Julia Gillard's Carbon Tax: The Straw that Broke the Camel's Back

by: Cranky Ramblings

The straw that broke the camels back (the camel being the Australian people and the straw being the carbon tax) is the now infamous announcement of the introduction of a carbon tax by the middle of next year by the Prime Minister Julia Gillard, flanked by the greens and independents on her left and right.  Not so much that action was being done to tackle climate change but more so as Tony Abbot’s attempt to portray this as the lie of the century, successfully nonetheless and also yet another Labour tax and the people have had enough of taxes. 

Before the election Julia Gillard said in no uncertain terms that a carbon tax will not be introduced under a government she leads and whalla a carbon tax is now being introduced effective the middle of next year.  Why is Tony Abbot jumping up and down crying for a people’s revolution when he himself has lied and changed his position numerous times in the course of his turbulent political career?  Political opportunism of course.  How much tax per tonne of carbon, what are the compensation to households and businesses most affected and any other detail have not been worked out and Tony Abbot being the political opportunist he is jumped on Labour and unleashed the mother of all scare campaigns by telling the public that EVERYONE will be hit with the big fat tax that will do nothing to lower temperatures and asked for a “People’s Revolt”, even though the government hadn’t announced what the details of the tax was.  Some pathetic trolls in his party started calling the Prime Minister names by comparing her to the Libyan dictator Muamar Gadaffi.  I know the Liberals are still hurting from the last election but childish name calling will not help their cause to get back in government.

Now climate change and the policies to tackle climate change is not only a thorny subject but it’s also a complicated one.  Everyone has a view, politicians, bloggers, journalists, mom, dad and my pool man but the fact remains that the science should prevail.  Leading prominent scientists have shown that climate deterioration has occurred throughout the decades of abuse by man induced pollution.  In my opinion, there is no doubt about this no matter what the sceptics say or what arguments they put forward.  The science is there, it’s not subjective and it cannot be disputed.  There have been arguments that both sides fudge figures/ reports and whatnot to add weight to their case.  While that may be true, if you know basic science then you would be able to know the basic concepts of climate pollution and understand a little of what the scientists and deniers are saying and for now I can make very little sense in what the deniers are saying.  Could the majority of leading climate scientist all be wrong about climate change?  Do we dare take the chance or are willing to sacrifice now for our children’s future or are we happy to listen to Tony Abbot and his merry men like Nick Minchin and Barnaby ‘one million equals one billion’ Joyce?

Why is this carbon tax so unpopular?  Well firstly because Tony Abbot is really good at what he does, that is to oppose.  I’ll have to admit he is a really good opposition leader because he is great to highlight other people faults and put his catchy slogans so it remains in the minds of the voters.  He’ll do a shit Prime Minister but he’s a really good opposition leader, I’ll give him that and every step of the way he’s given the government grief.  He did it will the alcopop tax, the NBN, the flood levy, the mining tax and now this carbon tax.  If not for his destructive manner in which he’s constantly putting the government on the back foot, he would have been removed by his party, because as a person and leader, he’s a pretty shit character.  He swears, can’t keep his cool, is not very articulate, doesn’t have any conviction or principles and is really careful to say only what he thinks people want to hear (well most politicians do that).

Now let’s look through the smoke and mirrors of Tony ‘I do not have a policy just good to criticize’ Abbot and see other reasons why the carbon tax is so unpopular.

1.                   The government hasn’t sold it well.  It announced this with no detail and didn’t explain how the tax would hurt the biggest polluters while giving some reprieve to the middle to low income earners by way of rebates.

2.                   The labour party is perceived as being a party that only knows how to tax.  TAX, TAX, TAX!  They lost the billion dollars worth of reserves built under the Howard years.  The opposition has blamed the government’s failed policies on the NBN, pink bats, school halls rort, free money given away to stave off a second quarter of negative growth and a host of other wasteful projects.  With the reserves now gone, the government has to go back to the people on anything not allowed for in the budget e.g. when the floods hit Queensland the government proposed a flood levy to build back the state even though that would have been a legitimate reason to bring the budget further into deficit but because Tony Abbot had done such a good job spooking the government, they dared not even contemplate further deficits to their already fragile finances resulting in further bad public policy, a good example of Tony Abbot's destructive force.  There is a sense in the community that the people are fed up with the waste and taxes and the backlash has probably got to do more with that than the policy to tackle climate change put forth by the labour party..

3.                   The government has let Tony ‘The Climate Change Denier’ Abbot tell the world that Australia “is going it alone”.  This in fact is actually not true and many other countries like New Zealand, Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden, the UK, Norway, Canada and the US already have a full or partial carbon tax policy.  The likes of China and India have changed their tune from two years ago and are now looking seriously at various ways to reduce their emissions and building cleaner coal fired stations and demolishing the dirtier ones (still coal but nonetheless a good start).  China is also investing huge amounts of money into wind and solar power which is getting cheaper every year.  So Australia is not going it alone, in fact as the leading climate commissioner for the EU said “it would be good if Australia could join us”.

4.                   There are a bunch of climate change sceptics, Liberal lackeys and shock jocks that hate the Labour party so much that you just can’t make them see the good that a carbon tax could bring before an ETS takes effect.  That is also something that the Labour party have not explained well in that the carbon tax is not a direct tax on the people but on the polluters and it’s just a temporary tax until an ETS kicks-in in 2015, an ETS which the Australian people were overwhelmingly in favour of, as evidenced by the landslide victory by the Labour party in 2007 when they got the people’s mandate to tackle climate change in favour of Howard’s climate change sceptics (Abbot being one of the most vocal sceptics saying “climate change is crap”)

Let’s put it this way.  The Labour party was described as on “training wheels” when they took office four years ago and that is probably not far off the mark but what is the alternative?  Abbott and his henchmen?  Right wing sorry arse racist shadow ministers like Cory Benardy and Scott Morrisson who have a better fit in “One Nation” than any progressive political party in Australia or is it Barnaby Joyce who doesn’t know his millions from his billions or maybe Joe Hockey who after criticizing the government’s budget during the election stalemate reluctantly released his with a $11 billions black hole (which we now know why he was so reluctant to release in the first place).  But the person that takes the honours though is no other than their fearless, budgy smuggler, opposition leader himself Tony Abbot.  A vindictive, lost for ideas, good only to criticize, foul mouth, bad policy, no conviction or leadership budgy smuggler wearing politician who will soon be dumped as Liberal leader as soon as Newspoll does not show progress for his party.  As unpopular as Julia Gillard and the government are, she’s still ahead of Tony Abbot in terms of preferred PM but the Liberal party is ahead of the Labour in the two party preferred polls and that’s what counts and that’s what is keeping Abbot as Liberal leader.

The Labour party needs to sell this tax better and not just to spend tax payers dollars on advertising.  They should sell it with informative, backed by facts arguments.  The price for carbon need not hurt the general population if you bought less products that are carbon intensive to produce, or if you used less energy which is the underlying goal for the introduction of a carbon tax.  The whole purpose of a carbon tax is to reduce our reliance on dirty carbon and invest the tax coming from this into greener, cleaner energy for our future, not to tax and give back to “soften the blow” etc. which is giving the people confusing signals and lost confidence that this government has any proper policy direction.