Tag Archives: ets

Julia, Things Have Changed

27 Apr

UPDATE:

Essential Research’s latest polling confirms it.  We used to care.  But things have changed.

Via Crikey’s Poll Bludger –

Seventy two per cent of voters believe “will promise to do anything to win votes” applies to Labor, up nine points since March last year, while 66% believe “divided” applies — a massive 30-point increase since last year. “Out of touch” has increased 13 points to 61%, and “moderate” has dropped 12 points to 51%. Even otherwise uncharacteristic descriptions such as “extreme” now garner significant support, up 12 points to 38%. And whereas even last year 52% of voters thought Labor had a good team of leaders, only 34% now feel that way.

For the Liberals, however, it’s all positive: a drop in the number of voters who think they’ll promise to do anything to win votes — down from 72% to 65%; a rise in “moderate” perceptions by five points to 55%; “out of touch” down to 54%, “divided” down from 66% to 49%. There was also a big improvement on “good team of leaders”, but off rather a low base, up nine points to 40%. The Liberals lead Labor on nearly every positive indicator and trail on nearly every negative indicator. Labor still has a one-point lead on “looks after the interests of working people.”

Full report here.

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Now Or Never To Stop The Carbon Tax?

26 Apr

A great bloke over at Business Spectator, Rob Burgess, has crunched the Senate electoral numbers with a view to the likelihood of Tony Abbott actually being able to repeal the Labor/Green/Oakeshott carbon dioxide tax at any time soon.  It makes for troubling reading (free subscription access) –

Labor is revealing its carbon pricing policy with all the coy teasing of a professional stripper – a glimpse here, a peek there. All Greg Combet showed us yesterday was that 50 per cent of carbon tax revenue would be handed back to households. The rest of his National Press Club speech was old hat.

And all the while Tony Abbott hopes he can get them off stage and close the club before we see ‘everything’.

In an important sense, that’s Abbott’s only hope of triumphing in the highly polarised debate over the carbon tax. The anti-carbon-tax rallies and marches of the past few weeks have elicited rash promises from the Coalition figures who have attended, that they will repeal any carbon tax and get on with reducing emissions their own way. As Abbott put it in February, “we will oppose it in opposition, we will rescind it in government”.

I doubt the thousands of concerned Australians turning up to the rallies know that the Coalition can’t deliver on this promise.

While it’s certainly true an Abbott-lead government would wish to repeal the tax, there is an infinitesimally small chance it would have the Senate numbers to do so in its first term. And it’s pretty clear there would be no help from Labor or the Greens to overturn legislation for which they have so bitterly fought.

The Senate is a tricky beast. Indeed, it’s designed to be that way – the manner in which the house of review is elected virtually ensures a broader range of parties will be represented than in the lower house. Moreover, because only half the 76 seat chamber is elected at each general election, it takes a bit of scribbling on the back of an envelope to work out what’s going to happen (okay, I do it in Excel).

And here’s the results.

The probability of Tony Abbott winning government, whether from the floor of the house, or through an early election, or through a normal general election in 2013, and having enough votes in the Senate to repeal the carbon tax … practically nil.

The odds of Abbott winning government, serving something close to a full term and winning the next election (in 2016, say) with a Senate majority … slim, but not impossible.

…

To win 22 seats at the next election, the Coalition needs to retain the one seat it holds in each of the territories, and win 20 seats in the states. With Tassie likely to repeat its familiar pattern, that means winning:

— four out of six seats in three of the non-Tassie states

— three out of six in the two remaining states

— one seat each in ACT and NT.

That would give the Coalition the 22 votes required to repeal the carbon tax. That would also give bookmakers across the land heart attacks, because the odds of such an electoral coup are so extraordinarily long.

…

That fact remains, therefore, that if Tony Abbott’s team does not find a way to bring down the government before the carbon tax is legislated – most likely in November of this year – the Coalition will be powerless to repeal it until two Senate elections have taken place. That most likely means a carbon tax for four years, and by that time who knows where global carbon politics will have taken us.

Our only other hope would be a double dissolution election – where both houses of parliament are dissolved, and full elections for both houses held:

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Barnaby Ridicules Rudd’s New ETS

29 Apr

Media Release – Senator Barnaby Joyce, 29 April 2010:

ETS – the Extra Tax on Smoking – was it?

Well, this should allay our fears about the Prime Minister’s sincerity. He’s decided after 10 months of having the plans on hold to put a new tax on, wait for it – smoking. What a stroke of genius.  I suppose it’s a carbon abatement scheme of sorts, but I don’t think this is the one he took to the election. It is, though, a good reflection of the proportional relevance of his policy delivery. He talked about an emissions trading scheme to reduce billions of tonnes of carbon, but what he gave us was the removal of a few durries, with another moralistic sermon as a bandaid on his street cred which is more than a little bruised of late.

While in November last year, Mr Rudd said that any delay on climate change action would be “political cowardice … an absolute failure of leadership … and … an absolute failure of logic”, he has now managed to gather the courage to introduce what he called today “an unpopular” move to increase the cost of cigarettes by 25%.

This may be a good move in the interest of health, but it’s not going to cure Mr Rudd’s lack of credibility. It will be called for what it is – ‘a government desperate to do anything to avoid attention because the reality is that they’ve done nothing’ story.

Mr Rudd says this is not a diversion from the ETS, so why wasn’t it announced as part of his health reform package or the budget?  He doesn’t have the conviction to get the “Great Big Tax on Everything” up through a double dissolution, but he can put a tax on the individual emissions from the smokers of Australia. Maybe a tax on cigarettes is a more authentic exposé of the depths of his political complexity and belief.

More Information- Jenny Swan 0746 251500

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Rudd Destroys His Minister’s Beliefs

28 Apr

* This April 28, 2010 post has since been revised, updated, and expanded with new developments in the ongoing Turnbull saga, in the following articles –

“Compassion For Malcolm – He Just Wants His Balls Back“
“Malcolm’s Motive: His ETS Lie Unravelled“
“Doing God’s Work – Turnbull An Angel Of Death Derivatives“
““Turnbull Once Said To Me, ‘You Capitalise On Chaos'””
“Spread The Word – ‘Untouchable’ Turnbull Is A Goldman-plated Turd”
“Malcolm Turnbull – The Goldman-churian Candidate?”

********************

The following media release by Barnaby just goes to show that he isn’t always right.  There is plenty of evidence to strongly suggest the true reason why Malcolm Turnbull really “believed” in an emissions trading scheme.

Simply take the time to review the history of the HIH collapse.  Consider the highly questionable role that Goldman Sachs Australia – of whom Malcolm Turnbull was chairman at the time – had to play in this, the biggest corporate failure in Australian history.

Consider the subsequent $500 million lawsuit brought against the key players in the HIH collapse… including named defendant Malcolm Turnbull.

Consider that only a few years after the collapse of HIH, even as those legal proceedings were being prepared, Malcolm Turnbull’s (again, questionable) takeover from Peter King as the Liberal candidate for the seat of Wentworth gave him a ready made entrance into Parliament in 2004.  Consider his rapid elevation to the key role of … Environment Minister. Followed by the first suggestion that the Howard Government should adopt an ETS.

Consider the revelation only a short time later that then Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull was to be spared from appearing in court as a defendant in that $500 million lawsuit.  Why?

Because his former employer Goldman Sachs had made a “confidential” settlement on his behalf.

Finally, consider which massive international banking power has been behind all the great bubbles in modern history – and is again behind the global drive for a new derivatives-based trading bubble, the likes of which the world has never seen.

It hardly takes a rocket scientist to put two + two together.

Malcolm Turnbull, the former Goldman Sachs chairman, named co-defendant, and beneficiary of a “confidential” settlement by his former employer, “believed” so strongly in Australia having an emissions trading scheme for a very good reason indeed.

But I personally harbour the gravest of doubts that “saving the planet” had anything whatsoever to do with it…

Media Release – Senator Barnaby Joyce, 28 April 2010:

“My heart actually felt for Minister Wong being dragged through the public teeth pulling exercise on radio this morning explaining that the Labor Party no longer has a carbon reduction scheme of any sort,” said Senator Barnaby Joyce. “In fact, it is now apparent that the only scheme likely to get up at the next election is the Coalitions as the Labor Party does not have a CPRS policy. Mr Rudd has yet again destroyed another one of his colleagues by revealing his lack of a political soul and his mercenary ambivalence that puts polls over statesmanship.”

“How can he possibly hold any credibility when he publicly denies the fundamental tenant of his political faith so illustriously espoused at the previous election? Mr Rudd has jettisoned the ETS as one would put aside a paper plate at a picnic.”

“One can now see that at least Malcolm Turnbull, although he had a view I fervently disagreed with on the ETS, was willing to put his job on the line because he believed it was right*. Likewise, Brendan Nelson. I don’t believe Tony Abbott is going to change his view to be in favour of an ETS because the polls say so, or Ron Boswell for that matter.”

“Mr Rudd is a philosophical soldier of fortune who chameleon like uses faux earnestness as a key tool of deception. He has made Peter Garrett completely recant all his former beliefs, he has handed Combet his ceiling insulation problems in a modern version of the ‘loaded dog’, and now he is piece by piece dissembling the belief structure of Penny Wong. Why? Because the poll monster told him to do so. Mr Rudd is a political bric-a-brac shop of kitsch philosophies – overpriced, under planned and dispensed at will.”

More Information- Jenny Swan 0746 251500

UPDATE:

Post reorganised to lead with Turnbull/Goldman connection, followed by Barnaby’s media release.

UPDATE 2:

Interesting. Less than a month after announcing his intention to retire from politics, Turnbull changes his mind.

Or should that be, has it changed for him.

(There are numerous anecdotal reports that Turnbull’s “overseas” trip was for a meeting with Goldman Sachs in NY)

UPDATE 3 – 19 May 2011:

h/t Twitterer wakeup2thelies –

@BarnabyisRight Thats a fantastic write up Head of CSIRO also Fmr director of Aus arm of of Rothschild 2001-03 resume http://bit.ly/mqpJx9

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Hell Freezes Over

18 Mar

Media Release – Senator Barnaby Joyce, 18 March 2010:

Hell Freezes Over: Cameron / Barnaby Agree

For once, Senator Barnaby Joyce agrees with the government. In the Senate today Senator Doug Cameron said, “This government has a good record on tax”.  They have a great record if it is about increasing taxes. Barnaby Joyce says he is glad that they recognise this. The Rudd Government’s ETS is one of the biggest imposts on every aspect of life ever invented.  So it is great that the members of the Senate do recognise that they have a fine record of creating taxes. Remember this is a tax on everything that will achieve nothing. It will not change the weather patterns but it will increase the prices on everything.

Mr Rudd did give us hope that there may be some real efforts on tax reform, but the report is conspicuous by its absence. Perhaps the Henry Tax Report has become a doorstop, a coffee table book or elaborate origami, buried somewhere in Mr Swan’s office?  Without the report, how can the Federal Government expect the states to agree to any change of GST funding for their proposed health plans?

More information- Jenny Swan 0538 578 402

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Joyce: Rudd On Risk

1 Mar

Media Release – Senator Barnaby Joyce, 1 March 2010

On the weekend I was flattered by Mr Rudd making a statement about myself and risk.  I heard the statement whilst driving from a major protest in Armidale about the decision to bring in beef from countries with mad cow disease, which I think is very risky and so do most Australian consumers.

Whilst driving there was blanket coverage on the radio about Mr Rudd’s insulation program, a program responsible for the deaths of four young men, a program which has burnt down approximately one hundred houses and created deaths traps in about another 1000. According to James Tinsley from the National Electrical and Communications Association  it could cost tax payers almost half a billion dollars to fix.

Yesterday I heard Mr Rudd asked about fixing the health system and he said, “We didn’t anticipate how hard it was going to be to deliver things.” Now he wants us to give him more time to do a proper job on it. Let us not forget that Mr Rudd continues to pursue the Emissions Trading Scheme. This is where he reconfigures the whole of the nation’s economy based on a colourless, odourless gas while taxing every Australian household at the power points in their rooms. This is on the belief that Minister Wong can single handedly change the temperature of the globe from her room in Canberra.

Surely Mr Rudd can see the paradox of his statements on risk and national management. I’ll have to inform Mr Rudd, that as I drive around the country I am told constantly about the parody that his government is becoming. I think the best summation of the Labor Government was given by two people, a worker in a mine talking about discussions with his union colleagues and a service station operator. The first one said we just do not understand anything Mr Rudd says and we are very concerned about our jobs and his position on the ETS. The service station operator said people just start laughing when they see Mr Rudd now.

That, Mr Rudd is the fair dinkum reality. It is like the mechanic who, asked to service your car has done nothing to it except mount up a huge bill. After a couple of years bits and pieces of the vehicle are strewn around the shed and now Mr Rudd rushes out the front to talk to you with his little note book and says, I know I’ve stuffed up but I just want you to give me a couple more years to do a proper job on this.

More Information- Jenny Swan 0746 251500

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