Wednesday 10 February 2010
Free Rice: improve your vocabulary and feed the world
Tuesday 9 February 2010
Greg Hunt's rubbery CPRS figures presented to Parliament
The Opposition's Greg Hunt spoke to the Rudd Government's third reading of the CARBON POLLUTION REDUCTION SCHEME BILL 2010 on Thursday 4 February 2010:
The ABS lists 8.7 million Australian families.
Where do we get the $1100 figure from? It is not
just us. Whether it was the Daily Telegraph in November
on the splash front page '$1100 per family the cost
of Mr Rudd's ETS', whether it was the work of the
Brotherhood of St Lawrence...
If Greg Hunt goes to a newspaper for some of his figures, where did he go to get his $11.5 billion great big tax and is it a per annum number?
We know that this figure is the estimated revenue from the proposed auction of CPRS carbon permits over two years because the Senate Economics Committee told us so in April 2009 and we also know from Frontier Economics that this original estimate is expected to fall under the revised CPRS currently before Parliament, but Hunt appears to be sticking with the original and now out-of-date projections which he insists on calling a tax on families, pensioners and small business.
Of course with this $11.5 billion being spread over two years that would mean that the spurious dollar amount Hunt is implying is an annual figure would have to be cut in half - that's $550 per family each year for the first two years of the emissions trading scheme.
Hunt is also being a trifle elastic when it comes to population numbers and needs to explain why he is distributing this 'tax' across 8.7 million so-called 'families' when he perhaps should be saying 'households'.
The $1,100 reverts to a per household basis in Liberal Senator Simon Birmingham's media release, so Greg Hunt cannot plead ignorance of what his 8.7 million represents.
Perhaps he thinks telling Parliament that it's all about Australian families reads better in Hansard and, after all the suspect $1,100 he is quoting appears to actually apply to middle-income families anyway according to other members of the Liberal Party.
And the $900 million or the Brotherhood of St Laurence and KPMG?
Well Hunt never explains where he drew that $900 million figure from.
While BSL-KPMG documents don't appear to mention the $1,100 per household but placed the additional costs at:
$494 per year additional expenditure for very low income (below $500 week gross income), high energy using households; and $478.40 for low-income (below $1000 per week gross income), high energy using households.
One rather suspects that Messrs. Hunt and Abbott have carefully included in their totals those projected cost of living price rises which are independant of any emissiosn trading scheme.
Rising to one's feet in the House of Representatives and knowingly building a dollar pyramid based on shifting sand is seen by simple folk as lying to Parliament.
Something Greg Hunt should remember before he goes any further.
Tony Abbott will of course totally ignore any parliamentary rules or conventions if it suits his immediate purpose.
ACMA snaphot of the Australian Internetz
Nats Luke Hartsuyker gets sprung or the local butcher gets an unfair hearing?
Sometimes comic relief is all there is in Question Time and the Nationals MP for Cowper shovels in on with a predictable response from the other side.
The question voters are left with - is the butcher an honest catalyst in this exchange?
I sorta think his use of the term "great big new tax" hints at a a more thhan passing acquaintance with the Coffs Harbour Nats.
Monday 8 February 2010
CPRS Bills 2010: Turnbull trumps Abbott in climate change debate (transcript)
Malcolm Turnbull speaking today in Parliament on anthropomorphic global warming and an emissions trading scheme, in direct opposition to his leader's new policy position:
The White Paper estimates the CPRS will result in a one off increase in the CPI by 1.1% – compared to the 2.8% one-off increase in the CPI caused by the introduction of the GST. Most households are compensated for this increase in costs either in whole or in part.
I should note that the largest component of increases in electricity prices in NSW over the next five years is, in fact, additional network charges to recognise the increased investment in the security and reliability of electricity infrastructure. Those increases, unlike the CPRS element, are not the subject of any compensation.
But given we have an apparent bi-partisan agreement that emissions should be reduced by 5% of 2000 levels, is an Emissions Trading Scheme, at a general level, the best policy to achieve the desired reduction in emissions?
Believing as I do, as a liberal, that market forces deliver the lowest-cost and most effective solution to economic challenges, the answer must be yes.
Because more emissions intensive industries and generators need to buy more permits than less intensive ones, lower emission activities, whether they are cleaner fuels or energy efficient buildings, are made more competitive.
A brown coal fired power station, for example, pumps out four times as much CO2 as an efficient gas fired one. But gas is expensive and clean and brown coal is cheap and dirty.
If there is no cost charged for emitting carbon there is simply no incentive to move to the cleaner fuel.
Until 1 December last year there was a bi-partisan commitment in Australia that this carbon price, this exercise in reducing emissions should be imposed by means of an emissions trading scheme.
At their core these bills are as much the work of John Howard as of Kevin Rudd. The policy I am supporting today as an Opposition backbencher is the same policy I supported as John Howard’s Environment Minister.
And why did we, in the Howard Government, believe an emissions trading scheme was the best approach?
It was because we, as Liberals, believed in the superior efficiency of the free market to set a price on carbon......
The ETS allows Australian businesses to make their own decisions as to how to reduce their emissions – Government sets the rules and in part sets the cap on total emission and then lets the market work out the most efficient and effective result.
Schemes where bureaucrats and politicians pick technologies and winners, doling out billions of taxpayers’ dollars is neither good policy is neither economically efficient and nor will it be environmentally effective.
For these reasons, Mr Speaker, I will be voting in favour of these Bills.
Rather cleverly Turnbull has released his full speech here ahead of the Hansard transcript.
Shafting Abbott in this way must have given him much pleasure, with the added advantage that he appears steadfast in his views when compared to Abbott's recent volte face.
A little aromatic? No, Tony - you said cr@p and you meant cr@p
ABC TV The Insiders Sunday 7th February 2010:
"BARRIE CASSIDY: You see the credibility problem for you is that you're a conviction politician. You call it as you see it. And yet you seem to be slightly half hearted about it. And then of course you have to live with the comment that you made, that you think climate change is crap.
TONY ABBOTT: I think what I actually said was that the so-called settled science was a little aromatic. Now you don't have to accept the totality of the science to still think that there is a reasonable argument for taking sensible precautions against possible risk and that's what we're doing."
I think we can all recognise the lie because as I write you are in the House of Reps getting ready to vote down the Rudd Government Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme amended bills for the second time.
Download the audio file of Pyrenees Advocate interview.
Election 2010 - What's a lamb roast?
For days Tony Abbott's been popping up all over the evening tellie talking about the cost of food and shaking his head solemnly; calling lamb the "new lobster".
I couldn't afford to eat lamb chops in 2006 under Howard or in 2009 under Rudd - so why does 'Phoney Tony' Abbott expect me to believe that he will somehow make lamb affordable to poor people post-2010 if he's made Prime Minister.
Pull the other one, Abbott - those budgie smugglers are strangling your brain!
Lucky to afford mince
Maclean
The right-wing disinformation campaign is alive and well on the NSW North Coast
The political disinformation campaign is alive and well on the NSW North Coast in The Daily Examiner letters to the editor and what passes for the party faithfull are gearing up for the next federal election campaign:
Teaching, nursing students targeted
In the 2009 Budget, the Australian Government announced that students who graduate from an eligible education or nursing course of study from second semester 2009 onwards will be able to apply for a reduction in their compulsory HELP repayment if they work as a teacher or nurse.
From 1 January 2010 the maximum annual student contribution amount (previously called HECS) for commencing students undertaking education and nursing units of study will be increased from the 'national priority' rate to the band 1 rate [Rate 1 set at $5,310 p.a. maximum in 2010]......
An education or nursing graduate is a person who has graduated from a course of study that is required for initial entry to teaching or nursing professions.
Further information will soon be available when guidelines for the benefit for teachers and nurses are finalised.....
Find out if you're eligible