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February 1, 2010
I tuned into the ABC's Radio National Breakfast this morning before I went to the gym, and I heard the Coalition selling its retail politics. It was Barnaby Joyce doing his standard rave thingy on climate change. The ETS is a gigantic big tax, it's a revenue raising mechanism to pay off the huge government debt, and we'll all be crushed by the big tax and gigantic debt. Outrage outrage. Anger anger. Bad bad bad. He's running a campaign.
At least Joyce didn't go anywhere near the comic figure of Lord Monckton, currently going around Australia tilting at windmills:
Morten Moreland
Barnaby Joyce slowed right down when he was asked about his cost free climate change policies. He kinda sounded deflated. Aw shucks, I have to say something sensible here. Yeah we'll have something soon he said. No details though until just before the election. It wont be a consumption tax like Labor's and off he went on the talking points of the big tax rave crushing us all again. He's in election mode firing up the conservative base with the talking points of his politics of fear.
The Coalition may be firing up the conservative base, with its campaign, but it is still struggling to establish its credibility on economics, the environment and the digital economy whilst confronting the reality of losing the 2010 election. They are strapped for cash and will be hoping that consecutive increases in interest rates cripple the Rudd Government.
It is not plain sailing for Rudd Labor either. As Andrew Norton observes, the:
wide disparity between climate-change aspirations and ETS readiness creates major problems for reformers. Though there are many precedents for governments pushing ahead with unpopular policies, the ETS is potentially unusually politically difficult. Its effects will be felt by every voter, but especially those without children or on higher incomes. They face substantial and uncompensated additional costs. ETS benefits will be hard for voters to perceive; the scheme comes with a promise that fewer bad things will happen rather than that life will eventually get better.
The ALP is going to play down climate change, ETS reform and the shift to a low carbon economy. The politics of climate change has done its job----fractured the Coalition. It doesn't need to fight an election with its ETS as the central issue. Given its lack of reform so far, it will campaign on it how it has a long-term economic reform agenda: ie., the need for productivity improvement and fiscal discipline to address the challenge of an ageing population.
The Rudd Government faces the prospect of a Senate controlled by the Greens after the 2010 election, and that must make them rather uncomfortable.
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I have a vague feeling that the Liberal Party will try and scrap the national broadband network so as to find money to pay for its election promises.