Thread: Carbon Tax on it's way through the House.

Woo.. it get $3 back for.....riding my bike to work, driving an old land rover (or several) (which as we all know is better for the environment than getting new car), growing my own veggies in the garden...sounds fair right? Where is the incentive here?

Leave my car out of this - its the only vice i have left!! You are right. I know little about mining. I know they make holes in the ground and ship the product out without value adding. I know that they make huge profits and yet pay less tax than most. I know they pay silly amounts to drive big trucks and even more for people with degrees. *I know that their success can be measured , but so can the misery of those people in the towns that get taken over.

If you work in the mines or make a living that way, good luck to you, but i'm sure you are not tell me that a trading scheme that will have little to no global effect on CO2 and one that will see the credits traded overseas is a good thing, or that selling our coal to power a third countries dirty power stations is a good thing for our kids future.

But I'm off subject as this is not about the environment or mining - It is about tax.

I do what I can to become self sufficient. I built a new house and sent more than I could afford on clean technology and methods to save the heat/cooling cost in a passive way. I have my own super, and I work hard to pay the taxes and maybe more than some. I buy Australian food products because It make sense. I buy local when ever I can - I even have a large vegy garden and hug one of my 1000plus trees on my slice of heaven. And I've*lived in 5 other countries and always come back because this is what I call home, so when the government I trust with the future of my kids is doing little or nothing to improve their future, other than yet another tax because they cannot think laterally, well I just don't think that right.

When did over taxing solve anything....it did not work at Ballarat 1854 and it will not work here.

The tax is a carrot and stick to modify behaviour. The Government would not be paying out the vast majority of tax collected in compensatory measures if it was a purely revenue raising device.

Originally Posted by Veryan

Woo.. it get $3 back for.....riding my bike to work, driving an old land rover (or several) (which as we all know is better for the environment than getting new car), growing my own veggies in the garden...sounds fair right? Where is the incentive here?

The incentive is if you spend on products that don't attract carbon tax, or have a lower carbon tax component than the alternative choices you retain more of the tax cut resulting from the increased tax free threshold in your pocket.

If you choose not to minimise the impact of the carbon tax through you purchasing choices you really can't blame the government.

Originally Posted by Lotz-A-Landies

The problem is that this tax isn't going to innovation, it is going into the pockets of those who cant work and the pockets of those who wont work and to subsidise the people who pollute.

In your proposal you suggest that we need to get away from living off mining and manufacturing and we should innovate. The comment doesn't make sense. If we don't dig anything out of the ground and we don't make anything we are back to relying on agriculture and tourism. Agriculture no longer employs a lot of people, except back-packers.

Innovation is only useful if we value add to it, thinking something up and transferring that "innovation" to another country to manufacture only helps that other country. Look at the higher efficiency photovoltaiic cells designed at UNSW, these are being manufactured in China and being exported to the World from there, including to us. So our innovation has only meant that we are sending dollars to China to buy something that we designed.

It absolutlely makes sense, Companies who pollute have to face the cost of doing business will increase, If they pass that onto consumers the consumers start to look elsewere and said company will need to become more competitive to survive and the only way to do that is to invest $ in clean energy alternatives hence increasing spending on research and development of new technologies. Nothing to do with agriculture at all.

As for the solar comment, i guess you are ignoring the royalties Australian companies get from inventing these technologies.

Its not all doom and gloom mate there are positives.

We went through this topic in THIS THREAD where a lot of arguments were backed up by articles in the media and other source.
Why bother to repit all again?
Just take it as it comes and try to do the best for the future.
For those who prefer the alternative policy, also in the other thread is information about the "brilliant policy" by Mr Abbott.

Originally Posted by roverfan

Your $460 a year will go towards the creation of jobs to strengthen the economy. It's not just about pollution it is about establishing Australia as a leader in clean energy research and development, essentially future proofing our economy so that it doesn't rely on the mining industry to sustain it.

Australia is in a great position to be an innovator and a leader in this field that will pay dividends going forward instead of relying on an industry that rapes the resources of our country to benefit foreign investors. The mining boom won't last forever as even without the carbon tax there will come a te when we can't compete with Luther resource rich countries with a lower cost of doing business.

Australia needs to move away from manufacturing and build on it's strengths as an innovative nation as that's where the future of industry for our country lies.

And bitching about a few hundred bucks a week is pathetic.

If you dont need to complain about a couple hundred bucks a WEEK... then send some $$$ my way cause I could use and extra couple hundred per week

Cheers Ean

Week - year whoops if I had it I wouldn't mind sharing but I've just quit working to stay at home with my little boy.