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December 22, 2008
Foe once I agree with Paul Sheehan. He says in the Sydney Morning Herald that the Rudd Government's multibillion-dollar plan to reduce Australia's greenhouse gas emissions
is a green light to every big polluter in the country to keep doing what they have always done, which is short-change the future by polluting the present without adequate compensation. This policy does nothing to create green jobs....After all the horse-trading with big business and the unions by Labor's bagmen in cabinet, the primary burden of paying for this scheme will rest not with big polluters but with middle-income households and small businesses. Not only do big polluters get excess hand-outs, they are given little incentive to make radical change.....The policy sends the wrong market signals to polluters. It sends almost no market signals to consumers. The scheme will operate with no independent governance. It is entirely political.
And the Liberals have gone missing on the issue. Meanwhile Rudd, Tanner and Swan are trimming waste so the Government could deliver to priority areas, including pensioners and battlers struggling in the face of the global economic crisis. Despite the global financial crisis had poked a "$40 billion hole" in expected tax receipts over the next four years, the Rudd Government has been spending like there is no tomorrow. Why not trim the waste of corporate welfare?
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If there is money to be splashed around, it would almost be better if they paid the polluters for every CO2-equivalent unit UNDER a specified amount (for power utilities, that could be calculated from gigawatts generated), and let the CO2 producers send the signals to their customers.