|
July 16, 2013
The Coalition's slogans, stop the boats, end the waste, repay the debt, abolish the carbon tax-- a pledge in blood--were negative slogans, but they were devastating cut-through lines. The vacuum left by no, no, no. was filled and underpinned by a fear-mongering about future high carbon prices that was a political game, playing on people’s ignorance of how carbon trading works.
Alan Moir
The Rudd Government's proposed shift from a fixed carbon price to a floating one in an emissions trading scheme is flushing out the Coalition's position on climate change--its remedial policy is half-hearted, driven mainly by the search for votes, and under pressure from the climate deniers in the Liberal Party. It is also drive the Coalition further to the right. Hence Abbott's recent remark:
what an emission trading scheme is all about, it's a market, a so-called market, in the non-delivery of an invisible substance, to no one.
It implies a right to emit carbon – and then to limit the availability of this right in order to create scarcity and therefore a market for it. Carbon trading is the buying and selling of permits to emit carbon dioxide.
The shift to an emissions trading scheme linked internationally means a lower carbon price-- between $6 and $10 per tonne hence the politics. But will this lead to the generous concessions to business being reduced? Or an increasing focus on energy efficiency and renewable energy? Or reforms to the national electricity market?
It is unlikely, as the shift by the Rudd government is about politics not policy--a return to the Rudd tactic of wedging the Coalition--- with its spin about reducing the ‘carbon price cost of living pressures. It is spin because one of the reasons for the hike in electricity prices is the current system of national electricity regulation which has allowed excessive rates of return for publicly-owned transmission and distribution utilities which have become cash cows for various state and territory governments.
|
Smokescreen -literally and actually, from Rudd.
Blather, nonsense and goobledegook from Abbott - confustication for the voters who are lost in a welter of words and left with vague feelings of doubt and confusion from both 'leaders'.
"Leaders'? Hah!
Two men, and the parties that they lead, who cannot and will not clearly enunciate a solution to one of the major problems facing the world, and therefore Australia.
Dog help us.