carbon tax

[ellicat]

The stickers arrived today.

To make it easy for me -

Please send me a pm with your mailing address and number required.

Cheers

Nathan, I'm from the money side of the argument. The C/Tax is a complete disaster in the making. For it to work prices will need to rise immensely to change consumer demand. Garnaut states @ $26/tonne the tax will raise $11,500,000,000.00. That's about 40% of what the GST currently raises. A small child could see that the "big polluters" will not absorb that cost. It'll be the end consumer copping it in the neck big time! It will spell the death of any significant manufacturing in Australia. At least the price of secondhand tinnies will rise in line with the new ones.......that is if the Greens/ALP coalition leave us anywhere to use them

[ellicat]

one question - who gets the revenue from the carbon tax as it stands today?

Of the tax received, 10% also goes to the UN Climate Change Fund.

Garnaut is now saying about $2.5 Billion should go towards incentives too.

[ellicat]

Are there any more extremists that would like some of these stickers ?

If so, please shoot me a pm with number required and mailing address.

Cheers

PS Haven't we come a long way in our language since "Kerr's Cur"

[Luc53]

Driving to work on Friday morning, the news said a federal government panel comprising of big industries was told the aim of the carbon tax is to put the budget back in the black by the promised date.

There are only 2 winners from this tax,

1 Federal government coffers

2 Those who have the dollars to trade in carbon credits

Won't make a shred of difference to the environment but will put a hole in your wallet.

Luc

[ellicat]

I posted out the stickers last week but a few envelopes found their way into the door pocket beside the passenger seat. :blush: I posted them today.

Sorry for delay my fellow extremists. :pinch:

[ellicat]

I'm not sure with the number of non-supporters at 60% that we could be called extremists anymore, but nevertheless here's is some more extremist info that is an interesting listen and read...especially if you are one of the non-extremist 40%.

Listen
/>http://www.4bc.com.au/blogs/4bc-blog/cake-of-complexity/20110418-1dkd9.html

Read
/>http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/totting-up-carbon-tax-is-anyting-but-a-piece-of-cake/story-e6frg6zo-1226040594836

Totting up carbon tax is anything but a piece of cake

Tim Wilson

WHEN asked on ABC1's Q & A about the carbon tax we'll pay on a birthday cake Assistant Treasurer Bill Shorten joked he didn't know how many candles there would be on it before blundering through a non answer.

For the government it was a moment, no doubt, uncomfortably reminiscent of former Liberal opposition leader John Hewson's famously botched attempt to explain the effect of the GST on a birthday cake in an interview with Mike Willesee in 1993 on A Current Affair.

But calculating the carbon tax on a birthday cake is no mean feat. Here's the recipe.

First establish whether individual ingredients come from a company required to report its emissions under the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Scheme, which will then be used to issue carbon tax bills.

Despite what you may have heard, "big polluters" aren't just electricity generators and mining companies, but include most food and beverage manufacturers, as well as supermarkets.

Each is required to report their emissions from "scope one" activities involving the direct consumption of fuels, such as driving a car or burning gas, and "scope two" activities, primarily emissions from electricity consumption.

And since one company's scope one emissions are someone else's scope two emissions, their value is discounted to avoid double counting on each company's NGERS balance sheet.

Step two is to calculate the carbon tax the company will pay based on its reported emissions and how it will be distributed through the prices on each good consumers buy.

All the ingredients for our birthday cake -- 225g of White Wings plain flour, 125ml of Crisco vegetable oil, 85g of Cadbury cocoa powder, 250ml of Pauls milk, 350g of CSR caster sugar -- will include the direct cost of a carbon tax because they're manufactured by a big polluter.

As will the 220g of Plaistowe cooking chocolate and 200ml of Pura double cream for the icing.

And assuming the cake is being made in my kitchen in Melbourne's South Yarra, there'll be a carbon tax directly on the 250ml of water from big polluter South East Water I need to boil as well.

But the 1 1/2 teaspoons of McKenzie's baking powder and bicarbonate of soda, two teaspoons of Queen vanilla extract and two Pace Farm eggs don't come from NGERS reporting companies and won't be taxed directly.

Nor will the Australian-owned Alpen pack of 24 assorted birthday candles manufactured in China.

All the locally produced ingredients, however, will include an indirect price increase through carbon tax electricity price rises.

They'll also include the carbon tax that flows through from "scope three" emissions, which includes all non-electricity scope two emissions whose cost will be passed through to every good and service in the economy and for which the government won't be compensating households.

For our birthday cake, scope three emission costs will be added to ingredients through the carbon tax paid by wholesale distributor Linfox and retailers Coles, Woolworths or ALDI; as well as any other carbon tax costs to other companies who help get the ingredients into my pantry.

But it's important to note that scope three emissions don't attract a direct carbon tax bill as they're not required to be reported under NGERS.

Scope three emissions costs only flow through when they are passed on from another company's scope one or two emissions.

Step three is to calculate the carbon tax associated with actually producing the cake.

In this case I won't include the proportionate scope three emissions carbon tax cost from the production of the electric mixer, oven, mixing bowls and dishwasher for cleaning, since they were bought before a carbon tax and were probably made overseas anyway.

However, I will need to include the carbon tax cost from the electricity company's scope one emissions, which are my scope two emissions, for the electricity used to power the mixer, oven and dishwasher, as well as more of the South East Water consumed.

Step four is to light the carbon tax-free imported Alpen candles and directly release the only greenhouse gas in the whole recipe while my friends and I sing Happy Birthday.

Ironically, the candle's direct emissions don't attract a carbon tax because my humble kitchen doesn't meet the NGERS reporting threshold of emitting more than 25 kilo tonnes of greenhouse gases annually.

Step five is to eat the cake while calculating the total carbon tax cost. But until the government sets the tax rate per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent gases the cost is impossible to calculate.

The cost would then need to be recalculated each year because the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee agreed the tax would be "increasing annually at a pre-determined rate", even during the fixed price phase.

So the carbon tax contribution on a birthday cake increases between a child's first and second birthday. Indeed, perhaps we could have a carbon tax birthday party each year on the day the tax goes up.

Because the tax increases on a compound basis, by their tenth birthday the carbon tax contribution will be about 50 per cent higher. By their 21st it will have doubled.

I also haven't calculated my share of J. J. Richards and Sons' carbon tax bill for disposing of the uneaten cake. Unlikely to be needed anyway.

Nor have I calculated the cost to business of complying with the 1000-odd pages of legislation and regulations required to operate the tax. Industries are already complaining about the burden to the Productivity Commission's annual regulatory review.

Indeed, compliance will be where Julia Gillard and Climate Change Minister Greg Combet's mystical green jobs are already being created.

At the end of Willesee's interview, he asked Hewson, "If the answer to [the GST] on a birthday cake is so complex, you do have a problem . . . don't you?"

Hewson replied, "Well, people don't know how much tax they currently pay."

Australians, however, do know they aren't paying a carbon tax yet, and with this recipe Gillard, Combet or Shorten are unlikely to try to explain it.

Tim Wilson is director of climate change policy at the Institute of Public Affairs, a trained carbon accountant and the chocolate cake recipe used is available at

tinyurl.com/2vd2hkx

[ellicat]

So far we know that

50% of the tax will be returned to low income earners

10% will go to the UN Fund to be funnelled to 3rd World countries like India, China and a bag full of countries where the people don't even know there is a UN because their "leaders" keep secrets from them as well as any wealth.

40% will go to ??????? Industries that are effected and have the best lobby group, some to fund some direct action initiatives, some to fund bureaucracy, whatever's left (if any) to perhaps put into R&D for new sources of energy or just be consolidated into tax revenues. Maybe, just maybe, there will be a bit leftover that they can spend on printing the maps of wherever the best caves are for us to inhabit.

Since Copenhagen failed to reach consensus it seems to me that this action ahead of the significant players in the pollution game doing something significant is a complete case of pain for no gain.

The scariest part is if this makes its way through, despite the majority of Australians' wills, it will continue to increase year after year after year. Despite the Opposition's claim it will repeal the legislation I doubt it will be able to as the over-represented Greens will hold the Senate to ransom after June this year. :sick:

[ellicat]

Mans worldwide contribution to the earths CO2 = 3%

Australia's contribution is 1.5% of that 3%

Australia's target is to reduce emissions by 5%

So if the world CO2 = 100

Man's contribution = 3

Australia's = 0.045

Australia's reduction target = 0.00030375

So instead of 0.00045% Australia if target is reached

will only contribute 0.0004275%

I don't care what lies and mistruths are put in the adds with Blanchett and co. the fact remains that carbon tax is all pain and no gain.

At $40 a tonne that equates to over $1000p.a. or just under $90pm before considering the rise in price for every item a consumer needs. Sen. Hanson-Young says the price needs to be close to $100 a tonne to have the desired effect on the price of coal power to make it completely unaffordable so the alternative energies get a chance to compete.

At $100, that equates to about $2500 pa.

Let's use a business similar to Zim Mans as an example.

To get the extra $2500 in his hands to pay for the increased energy costs he needs to up his profits by approx $4000 pa. To do that he needs to sell a whole heap of extra lures or put his lure prices up etc etc. Only trouble is his suppliers want less because the consumers aren't buying as much because they have to cut back to afford their own $2500 cost increase.

High insanity

[rayke1938]

Quote from one of the biddies at Donald Simpson Centre ( Local redlands pensioners club)

" I dont care because we dont eat it so it wont affect us "

Obviously a well informed voter.

CHeers

Ray

[ellicat]

Sounds like something from a Pommie SitCom :silly:

[Cheyne_jones]

On a side note, but still relevant; has any one else in business out there noticed that all this uncertainty about this tax has put the hand brake on the economy?

I am in food manufacturing and wholesale, our industry is bleeding at the moment, and I put it down to this bloody tax and not knowing what its going to cost.

Does anyone else have an opinion on this situation?

[rosstralia46]

okay so opening a can of worms but whats ur opinion on the carbon tax?

[Guest]

My thoughts, I hate the idea of carbon tax..No carbon tax means more $$$$ for lures

Cheers

Darren

[ellicat]

okay so opening a can of worms but whats ur opinion on the carbon tax?

Hahaha - Just merged this thread with the one I started a few months back. My opinion remains unchanged; if not a little more staunchly opposed.

Also there is a poll -
/>http://www.australianfishing.com.au/forum/96-environment/314200-do-you-support-it-

[ellicat]

On a side note, but still relevant; has any one else in business out there noticed that all this uncertainty about this tax has put the hand brake on the economy?

I am in food manufacturing and wholesale, our industry is bleeding at the moment, and I put it down to this bloody tax and not knowing what its going to cost.

Does anyone else have an opinion on this situation?

I do. Just waiting for the crime incidence to increase as the effects of a stand still economy take effect - i.e. robberies, break and enter, domestic violence, theft, shop lifting, fraud etc etc etc

Take a look at the Spanish economy since they tried it - over 20% unemployment

Take a look at the California economy since they tried it

Take a look at the UK - they're just introducing it with a big "out" clause for 2014 if other major economies/trading partners are not in the club and their economy is much different to ours in how they generate their main revenues. They also have Nuclear power.

The fact the government has not answered one question posed during Question Time on the subject is testament to the fact it is a dreadful idea.

[Zim man]

a disaster in the making, man i hate this government. not a sound economic idea amongst them :dry:

i am 150% against it in every shape or form.

[Cheyne_jones]

I will happily pay the tax if Julia will guarantee me that the world will stop warming... :whistle:

I am all for looking after the environment, but taxing the masses here will do nothing to stop the 3 odd billion chinese and indian folk spewing toxins into the atmosphere with their filthy industrial process...

I cant understand how we ever got out of the last ice age if the world didn't cool and warm of its own accord, if its all our fault how did the earth thaw out 10 000 years ago?

Its all a crock and anyone who questions the science seems to be labelled a denier or they must be in bed with the big polluters....

[Charter]

Personally I think polluters should be taxed more than those that don't. The run off into estuaries and rivers from industry will only increase over time if we don't address the problem now. If you don't want to pay the tax (which most people won't) DON'T POLLUTE !!!!

[haines490slc]

Can't trust those libs

[haines490slc]

But Ellicat, the proposal by the liberals will push costs up too! All the experts say that Tony Abbot's plan will cost the consumer more, is it just that you are a liberal supporter that you are so passionate?

[ellicat]

I agree mainly with the comments made on that vid by ellicattube :whistle:

Can't trust those libs

Can't trust the media and out of context youtubers grasping at straws you mean ?

By the way - Here's the full interview
/>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5QXblcJAr4&feature=youtu.be

Here's some "questions" on a few people from the government and their propensity to make themselves untrustworthy too. Just to give the right balance to the 30 second clip you posted :blush:

/>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2i3XC-_eA0&feature=related
/>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_KVBwKU7B8
/>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0APe52IEaN0&feature=related
/>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCNYb3XWVTE
/>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMVc0IbtyAQ&feature=related
/>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ddga5MP9FFA
/>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J60xoDgNdCM
/>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh4URTZt-78
/>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtEyAe1QqCg

[ellicat]

But Ellicat, the proposal by the liberals will push costs up too! All the experts say that Tony Abbot's plan will cost the consumer more, is it just that you are a liberal supporter that you are so passionate?

Not at all.

The truth is -

The proposed direct action plan would cost $11Billion p.a.

The Carbon tax would raise $11.5Billion in it's first year (assuming a price of $26/tonne)

The Crabon tax rate is set to rise each year. Therefore the cost will be higher each year.

The Greens state $40 is required to kick it off and must reach $100 to attain the stated goal of reducing our emissions by a (whopping :S ) 5% At that price it equates to approximatel $45Billion p.a.

When it converts to an ETS in 2015 what will the price be then ? It wont be a tax - so why would a government then offer any compensation ? In deed will there even be compensation after year one anyway - I have heard no-one mention that ??

Is the compensation being suggested even going to cover the cost increases. Average house prices will rise by $6000. That means State duties, GST, and interest on borrowings will rise too. The interest cost alone on the extra $6000 borrowing will be in the vicinity of $500. So the figure being bandied around of $800 will only leave $300 to cover the cost increase of not only electricty, but every item purchased that is produced locallyor has any local input....I don't think it will.

It's not about which political side I support. It's about my own independent interpretation of what is going on.

I haven't looked closely at the direct action plan but one thing is certain - It is alot easier to turn off discretionary spending than it is to turn off a tax that will convert into a financial market. Add that to the fact the carbon tax in Australia will have zero positive effect on the environment of the World and it makes no sense. Add further to that the fact USA China India (The big polluters) will not do the same thing and it makes even less sense.

It's a numbers game and many numbers are being thrown at the public. I like to read between the lines of what the supporting economists are saying. Like the latest fella that came out and said that the 24,000 jobs that will be lost in the mining sector is not an unusual amount of jobs to be lost in an industry like mining. He said that most miners that lost jobs in mining had another job within 12 months. He didn't tell us that they were earning $150,000 a year in the mines and are now earning less than half that packing fruit at the markets.

Anyway I could write a book on the topic but this isn't the place......maybe just some excerpts of the chapters in my head :S

[Zim man]

i dont think you have to be a party supporter to see the lack of logic and understandings of basic economics involved with a carbon tax. the idea of yet another tax in one of the most taxed countries on gods green earth is mind boggling its even more absurd when the targetted reductions amount to one cows fart a year being stopped.

this may be apt for the goverment to follow in the future and may be the source of all the Greens ideas.

[Gad]

Personally I think polluters should be taxed more than those that don't. The run off into estuaries and rivers from industry will only increase over time if we don't address the problem now. If you don't want to pay the tax (which most people won't) DON'T POLLUTE !!!!

that`s certainly an in depth view into the Carbon Tax Debate :pinch: if I go and live naked in a cave,live off grubs and leaves does that mean I won`t have to pay the Tax :dry:

[ellicat]

That's the idea, Gad. Have you been talking to Bob Brown or Christine Milne or Sarah Hanson Young ?

Hmmmm. If SHY is doing it I might go for a look :woohoo:

[haines490slc]

I guess the first question is, do you think something needs to be done about human CO2 emissions? If you answer yes to that (and apparantly 70% of australians are concerned) how are we going to do it?

The argument about why should we if no one else is doesn't really come into play as other countries have this on the agenda (impending qantas landing tax in Europe due to australia not having carbon scheme).

So if you answer no to the first question, fair enough to argue for no carbon tax, and no co-alition direct action plan either.

If you answer yes, then how do we do it?

I believe that market forces via the carbon tax is the best way to do things. Future wealth will be technological superiority in green and renewable energy, this will give Australia a head start as the market will push investment and interest in this direction.

I think that Julia was wrong to say that no government she would lead would have a carbon tax and then to put one on the table, however, I support it anyway. I do think the ALP could have done a better job of explaining it however.

My 2cents worth.

No sticker for me thanks Ellicat

[Gad]

That's the idea, Gad. Have you been talking to Bob Brown or Christine Milne or Sarah Hanson Young ?

Hmmmm. If SHY is doing it I might go for a look :woohoo:

nah... hello Bobby and I don`t frequent the same type of bars,and as for Christine and Sarah the wailing violin and harp types depress me,so I don`t mingle or dingle in the Latte circles

[ellicat]

haines490slc, Your post highlights the error in your thinking. I will respond later.

In the meantime you can start to reduce your emissions by slowing down when on the water.

[Cheyne_jones]

I guess the first question is, do you think something needs to be done about human CO2 emissions? If you answer yes to that (and apparantly 70% of australians are concerned) how are we going to do it?

I dont think we are the major factor in the warming of the earth, and for those who do, answer me this; how did we come out of our last ice age without factories, cars and huge number of people to emit the carbon that warms the atmosphere?

Answer is that carbon levels in the atmosphere have always risen and then fallen by means we are yet to fully understand, they have tracked atmospheric carbon levels in ice samples from the poles and have found that rises in the earths temp has not always correlated with rises in atmospheric carbon. The 2 are not directly linked as the labour party would have you believe. Therefore taxing carbon will not stop the earth warming, as the earth does it naturally.

[haines490slc]

haines490slc, Your post highlights the error in your thinking. I will respond later.

In the meantime you can start to reduce your emissions by slowing down when on the water.

mate I will take that, yes I could slow down, but wouldn't be as much fun. I am not trying to start an arguement, just adding another opinion to the debate.

[crazywalrus]

I put this up as an interesting read as it did come from an ultra conservative group. I have not vetted the information in it.

It pays to check out Tim Flannery's predictions about climate change:

Andrew Bolt

Tim Flannery has had years of practice trying to terrify us into thinking human-made climate change will destroy Earth, says Andrew Bolt.

TIM Flannery has just been hired by the Gillard Government to scare us stupid, and I can't think of a better man for the job.

This Alarmist of the Year is worth every bit of the $180,000 salary he'll get as part-time chairman of the Government's new Climate Commission.

His job is simple: to advise us that we really, truly have to accept, say, the new tax on carbon dioxide emissions that this Government threatens to impose.

This kind of work is just up the dark alley of Flannery, author of The Weather Makers, that bible of booga booga.

He's had years of practice trying to terrify us into thinking our exhausts are turning the world into a fireball that will wipe out civilisation, melt polar ice caps and drown entire cities under hot seas.

Small problem, though: after so many years of hearing Flannery's predictions, we're now able to see if some of the scariest have actually panned out.

And we're also able to see if people who bet real money on his advice have cleaned up or been cleaned out.

So before we buy a great green tax from Flannery, whose real expertise is actually in mammology, it may pay to check his record.

Ready?

In 2005, Flannery predicted Sydney 's dams could be dry in as little as two years because global warming was drying up the rains, leaving the city "facing extreme difficulties with water".

Check Sydney 's dam levels today: 73 per cent. Hmm. Not a good start.

In 2008, Flannery said: "The water problem is so severe for Adelaide that it may run out of water by early 2009."

Check Adelaide 's water storage levels today: 77 per cent.

In 2007, Flannery predicted cities such as Brisbane would never again have dam-filling rains, as global warming had caused "a 20 per cent decrease in rainfall in some areas" and made the soil too hot, "so even the rain that falls isn't actually going to fill our dams and river systems ... ".

Check the Murray-Darling system today: in flood. Check Brisbane 's dam levels: 100 per cent full.

All this may seem funny, but some politicians, voters and investors have taken this kind of warming alarmism very seriously and made expensive decisions in the belief it was sound. So let's check on them, too.

In 2007, Flannery predicted global warming would so dry our continent that desalination plants were needed to save three of our biggest cities from disaster. As he put it: "Over the past 50 years, southern Australia has lost about 20 per cent of its rainfall, and one cause is almost certainly global warming .

"In Adelaide , Sydney and Brisbane , water supplies are so low they need desalinated water urgently, possibly in as little as 18 months."

One premier, Queensland 's Peter Beattie, took such predictions - made by other warming alarmists, too - so seriously that he spent more than $1 billion of taxpayers' money on a desalination plant, saying "it is only prudent to assume at this stage that lower-than-usual rainfalls could eventuate".

But check that desalination plant today: mothballed indefinitely, now that the rains have returned. (Incidentally, notice how many of Flannery's big predictions date from 2007? That was the year warming alarmism reached its most hysterical pitch and Flannery was named Australian of the Year.)

Back to another tip Flannery gave in that year of warming terror. In 2007, he warned that "the social licence of coal to operate is rapidly being withdrawn globally" by governments worried by the warming allegedly caused by burning the stuff.

We should switch to "green" power instead, said Flannery, who recommended geothermal - pumping water on to hot rocks deep underground to create steam. "There are hot rocks in South Australia that potentially have enough embedded energy in them to run Australia's economy for the best part of a century," he said.

"The technology to extract that energy and turn it into electricity is relatively straightforward."

Flannery repeatedly promoted this "straightforward" technology, and in 2009, the Rudd government awarded $90 million to Geodynamics to build a geothermal power plant in the Cooper Basin , the very area Flannery recommended. Coincidentally, Flannery has for years been a Geodynamics shareholder, a vested interest he sometimes declares.

Time to check on how that business tip went. Answer: erk.

The technology Flannery said was "relatively straighforward" wasn't.

One of Geodynamics' five wells at Innamincka collapsed in an explosion that damaged two others. All had to be plugged with cement.

The project has now been hit by the kind of floods Flannery didn't predict in a warming world, with Geodynamics announcing work had been further "delayed following extensive local rainfall in the Cooper Basin region".

The technological and financing difficulties mean there is no certainty now that a commercial-scale plant will ever get built, let alone prove viable, so it's no surprise the company's share price has almost halved in four months.

Never mind, here comes Flannery with his latest scares and you-beaut fix.

His job as Climate Commission chief, says Climate Change Minister Greg Combet, is to "provide an authoritative, independent source of information on climate change to the Australian community" and "build the consensus about reducing Australia 's carbon pollution".

That, translated, means selling us whatever scheme the Government cooks up to tax carbon dioxide, doing to the economy what the floods have done to Flannery's hot-rocks investment.

See why I say Flannery is the right man for this job? Who better to teach us how little we really know about global warming and how much it may cost to panic?

[haines490slc]

interesting

[ellicat]

or (the humourous political view)
/>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mszct-8nfyg

[ellicat]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-09-14/kohler-unspoken-truth-about-carbon-permits/2898600

Unspoken truth about Australia's 'Clean Energy Future'

By ABC's Alan Kohler

The lack of any sort of sophisticated discussion about carbon trading is causing a lot of uncertainty.

No wonder business confidence has collapsed. While the US and Europe apparently grind towards a new financial crisis and recession, Australia's politicians busy themselves with a fraudulent debate about climate change.

Why fraudulent? Because it is impossible for Australia to meet the proposed greenhouse gas emissions target through domestic action, and everyone knows it.

In her speech to Parliament yesterday, the Prime Minister Julia Gillard said: "Liable parties will be able to meet up to half of their obligation through the use of international carbon units."

What she didn't say is that buying permits from overseas is not simply an option, but an essential part of the plan.

At least she is half honest about it. The Coalition continues to pretend that its "direct action" plan can achieve the same proposed emissions reduction as the Government's, when it would also clearly have to rely on international carbon units to cut emissions by 5 per cent of 2000 levels by 2020.

Yet Tony Abbott and his climate change spokesman Greg Hunt remain magnificently unquestioned about their own policy while hammering away at the Government's. It is a beautiful thing to be able to successfully criticise careful and detailed Government legislation that has been 20 years in the making while not having to worry about developing a credible policy of your own.

But that's the golden place in which the Coalition finds itself, and good luck to them I guess.

Unfortunately the lack of any sort of sophisticated discussion about the issue is causing a lot of uncertainty among business people and consumers and contributing to the big drop in their confidence.

No-one, for example, is remarking on the fact that while Australia's "Clean Energy Future" relies on buying international carbon units, the only place you can get them from at the moment - the European Union - appears to be falling apart.

About 85 per cent of the world's carbon permits are generated in the EU emissions trading scheme, which remains the only deep carbon market to have come out of the 1997 Kyoto Protocols.

Despite two attempts so far - at Copenhagen and Cancun - there is no sign yet of a successor international agreement to replace Kyoto. The World Bank reports that the global carbon market has stagnated, even as the global economy recovered in 2010 and the world's temperature was the hottest on record at the same time.

There is virtually no chance of an agreement in Panama next month, or next year, wherever that meeting is held. That means Kyoto will expire in 2012 and it will be every country to themselves… no international market.

That means, realistically, the only place that Australia's 500 "big polluters" will be able to buy permits outside this country - as they must - will be Europe. But will they be able to?

The EU ETS is not falling apart with the EMU at this stage, but the future of everything about the Eurozone is extremely unclear.

The German Constitutional Court has decisively ruled out a permanent European Stability Mechanism as well as the issuing of Eurobonds. In effect, a fiscal union seems to be off the agenda now, which is why financial markets have reacted so negatively in the past week, since the German Constitutional Court ruling.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has publicly ruled out the insolvency of Greece, but that's not carrying much weight against the combination of Germany's legal and right-wing forces standing in the way of practical solutions.

So will there actually be an EU ETS in 2015 when Australian companies have to start buying permits from it? Who knows. No-one wants to talk about that.

More importantly, nor do they want to talk about what Australia's response to a new financial crisis and recession ought to be. More cheques in the mail? Another Building Education Revolution? What should happen with the budget?

Australia's politicians are too busy struggling for power to worry about stuff like that.

Alan Kohler is the Editor in Chief of Business Spectator and Eureka Report, as well as host of Inside Business and finance presenter on ABC News.

[Ricko69]

Ill take a ticket out of this shit house country.....

It must be worse in every other country man cause they are all coming here for some reason !!!

[Keen-as-fisho]

Well its official, the legislation passed in parliament today grrrr bloody ranga. Broke now, going to be worse when EVERYTHING goes up with the tax in place.

(Emoticons not working for some reason)

[KD]

Know how you feel. Labor and the Greens can rest easy that we are reducing the world's CO2 levels by 0.1% !!! What a croc.

[ellicat]

Know how you feel. Labor and the Greens can rest easy that we are reducing the world's CO2 levels by 0.1% !!! What a croc.

It is not as high as 0.1%, KD.

Nothing changes the fact that since the 2009 Copenhagen failure it makes absolutely no sense for Australia to be doing this to itself. Zero effect on temperature, sea level, and whatever else the Green imaginations can dream up, at a huge cost to every member of our population. The cost to administer has not been divulged but is likely to be 4 Billion dollars pa.

I have never witnessed nor been so strongly opposed to such a ridiculous piece(s) of legislation. Legislation that has been thrown unceremoniously in the face of the large majority of Australians who do not want it and do not need it.

Gillard today was like a double murderer who has gotten off on a technicality helped by a team of corrupt lawyers. I cannot wait for the 2013 (or earlier) appeal verdict.

[sweresy]

complete joke.... now maybe people will tick the right box this time.....FFS .

hey Eli, what do you think about the fact she's going to collect some serious coin (even when she is voted out) for the rest of her life..... Any kids reading this that are deciding on future job paths? Don't become a tradie.... be a polly!!

love the profile pic btw lmfao

[ellicat]

complete joke.... now maybe people will tick the right box this time.....FFS .

hey Eli, what do you think about the fact she's going to collect some serious coin (even when she is voted out) for the rest of her life..... Any kids reading this that are deciding on future job paths? Don't become a tradie.... be a polly!!

love the profile pic btw lmfao

Like her or not she has given a lot of years to public life so deserves what anyone else in the game is entitled to. The best thing is that she will have a Commonwealth driver allocated to her. That will make it safer for all of us as she has proven she will drive through red lights and stop signs .....