Australia repeals carbon tax

Damned depressing read.

The demand was there, and the political class responded. Both Howard and Rudd went to the 2007 election committed to introducing an emissions trading scheme. By 2008 more than 70 per cent of Australians said that they supported an emissions trading scheme. These conditions were as good as it gets for reform - a bipartisan political accord, with strong public support, endorsed by an election.
This is surely an exemplar of democratic politics – the people identify a serious problem, demand a solution, and the political parties provide one.
How did it fall apart?
Rudd sent Penny Wong to negotiate the details with the then Opposition Leader, Malcolm Turnbull. Rudd wasn’t helpful. Even as Wong conducted civil dealings with Turnbull in the negotiating room, Rudd attacked him in the House.
Even when they struck a deal, Rudd continued tormenting Turnbull. He was playing partisan politics as hard as he could while trusting the Coalition to deliver a bipartisan deal. Turnbull was in an increasingly tough position, fighting a rearguard action against a rising clamour in his own party. Barnaby Joyce led a widening backroom insurgency against his own leader.
Rudd told his staff to maximise Turnbull’s pain. One of Rudd’s press secretaries at the time, Sean Kelly, later told me: ‘‘I was going up into the press gallery daily and pushing hard [to reporters] any sign of dissent in the Libs. Kevin prioritised politics over events.’’ Problem solving or parlour game? Rudd went with the parlour game. ‘‘It meant we didn’t get the ETS over the line,’’ said Kelly. ‘‘It was a huge political mistake.’’ Before Rudd could get the emissions trading scheme plan through the parliament, Abbott struck. The opposition spokesman for family affairs had been in a mid-career funk. He was depressed by the defeat of his great mentor, John Howard. Adding insult to injury, his colleagues told him that he wasn’t fit to be leader because he was too closely identified with the Liberals' second longest-serving leader. He missed the relevance of being a cabinet minister and also the salary. He took out a second mortgage on the family home.
So when he was approached by a group of party conservatives to run as the anti-carbon pricing candidate against Turnbull, he decided he had nothing to lose. It was slightly awkward that Abbott had said on national TV, less than two months earlier: ‘‘We don’t want to play games with the planet. So we are taking this issue seriously and we would like to see an ETS.’’

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/comment/ho...-carbon-tax-20140718-zuix7.html#ixzz37udeE7n6
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No one comes out of this looking good.
 
a_unique_person said:
Correct. Blatant hypocrites subsidising the development of fossil fuels while removing subsidies for renewable energy.
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I invite you to understand the uses of irony and sarcasm. ;)

Please Google the rate of coal-fired electrical power growth in China, for one.

Happy learning.
 
I posted this in the other thread, but it probably should be here:


We definitely need a carbon price, but with a well implemented ets. The carbon tax was indeed working, but had several unintended consequences. I don't want to talk out of school too much, but suffice to say I work in a directly impacted industry. It would have been fine had the tax been handed in to consumers, but due to contractual obligations this wasn't always possible and therefore had zero impact on behaviour. All it did was put immense pressure on companies with 9+ figure investment into core infrastructure.

Had we been able to pass it on, the effect would have been positive - curbing use, making alternative technologies more competitive over the medium term, but still allowing grid stability and allowing companies with massive investments to exit gracefully over the next few decades.
 
devnull said:
I posted this in the other thread, but it probably should be here:


We definitely need a carbon price, but with a well implemented ets. The carbon tax was indeed working, but had several unintended consequences. I don't want to talk out of school too much, but suffice to say I work in a directly impacted industry. It would have been fine had the tax been handed in to consumers, but due to contractual obligations this wasn't always possible and therefore had zero impact on behaviour. All it did was put immense pressure on companies with 9+ figure investment into core infrastructure.

Had we been able to pass it on, the effect would have been positive - curbing use, making alternative technologies more competitive over the medium term, but still allowing grid stability and allowing companies with massive investments to exit gracefully over the next few decades.
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IIRC, some companies such as the power generators were compensated for business impacts. Perhaps it was that hard to get the bill passed, the finer details of compensation were overlooked.
 
a_unique_person said:
IIRC, some companies such as the power generators were compensated for business impacts. Perhaps it was that hard to get the bill passed, the finer details of compensation were overlooked.
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First I've heard it.

Honestly, from our perspective, it sucked. Nearly drove us under. Great idea, but too many holes.

Here's hoping for a well implemented ETS under the next labor govt.
 
DC said:
I know. The US has not even a Carbon tax to repeal.... :rolleyes:

and compared to some US senator, Tony Dumb Dumb comes across like a well informed and intelligent dude.
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So the numerous federal and state taxes on gasoline, diesel fuel, home heating oil, natural gas, and coal don't count as carbon taxes? Gosh, who knew? :rolleyes:
 
balrog666 said:
So the numerous federal and state taxes on gasoline, diesel fuel, home heating oil, natural gas, and coal don't count as carbon taxes? Gosh, who knew? :rolleyes:
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Correct. They were just taxes to raise revenue. Nothing of these taxes was assigned to mitigating carbon emissions. The underlying beneficiary for fuel taxes was actually supposed to be road building, e.g., increasing vehicular use. The fact was that these revenues just went into the general government coffers.

Essentially they were/are an excise tax, with the addition of GST.
 
DC said:
I know. The US has not even a Carbon tax to repeal.... :rolleyes:

and compared to some US senator, Tony Dumb Dumb comes across like a well informed and intelligent dude.
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And, by wild coinkydink all those senators and congress critters have names that end in R.
 
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