'... the classic left-wing mistake of being too eager to cut up the economic pie and distribute it rather than grow the size of the pie.'

Too true ... as opposed to the valiant Howard Government that ruthlessly eliminated middle class welfare and rejected the whole notion of income churning.

I'm constantly amazed that a newspaper can publish such juvenile tripe and still get taken seriously. Which begs the question Gary ... why on earth do you read it?

Ken,
To see the conservatives at The Australian struggle with reality.They are being mugged by reality and they don't like it. So they just all perspective and compete to write the most alarmist stuff.

A good example is Keith Orchison, the chief of the Electricity Supply Association for 12 years and a member of the Howard government critical infrastructure advisory council 2003-07). He says in an op-ed in The Australian:

In Rudd's case, he has led the voters to believe he is going to deliver relief from global warming or, at the very least, a world-leading Australian example of how this can be achieved - and he can't.He can't, first, because no matter what is done here, the key impact of human-sourced greenhouse gases on the environment will be delivered elsewhere. Second, because delivering a massive cut in Australian domestic emissions through very high energy prices will make a slaughterhouse of the local manufacturing sector and deliver more than a million direct jobs, and perhaps as many indirect ones, to the block.

decimate? What about the free permits, compensation and one off cash payments? Orchison continues:

Nor can Rudd escape the political cost of undermining manufacturing by relying on the ongoing minerals and energy boom, heavily based on Chinese and other Asian demand for our resources, to be the key prop of the economy. As the eminent American economist, Jeffrey Sachs, at present visiting Australia, points out, countries over-reliant on exporting natural resources rarely show much economic growth.

Since when was the Howard Government concerned about manufacturing. Their policy was one of over reliance on economic growth from natural resources.It is the Rudd Government that is concerned about manufacturing.

He does speak some truths when he talks in terms of a raft of things Australia can, and should, do to deal better with its own greenhouse gas emission levels. An effective, regulation-driven approach to end-use efficiency is one. Adequately promoting effective large-scale non-emitting generation - geothermal in the short-to-medium term, perhaps solar thermal (baseload power, not rooftop solar cells) in the medium-to-long term - is another step that should be given greater prominence here.Spending big (and it will cost billions, not tens of millions) on cleaner coal generation technology and capture and disposal of carbon dioxide is important.

Suddenly they are acknowledging that solar is capable of base load power in the medium to long term, undercutting the claims of the coal industry.