I'm gobsmacked by Australia's coal export hypocrisy. We're supposed to bust our nuts getting net CO2 below 500 Mt by 2020 yet CO2 from exported coal is over 700 Mt and increasing. We also hope to overtake Qatar as the biggest LNG exporter. It's not hypocritical, it's sleazy.

To make it worse we'll pay the PNGians big bucks to save the forest so they'll probably cut down another forest at double speed just as Norway found with their sweetheart deal with Bolivia.

But wait there's more. Asian steel mills send ships to Pt Headland to pick up iron ore then send other ships to Newcastle to pick up coking coal. Now Bluescope and OneSteel say carbon tax (or lack of in Asia) will wipe them out. But it's steel from our ingredients that have travelled half way around the world which we'll now have to import.

My suggestion is that the PM invites India and China to pay carbon tax of about $60 a tonne of coal on a voluntary basis, to be refunded for their green programs. If they decline we know they have no intention of going low carbon therefore we should carbon tax all their finished goods.

I do wish the ironic title of the book 'The Lucky Country' was not used all the time as a description of this nation.

In fact, if anyone ever took the time to read 'The Lucky Country' it would become clear that not much has changed since Horne put cynical pen to paper.

What's 'lucky' about having nothing going on in the economy but for a massive quarry mentality?