politics

ETS- fake market with fake words

/ newlifenarrabri / Leave a comment

Jo Nova explains that an ETS is a tax and there is no free market involved in CO2

 

The Emissions Trading Scheme monster idea is back – but the conversation is booby-trapped with fake words

 

It’s a tax that’s “not a tax” and a “free market” that isn’t free.

Joy. An emission trading scheme (ETS) is on the agenda again in Australia. Here’s why the first priority is to clean up a crooked conversation. If we can just talk straight, the stupid will sort itself out.

The national debate is a straight faced parody — it could be a script from “Yes Minister”, except no one would believe it. Bill Shorten argues that the Labor Party can control the world’s weather with something that exactly fits the definition of a tax, yet he calls it a “free market” because apparently he has no idea what a free market really is. (What union rep would?) It’s like our opposition leader is a wannabe entrepreneur building a  Kmart that controls the clouds. Look out Batman, Billman is coming. When is a forced market a free market? When you want to be PM.

The vandals are at the gates of both English and economics, and we can’t even have a straight conversation. The Labor Party is in flat out denial of dictionary definitions — is that because they can’t read dictionaries, or because they don’t want an honest conversation? Let’s ask them.  And the idea central to modern economics — free markets — when will the Labor Party learn what one is? It’s only a free market when I’m free to buy nothing.

A carbon market is a forced market. Who wants to buy a certificate for a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions? Only 12% of the population will even spend $2 to offset their flight emissions. How many Australians would choose to spend $500? Why don’t we ask them?! Why — because Bill Shorten knows what the answer would be.

Then, on top of all that, is the hypocrisy — the Labor Party say an ETS is the most efficient way to reduce carbon, but they know it isn’t true, because they also insist we buy 50% of our electricity from renewables. Even with an ETS, no one would choose wind power or solar to reduce CO2. They are that stupid.

But a fake free market will help the Global Financial Houses. Buy a carbon credit and save a Banker!

When will Labor start to speak English?

Definition of “Tax”: noun

1.a sum of money demanded by a government for its support or for specific facilities or services, levied upon incomes, property, sales, etc.
2.a burdensome charge, obligation, duty, or demand.

So let’s call it what it is, the ETS-tax. Confront the Labor Party with their inability to speak honest English. There is deception here, written into their language. As long as they won’t speak English, how can we even discuss their policy?

Can someone tell Labor what a “free market” is?

Real free markets are remarkable tools and very efficient, but we can never have a real free market on a ubiquitous molecule used in all life on Earth. It’s an impossibility.

The Labor Party is simply stealing a good brand name. This fake market in air certificates does not meet even the basic requirements of a true free market. It’s a market with no commodity, no demand, no supply, and no verifiability of goods delivered. You and I are not “free” to choose to buy nothing. Most of the players in this market are not free to play — who pays for yeast, weathering, or ocean cycles?

As I said in The Australian:  people who like free markets don’t want a carbon market, and the people who don’t trust capitalism want emissions trading. So why are socialists fighting for a carbon market? Because this “market” is a bureaucrat’s wet dream.

A free market is the voluntary exchange of goods and services. “Free” means being free to choose to buy or to not buy the product. At the end of a free trade, both parties have something they prefer.

To create demand for emissions permits, the government threatens onerous fines to force people to buy a product they otherwise don’t need and most of the time would never even have thought of acquiring. Likewise, supply wouldn’t exist without government approved agents. Potentially a company could sell fake credits (cheaper than the real ones) and what buyer could spot the difference? Indeed, in terms of penance or eco-branding, fake credits, as long as they were not audited, would “work” just as well as real ones.

Despite being called a commodity market, there is no commodity: the end result is air that belongs to no-one-in-particular that has slightly-less-of-a-trace-gas. Sometimes it is not even air with slightly less CO2 in it, it is merely air that might-have-had–more-CO2, but doesn’t. It depends on the unknowable intentions of factory owners in distant lands.

How strange, then, that this non-commodity was at one time projected to become the largest tradable commodity in the world – bigger even than the global market for oil…

 

Desperate Shorten Threatens Australian Economy

/ newlifenarrabri / Leave a comment

copper-crossing-solar-power-2-fw

I woke up to the news on the ABC this morning that Bill Shorten wants to take a proposal to the ALP National Conference that would make it policy to at a target of 50% renewable electricity by 2030.

It seems that Shorten is as thick as two short planks- not only is this likely not achievable, but it will drive the cost of power through the roof either through direct charges to consumers or through ever increasing Government subsidies.

The drama about changes to the Renewable Energy Target earlier this year was not driven by anti-renewable ideology as the media and the ALP portrayed it. It was basically about the fact that there was no way we could achieve the 20% by 2020 mandated by Kevin Rudd and consequently there would be massive penalties imposed on the electricity generators, driving up the price of power.

Here is the thing. Renewable energy, most likely in the form of solar will soon become economically viable. It is almost competitive with the cost of installing new coal powered generators, which is the only reason why AGL announced with great fanfare it would not be investing in any new coal-fired generators.

By the time we get to 2030 it is quite possible that new solar power stations will produce power so cheaply that existing coal powered stations will be closed down and replaced by power, simply by the laws of economics. The technology around both the generation and storage of power is going through such a revolution at the moment that it will make financial sense to invest without subsidies and targets imposed by Government.

Andrew Bolt’s take, complete with pretty pictures:

Under pressure on leadership, Bill Shorten lurches even more to the Left, promising a policy that will savagely increase the cost of electricity:

 

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten is set to unveil a bold climate policy goal requiring half of Australia’s large-scale energy production to be generated using renewable sources within 15 years.



This means more than doubling green power but without using more of the hydro electricity that so far produces most of it. (Labor won’t build more dams.):

image

That vast expansion of wind and solar will not happen without paying a fortune in subsidies and forcing consumers to use more green power, givenhow expensive it is:

image

This will potentially cost taxpayers and consumers billions more each year, when we already subsidise green power by around $3 billion a year.

Effect on global warming?Nil.

Effect on the economy? Business lost, jobs lost.

Government and Sport

/ newlifenarrabri / Leave a comment

What is it with politicians sponsoring sporting events at the expense of the tax payers? 

If all of these people who are outraged about a $5000 helicopter trip actually looked at the big money being wasted by the millions to wealthy sporting organisations like Liverpool FC, the AFL, the  NRL, IOC and FIFA maybe we could start reducing taxes instead of trying to find ways of increasing them.

From Freedom Watch:

Big Government in bed with Big Soccer

by  on July 21, 2015 in Economic freedom

 

Ball_in_net

Earlier this month I wrote on FreedomWatch about the absurdity of State and Territory governments subsidising AFL matches. Equally absurd is the government funding of friendly soccer matches involving the big European clubs currently touring Australia.

Real Madrid, AS Roma and Manchester City are currently playing in a pre-season tournament in Melbourne. Liverpool played Australian team Brisbane Roar on Friday night and Adelaide United last night. Manchester City played Melbourne City on Saturday night on the Gold Coast whilst Sydney FC played Chelsea in June and Tottenham in May.

According to the Australian Financial Review the Queensland and South Australian governments are understood to be paying Liverpool $10 million in appearance fees. Whilst the organisers of the tournament in Melbourne have received upwards of $8 million from the Victorian government.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews demonstrated the real reason why politicians are prepared to spend public cash on elite sport when he was front and centre at Real Madrid training on Friday. It is because elite sport is popular with voters.

As I wrote in The Spectator last year, governments pretty much always overstate the economic benefits of major sporting events when justifying spending their taxpayers’ hard-earned money. Indeed, Victorian Minister for Sport John Eren made the audacious claim that the series would generate between $50 million $80 million for the Victorian economy.

The reason these clubs are in Australia for glorified pre-season training (apart from picking up some free money from our governments) is to build their already enormous global fan bases. Liverpool claims to have almost 600 million fans worldwide. 10,000 people paid $15 each to watch Real Madrid train at the MCG last week.

Clearly, the organisers of these games don’t need government money to make them profitable, it’s just that it makes the undertaking a little bit more profitable, and a little less work. They have identified an opportunity to play state governments off against each other, and state governments have shamefully played ball.

If governments really think they can attract and hold major sporting events more efficiently than the private sector, they should introduce a voluntary major events tax whereby citizens can decide whether they want to contribute to what is essentially a luxury.

The Selective Outrage of the Media

/ newlifenarrabri / Leave a comment

Remember the fury at Joe Hockey’s “gaffe” about people getting a decent job to buy a house?

Where’s the anger when Bill Shorten says the same thing.

From Andrew Bolt:

Andrew Bolt

July 09 2015 (9:54am)

Treasurer Joe Hockey last month:

The starting point for a first homebuyer us to get a good job that pays good money… If you’ve got a good job that pays good money and you have security in relation to that job then you can go to the bank and you can borrow money. 

Bill Shorten:

As if Joe Hockey hasn’t insulted families enough, he’s at it once more… This is ‘poor people don’t drive cars’ all over again. This isn’t just another Joe Hockey gaffe – this is proof he just doesn’t get the pressure families are facing.

Bill Shorten in the royal commission yesterday:

My aim always in any EBA was to try and provide more work and more regular remuneration so that people could have certainty of an income. Once you’ve got regular income, then you can get a car loan, then you can even dream of getting a house loan.

Tony Abbott Wants Fewer Wind Farms

/ newlifenarrabri / Leave a comment

If renewable energy really was cheaper we would not need a RET or subsidies or a plethora of rent-seeking organisations demanding quotas and subsidies. If it was free as the advocates like to tell us, the big energy companies would abandon coal technology tomorrow. If Australians really wanted more renewable energy as the Greens and Labor want to believe, we would all be ticking that little box that says “Please charge me more to use green power.”

Facts:

  • Windfarms are ugly
  • They produce lots less energy than it says on the box
  • Their output is irregular and difficult to engineer for
  • They cost more than conventional power
  • They kill birds, including endangered species.

 

From the ABC:

Tony Abbott wants fewer ‘visually awful’ wind farms, wishes Howard government never implemented Renewable Energy Target

By environment editor Sara Phillips

Updated 34 minutes ago

Wind turbines at Capital wind farm stand next to Lake George near Canberra.PHOTO: Tony Abbott told Alan Jones he wanted to reduce the number of wind farms even further and described them as “visually awful”. (AAP: Lukas Coch, file photo)
RELATED STORY: Liberal backbencher threatens to cross floor over RET deal
MAP: Australia

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has described wind farms as “visually awful” saying he wishes the Howard government, of which he was a member, had never implemented the Renewable Energy Target (RET) policy.

“When I’ve been up close to these things, not only are they visually awful, but they make a lot of noise,” Mr Abbott told Sydney broadcaster Alan Jones this morning.

His comments echoed those of Treasurer Joe Hockey, who last year described wind turbines as “utterly offensive”.

Mr Abbott said changes before the Federal Parliament to reduce the RET were designed to prevent wind farms from further spreading across the Australian landscape.

“I would frankly have liked to reduce the number a lot more but we got the best deal we could out of the Senate,” he said.

“And if we hadn’t had a deal, Alan, we would have been stuck with even more of these things.”

The target was initially created in 2001 by John Howard and subsequently strengthened by Labor to “at least 20 per cent by 2020”, calculated at the time as being 41,000 gigawatt hours of electricity.

But energy efficiency gains since then mean that 41,000GWh would have represented a figure closer to 27 per cent of 2020 electricity needs.

Knowing what we know now, I don’t think we would have gone down this path in this way, but at the time we thought [introducing the RET] was the right way forward.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott

The Federal Government has sought to cut the target, saying it wanted one more in line with original 20 per cent target.

Changes to the RET legislating a 33,000GWh target have passed the Lower House but not the Senate — a point on which Mr Abbott appeared to be unclear.

“What we did recently in the Senate was reduce, Alan, reduce, capital R-E-D-U-C-E, we reduced the number of these thing that we’re going to get in the future,” he said.

Mr Abbott also said he would have preferred the Howard government had never created the RET in the first place.

“Knowing what we know now I don’t think we would have gone down this path in this way, but at the time we thought it was the right way forward,” he told Jones.

Opposition spokesman for the environment Mark Butler said he was “stunned” by Mr Abbott’s comments.

“Renewable energy is enormously popular in Australia,” Mr Butler said.

“People want more renewable energy, not less, because of the obvious economic and environmental benefits of creating clean energy from free resources like wind, solar and waves.”

Greens deputy leader Larissa Waters said Mr Abbott’s comments could harm the industry.

“This is the guy that’s held out — he’s trying to cut to give certainty. In fact, he’s made it clear that he doesn’t want the industry to exist at all,” Senator Waters said.

Abbott set out to destroy viable industry: Australian Wind Alliance

Australian Wind Alliance national coordinator Andrew Bray said the comments exposed the Government’s true intentions on the RET.

“These comments are extraordinary. Our Prime Minister has just admitted to setting out deliberately to destroy a viable industry in Australia, one that could provide jobs to many Australians, investment to regional communities and new income to farmers,” Mr Bray said.

“Not only that but he regrets that he wasn’t able to gut the industry even further.

“The Government has always maintained that it was cutting the RET due to an oversupply of electricity.

“But it’s obvious that rationale was just smoke and mirrors to cover up their real intent: to destroy wind energy in Australia.”

A Senate committee initiated by several independent senators is currently underway into whether wind turbines cause illness.

 

Medical reviews, including one by Australia’s premier medical research body, the National Health and Medical Research Council, have found no clear link between wind turbines and reported symptoms.

Well Done Jacqui Lambie and the Rest of the Feral Senate.

/ newlifenarrabri / Leave a comment

The wanton hypocrisy of the Senate at the moment is unprecedented. If Abbott wants it we will oppose it is the mantra of Labor and Greens. The cross-benchers are just as bad with Jacqui Lambie the worst of them. She vowed to get out of her hospital bed to vote against University reforms, and now Tasmania, the state she claims to be fighting for, is leading the way in cutting back their university places.

Politics in Australia is just disgusting.

UTAS campuses in Launceston and Burnie under threat if funding falls short

936 ABC Hobart

Professor Peter RathjenPHOTO: Professor Peter Rathjen said university managers would need to make some tough decisions.(University or Tasmania)

The University of Tasmania has signalled it will consider closing its Burnie and Launceston campuses if it does not receive financial support for a restructure.

It followed the Senate’s rejection of higher education legislation allowing universities to set their own fees.

UTAS’s $450 million proposal to split the university in two, with big developments in Burnie and Launceston, hinges on the passage of the legislation.

Vice-chancellor Peter Rathjen told ABC Local Radio that managers would now have to make some tough decisions unless there was more funding.

Full story here

Carbon Tax Accounting: $24= $5310

/ newlifenarrabri / Leave a comment

burning-australian-dollar-c-400

The carbon tax was the maddest deed of the Gillard Government, although the Mining Tax comes close. It takes a special kind of stupidity to produce two taxes that cost more to administer than they raised.

The scary bit is that these people still do not get it and could soon be running the country into an even deeper hole- see the comments by Mark Butler at the end of the story.

Jo Nova writes:

Carbon tax cost $5310 a ton. $15 billion to abate almost nothing and cool the world by even less.

If the Greens cared about the environment, they’d call this scheme “a ghastly waste”.

It takes skill to figure out a scheme where you set the price at $24 for something and end up paying $5,000. It could only happen when people are playing with other people’s money. That’s the soft left idea of good maths and good business.

That the Labor-Greens boast that this spectacular failure was a success shows the carbon tax was never about the climate, nor about CO2 or the environment. Follow the money. The purpose of the tax was to reward friends and punish competitors. Anyone dependent on Big-Government is a “friend”, and anyone who can stand on their own two feet is a “polluter” or a “denier”.

If the Greens cared about the environment, they’d call this scheme “a ghastly waste”.

The $15 billion price tag is $670 per Australian, or $2,700 per household of four. The real total is much more (when will the government add up the real bill?), because that tally doesn’t include the money wasted on solar panels, windpower, or the whole  “Department of Weather Change”. It doesn’t include millions in scientific research money poured down the sinkhole of climate models that don’t model our climate, nor the advertising, promotion and propaganda of all of the above.

A smart conservative government would add up the whole bill, then spend 0.1% (something like $20 million) paying skeptical scientists to audit, and check the evidence trail. They would trumpet their green credentials. This source of the river of gravy starts with the science. People who care about the poor and the planet would want to get that right.

Sid Maher, The Australian

THE carbon tax cost $5,310 for every tonne of emissions abated during its two years of operation, new government analysis shows.

The release of the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory last week shows emissions for the economy, excluding the land sector, fell 1.4 per cent in 2013-14 and 0.8 per cent in 2012-13. When the land sector is included, as is the case under Kyoto accounting, Australia’s emissions fell from 567.1mt in 2012-13 to 563.5mt, a drop of 3.6mt. Between 2011-12 and 2013-14, emissions fell 0.5 per cent or 2.9mt (there was a small rise the previous year).

No one can call this a success. Australian emissions were falling before the carbon tax came in. The big 1.4% fall only came after the figures of the year before were adjusted up. The 0.8% reduction they talk about for the previous 12 months does not exist after the figures were changed, yet they are still citing it. The current count of emissions will most likely be adjusted up itself, and the 1.4% figure is mere noise in the data — in past years the post hoc adjustments have been larger.

Opposition climate change spokesman Mark Butler told the ABC the report proved Labor’s policies were working. “The Nat­ional Greenhouse Gas Inventory — dropped by the government in the lead-up to Christmas in an effort to bury the report — showed that the emissions count for the overall year of Labor’s climate policies reduced by 1.4 per cent,” he said.

“That compares to a decline in emissions of 0.8 per cent for the previous 12 months, which shows that Labor policies to reduce emissions were working — to say otherwise is laughable.

Shame the Greens hate the environment.

Full article

Stop Your Whining

/ newlifenarrabri / Leave a comment

Australians grizzling about the awful “cut to the bone” budget need to think aobut this comparison with our neighbour New Zealand.

The culmination of almost two decades of mainly populist budgets, the Abbott government will spend $6200 a person on cash welfare next year, over 25 per cent more than New Zealand’s government will on each of its citizens (converting all amounts to Australian dollars).

Education spending, at $2900 a person, is 10 per cent more generous in Australia but health expenditure is torrential by comparison: Australian state and federal governments will lavish more than $4600 a person to keep Australians alive and healthy, almost 50 per cent more than is spent in New Zealand…

Australia’s population of 23.5 million is about 5.2 times New Zealand’s, but as of June last year we had 8.4 times as many public servants…

If the federal government overnight reduced welfare, health and education spending to New Zealand levels it would be rolling in a $40 billion budget surplus next year rather than wallowing in deficit until 2018 or even later…

[Bill] English, now in his sixth year as New Zealand’s Treasurer, commendably chose not to emulate the world’s greatest treasurer Wayne Swan and kept a tight leash on public spending before and after the global financial crisis, preferring to cut income taxes and lift consumption tax. The Key government, facing election again later this year, is now reaping the rewards.

While Australia’s economy is lumbering back to trend growth, New Zealand is enjoying a boom, its economy predicted to grow 4 per cent this year and 3 per cent next without pushing up inflation. The country’s unemployment rate is projected to fall to 4.4 per cent during the next few years as ours hovers around 6 per cent.

Apart from a bloated public sector and a wellspring of whingeing, what does Australia get for its vastly more indulgent public spending? Much higher taxes, for one thing. The marginal income rate most Australians will pay from July — 34.5 per cent — will be higher even than New Zealand’s top 33 per cent rate, which makes a mockery of our 49 per cent top rate, which will be higher than China’s and France’s.

Read more here

Lyle Shelton: Why silence is no longer an option

/ newlifenarrabri / Leave a comment

From ACL:

Why silence is no longer an option

parliament house

The Greens sure are committed.

Last week in the Senate they tried and failed to remove the Lord’s Prayer from parliament.

Since 1901, the prayer has been recited at the start of each sitting day in the senate and house of representatives by the president and speaker respectively.

A group of committed pray-ers is always present in each chamber. No one is forced.

Australia did not become what it is in a vacuum. Christianity had a profound impact on the development of western institutions, including parliament.

While not everyone in Australia is Christian (although more than 60 per cent tell the census they are), nothing changes the fact that Christianity made a significant contribution to making Australia what it is today.

It is a simple fact that Christianity is part of our cultural heritage in a way that other religions are not. That is no disrespect to them. The ethics and ideas of other religions simply did not have the same impact on the formation of western values and the Australian nation.

As the pre-European peoples of this land, indigenous people, are of course a huge part of our cultural heritage. Recognition of their cultural heritage is also acknowledged in parliament each day and that is fair enough. The Greens have not sought to remove this.

Most of us would condemn the cutting down of a 113 year old tree, but when it comes to our cultural heritage the Greens are happy to fell any vestiges of the values of our past.

Greens Senator Richard Di Natale cites the separation of church and state for wanting to remove the prayer.

This misunderstanding of the concept is becoming wearisome. The Greens and others who abuse this concept are attempting to cloak their secularism in neutrality and objectivity, but in reality seem to be excluding Christianity in order to substitute their own secular irreligion.

Australia was founded with the principle of separation of church and state but it was never meant to keep religious ideas, people or even prayers out of public life.

It was simply to ensure that Australia, unlike Britain, did not have an established church constitutionally entwined with the state.

The idea was for all religions to be allowed to flourish without any being favoured by the state.

 

Read the rest here