, their cosy world of riding the climate gravy train from one annual two-week conference in a resort city, to the next, and all the points through the year in-between.
Always, always, being prepared to make the tough choices: which resort city, and indeed, north or south?
Faced with going down in history as the free-lunchers that betrayed not just this generation of climate change main-chancers, but the next free-lunching generation and indeed the generation after that, they resolutely put their snouts – sorry, their shoulders – to the wheel and ground out a deal.
Success! Simply put, they ensured that the great climate gravy train would NOT come to a shuddering stop in Durban. It was given a new head of steam to roll on to Qatar next year and who knows where else right through to at least 2015.
They’ve done themselves and their peer group proud. It’s perhaps not well understood just how many billions of dollars and how many probably hundreds of thousands of main-chancers ride that gravy train.
It’s not just the billions of dollars that have been rescued for the ten thousand-plus people that most prominently ride the climate gravy train from one conference to the next.
But in the finest example of real trickle-down in action, all the people who feed off the climate hysteria and inanity beneath them.
From people building useless solar panels and wind turbines (sic), to feeding off the exorbitant power subsidies, to all the climate institutes (sic), to those doing research, all the NGOs, etc, etc, etc.
All their dollars were at risk if the gravy train had ground to a stop in Durban…
…
Combet and Gillard can’t have it both ways. Either we have signed on in Durban to a massive increase in our carbon tax and the virtual and very quick elimination of our cheap coal-fired power stations.
Or the whole thing is a disgraceful and very expensive charade. There won’t be any real deal in 2015 and we will be left with a useless but punitive tax.
What’s that saying? Oh yes. Oh what a tangled web, a prime minister and climate change minister weave, when first they practice to deceive and be very, very, stupid.
The truth need not hurt.
Sometimes, hearing the cold truth can be downright enjoyable.
Thank you Mr McCrann.
An epic column
The evidence keeps stacking up.
No need to be concerned that Europe is imploding. America slumping. China slowing. Our housing bubble leaking. Our economy faltering. Our debt rising. And 1 in 3 Aussie parents starving.
It really is a great time to introduce the world’s highest priced, and only economy-wide carbon tax.
From news.com.au:
STARVATION NATION: Parents going hungry to feed their kids
PARENTS in the grip of rising living costs fear they can no longer afford to feed their families and are cutting back on the bare essentials just to survive.
In exclusive Daily Telegraph survey of more than 1000 Australians found one in three people had gone without food in the past 12 months simply to put food on the table for their children.
Seventy five per cent of families had to cut back on buying food or cut some items from their shopping lists altogether.
Staples such as meat, fruit and bread were among the most common items sacrificed.
More than 60 per cent of people said they worried at least some of the time about not having enough money to feed their family.
Are you worried you won’t be able to put food on the table? Join in our Cost of Living survey below and tell us what’s on your plate.
Ironically, a report in yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph found grocery prices were decreasing for the first time in a year, thanks in part to the supermarket price wars and improved supply of fresh produce.
But the savings have done little to offset the soaring cost of other major expenses such as household power and water.
Conveniently, those major household expenses just happen to be the primary targets for the banker-designed, Bob Brown-mandated carbon derivatives scam.
And since we already know that Treasury’s “modelling” is about as reliable as reading tea leaves or chicken entrails, there is one thing you can rest assured of in these increasingly uncertain economic times.
Those “major expenses” are set to go up.
A lot.
Thanks Bob.
Thanks Greens voters.
I hope you are as smugly pleased with yourselves over the mouth-watering prospect of many, many more starving Aussie “working families” as you must already be over the genocide of black people in the Third World for the sake of carbon credit schemes to further enrich “green” multinational corporations.
Barnaby Is Right 
Comments