The Failed "Pink Bats" Scheme - See I Bag the Government Too!

Ok ok, I know what many would say about my postings. Many would say I’m biased in that I always bag the UMNO led Malaysian government and the opposition party in Australia, the Liberal party. What’s there not to bag…they’re a bunch of goons as far as I’m concerned. If they don’t know the difference between their bums and their head, you can’t blame me or anyone else for that matter for bagging them. Well today I’m going to show everyone that I’m “impartial” in that I’m going to rip into the Australian government, specifically their stimulus spending into the failed ‘Pink Bats’ scheme.

For those who don’t know the ‘Pink Bats’ scheme is a scheme concocted by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Environment Minister Peter Garret and their ‘brilliant’ advisers to insulate thousands of homes in Australia thus saving the environment but more specifically to create jobs for Australians. On the surface this seems like a noble idea but in reality it’s a terrible idea. Stimulus is a bad idea in the first place in that it’s not demand driven but supply driven by the government hence manipulating the market but this one is particularly disastrous in that it has now lost about 6000 jobs due to it being scrapped, so much for the ‘creating new jobs’ theory.

From the start this scheme was rushed in the hope that rolling it out as soon as possible would ‘create’ new jobs. Our brilliant treasurer Wayne Swan’s biggest nightmare is unemployment and to stave off the dire unemployment story all over the world which was knocking on Australia’s doorstep they decided to spend spend spend. How it was spent and where it was spent was immaterial just as long as it was spent! It’s easy to spend other people’s money right? Now comes the fact that taxes will have to be raised to pay for these largesse irks the hell out of me considering the amount of taxes I already pay in the form of income tax, land tax, water rates, council rates, GST etc. etc. etc…..the list is endless. The petrol that I buy with my after tax dollars is in itself taxed by the government!! I get taxed on my bank interest when the savings interest that is being taxed is the after taxed amount, the rest being taxed in the form of income tax or other forms of taxes before going to the bank in the form of savings. I’ve heard that for every one Australian income earned, more than 51% goes into taxes in one form or other but that’s a subject for another day and don’t get me started on that now otherwise this may take a few pages.

Anyway back to the ‘Pink Bats’ scheme. It was meant to be a $4 billion Energy Efficient Scheme that would give a rebate for installing insulation in the roof. The rebate was not to be given to the home owner but to the insulation company and amounted to $1,600. Many insulation companies were flogging off insulation for free. One pink bats supplier wrote on their website: “And, if you’re getting something worth up to $1,600 for free, why would you choose anything but the best?” The only problem with that was there were many companies created overnight that all of a sudden happened to be Insulation providers with no track record and no expertise to do the job well and safely. Some images captured on video showed kids on roofs helping with the installation! The result of all this was 4 unfortunate deaths and some 90 odd house fires attributed to dodgy installation. Apparently, the Environment Minister had several “warnings” but this was let to continue, as the bigger goal of spending our money needed to be fulfilled. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd defended his minister as “first class”. If that’s s first class minister then I don’t know what 2nd and 3rd class is. Maybe Tony Abbot can let us know. All he needs to do is turn around during question time and he won’t have to look far.

Peter Garret defended the scheme as a “good scheme” and blamed the specific installers and not the scheme for the deaths and dodgy installations. A couple of days later, he scrapped the scheme altogether without an ounce of prior warning and thousands were left jobless. Not only did he make one mistake, he corrected his first mistake by making another (bigger) mistake. Now you see why he too like the UMNO led Malaysian government and the opposition Liberal party deserve a bagging?

What’s going to happen now? Well as mentioned, thousands of installers are out of a job, not to mention the manufacturing that supports this industry, that’s a given. But further to this the government is going to need to do safety checks on the thousands of existing installations, rectify those that are dodgy which should be many considering the deaths and fires and send the inspectors back to verify that the job is done right this time…all at the taxpayers expense. So they’re going to spend more money now to rectify the “problems” and if spending is good for the economy, then I guess this too will ‘create’ jobs. Great job ministers!

Liberal Party's Climate Change 'Policy' - What a Load of Bull!

Not very long ago, Tony Abbott described climate change as "crap". It's no secret that the majority of Liberal and National party members do not believe in climate change and with a new leader in Tony Abbot I'm afraid things are not going to change. It's this then which surprises me as we see the nauseating sight of Mr Abbot climbing up roofs with solar panel installers smiling at every opportunity at the hungry media wanting to learn more about the new Liberal leader and his new climate change policy.

The thing is Tony Abbott's stance on climate change has not changed. It's still crap to him and to his merry band of hard line Liberal party foes, the likes of Barnaby Joyce and Nick Minchin. Why then does the Liberal party have a climate change 'policy' at all? This question was put to Mr. Abbott and his response was that their policy merely reflected the public's sentiments on climate change at this point in time. How committed to reducing green house gases then do you think Mr. Abbott would be if the only reason he has come up with a policy at all is to appease the public and not because he believes in climate change.

Now let's look at the Liberal Party's climate change 'policy' if you can call it that. This, according to Mr. Abbott is the magic solution to save our planet from destruction. Instead of putting a cost on emissions, he has decided to reward those, presumably farmers who 'act green', meaning the government will pay them to plant trees and practice environmentally sustainable methods to farming. The details in this however, are as clear as mud. Their 'policy' also rewards solar panel installations, which I presume was part of the reason why we saw Mr. Abbott on TV climbing up roofs looking like a sleazy solar panel salesman. As a note, no other developed nation has anything of a similar nature in their climate change policy as that proposed by Mr. Abbott. He is alone on this one but then again he is pretty much alone on his ferocity against the science espousing man created global warming when compared with other developed governments. Even developing nations like China and India have a far better grasp on the urgent action required than our free wielding solar panel salesman.

Let there be no mistake, those measures proposed by Tony Abbott are needed and will go some ways to helping our battered environment but one of many flaws with it is that it does not penalise the polluters. Within minutes of Mr. Abbott announcing his policy, the president of the 'Coal Association' appeared on TV, beaming with a smile that started just under his left ear lobe and ended close to his right ear lobe saying he supported Mr. Abbott's policy. Call me silly but the last person I want endorsing my green policy is the president of the Coal Association.

The policy highlights actions that governments should encourage the public to adopt but should never be the core of the government's climate change policy as it does not penalise pollution but rewards certain environmentally friendly practices. What happens if no one goes for the rewards? Does that mean that the policy does nothing at all? How do you tell the world that you're committed to a 5%, 10% or 20% reduction in emissions when you do not have an Emissions Trading Scheme? Mr. Abbott's solution is to tell the leaders of the other countries..."Aaaah we'll plant 1,000,000 trees and when they mature in 5 years time it'll be right mate...". Australia will be the laughing stock of the international community.

Mr. Abbott did not explain how he was going to fund the monetary rewards for acting green. The shadow treasurer Barnaby Joyce mixed up his millions and billions and likewise his billions and trillions when prodded further about the numbers. A $3.2 billion figure was bandied around and if that is the cost of saving our planet, then Tony Abbott really is a magician and I'm the tooth fairy.

The facts are the Liberal party has never been and are not committed to climate change. They've been forced to make a stance on climate change not unlike a child who's been forced to say sorry after doing something wrong and they've come up with this piece of crap they call a climate change policy. They haven't got the numbers worked out and the details are sketchy at best. There is nothing to say what they are proposing will reduce pollution by 5%, 10%, 20% or nothing at all. Who knows? Maybe Tony Abbott will consult the tooth fairy one of these nights and let us know.

If you want to see climate change tackled head on and not this airy fairy plant a tree here or there, throw in a solar panel here or there 'policy' then this latest charade perpetuated on a seemingly daily basis by the leader of the opposition should be given no more consideration than those Nigerian scams that pull wool over your eyes and take you for a ride.