Carbon Tax. Well someone had to bring it up!

Forget the logic (?) - Just look at human nature...

The business of a politician is to get into power (win enough votes) and the End justifies the means. Converting an enemy is a wonderful way to go, as their energies can then be directed against your OTHER enemies, with no effort from you.

Once IN power, the business changes to 'Staying in Power' and to do whatever needs to be done, doing or saying whatever they can get away with to entrench themselves there...

When another election looms, the game changes a bit towards the first one, to gather enough/more votes to get back IN power, preferably with more votes...

It has very little to do with what is best for the country, only whats best for me/the Party/my mates.

My view, in light of the above is that the Carbon tax is 'Payback' to the Greens and their Fellow-Travellers, not making a differance in CO levels or attitudes overseas where the problem REALLY is.

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Originally Posted by Slunnie

This is what I thought also when they were talking of closing the dirtiest coal power plant in the world. It makes sense, but will the peoples agree.

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What I don't see in the whole "We must shut down Hazelwood Power Station" argument, is what is the alternative? Hazelwood produces a quarter of Victorias power, and is the Latrobe Valleys second biggest power station. We already struggle to provide peak power in the Summer with this station still producing its designed maximun output of 1600MW. That's a lot of power to just switch off, and a replacement - coal, nuclear, whatever would take at least a decade to get running if someone decided to start today. Also, no one seems to be putting thier hands up to build anything else - the State Government doesn't want a bar of it, and I don't see anyone in the private sector getting excited about that prospect. This is likely to become a much bigger political football before someone sorts this whole mess out.

I don't see the carbon tax reducing electricity demand by 25%... not now, and not in the future...

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Originally Posted by Chucaro

Well here we are going again, for sure to the soapbox because people start going agains the present government,
Give me a break!! both parties are shocking, Howard was thinking about carbon tax in 2007 and run out of time to bring it forward and Abbot plan will cost us a bloody fortune and his promises regarding taxes and pensions will bring the country to the gutter.
Both are hopeless so refrain to talk about them and do something for the environment ;)

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So that's the stick your head in the sand option your suggesting? Oh and Baz :p......doesn't need my help to send it to the Soapbox ;). Personally see nothing wrong with having a lively debate/discussion on some of these topics......better than kicking the dog :),

Regards

Stevo

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Originally Posted by stevo68

So that's the stick your head in the sand option your suggesting? Oh and Baz :p......doesn't need my help to send it to the Soapbox ;). Personally see nothing wrong with having a lively debate/discussion on some of these topics......better than kicking the dog :),

Regards

Stevo

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Still couldn't resist though:p

Well I just used the government's calculator and they will give me $3 per year in compensation for an estimated $500 additional household costs. Surely as a single working nurse, I'm not one of the 1 in 10 housholds who will be worse off! :mad:

I don't get a baby bonus.
I don't get child endowment.
I don't receive any Family Tax benefits.
I don't get any Centrelink payments, unemployment, sickness or pension.
I have to spend twice as much (as a family) on my regular medicines before I get any tax considerations.
I have paid tax in every year of my working life.
In not so many years, I will have to be a self funded retiree.

If we in Australia halved our CO2 today, it would only reduce World CO2 by less than 0.8%, that will be replaced by China and India in less than a week. They talk about our per capita CO2 being higher than the USA, but where is the consideration of the transport costs of our widely separated population and yet without any low emission alternative, transport is going to be subject to the carbon price.

This Government's gone in my opinion.

Diana

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Originally Posted by Redback

Still couldn't resist though:p

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Yeah...that's cause you've got that little
bit of a mongrel in ya...like I have :D....you know you shouldn't but hey ;),

Regards

Stevo

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Originally Posted by bacicat2000

I don't see the carbon tax reducing electricity demand by 25%... not now, and not in the future...

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Yep, especially how the population and housing is increasing and yet the demand must decrease, hmmm somehow something doesn't add up.
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Originally Posted by pawl

Yep, especially how the population and housing is increasing and yet the demand must decrease, hmmm somehow something doesn't add up.
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With the increasing density of inner urban housing, every new development has a lift and each apartment has no option for solar-hot water or photo-voltaic panels. How are they going to reduce their electricity consumption. Get a water/hydraulic lift like they used a hundred years ago?

This is all cart before the horse policy, there should be low CO2 or no-CO2 alternatives available before they introduce the C/Tax. Remove the subsidies from the coal generation polluters and subsidise the R&D of innovation in power generation, plus construction of wind, solar, geo-thermal, wave and tidal power generation. Electrify the national rail network and then we can talk about carbon taxes.

The 'carbon tax on pollution' is too broad a term. The volcano in Chille will pump out more noxious stuff than Australia ever could. It's Al Gores old bandwagon that the gov has jumped on to try and look good to the rest of the world. The price of carbon will end up like the price of oil - at the mercy of investors and scammers doing anything for a buck.

Climate change may or may not be true. Our planet seems to do a pretty good job of self regulating. Humans can't compete with volcanos. The problem as I see it is with people and companies dumping toxic or harmful substances into our air and waterways.

If they really wanted to make Australia cleaner, they would simply set up a government department, perhaps called the Environmental Protection Agency, to monitor the pollutants (real ones, not carbon) from all producers and manufacturers and ensure they are doing the right thing and not pumping bad stuff into the air and waterways and disposing of their waste product in the correct manner, not just dupming it into a landfill.

But I guess they can't make a buck out of that as easy...

A couple of points that bother me:

This new tax also looks like outspending itself by $4 billion in its first four years....

Heavy vheicles are only exempt from the tax for the first two years...

Coal will still be shipped overseas, so China will still have cheap power...

$100 billion will be spent on renewable energy sources, hopefully they'll find something before Hazelwood is shut down and Victoria is left in the dark literally and figurativly.

Gillard and Co. have failed every other project they've tried, how can they handle such a huge change to our economy?