Tristan hitting the genuinely disadvantaged should not be part of the answer. Working out who is disadvantaged and who is just along for the ride should be.

R0bert

Tristan,

$11.5bn is not just a signal to the market, it is a complete reorganisation. $30/t will wipe out any profits the brown coal generators make, and all their company equity, without providing any incentives for others to provide alternative generation. There is a risk of the largest generators simply cutting back capacity and letting a power shortage drive electricity prices through the roof.

Secondly the rise in energy costs are going to raise all costs, the payment to lower income earners is going to strongly drive inflation, which will be met with rapidly rising interest rates.

The middle class welfare you mentioned were tax incentives for people to use health providers outside the public sector, which has been successful in reducing government expenditure in that area. The same applies for private school funding which has spectacularly reduced the cost of schooling.

Given the already record debt and rising inflating, all your additional spending will result in further inflation, increased taxes and further erosion of non mining industries.

The 70s were a period of stagnant growth coupled with high inflation primarily caused by a rapid rise in energy costs. We are looking at the same again.

I believe there will be a short-term 'once off' price inflation impact; but like with the GST the market will adapt and stabilise.

re: cost-of-living, though - that is covered by compensation.

Although the cost of investment in renewables that follows cannot but be passed on in some form - Whether you accept this generally rests on whether or not you believe something needs to be done about climate change.

re: the private health insurance rebate - I think it's reasonable to suppose people on higher incomes can afford private health insurance without a subsidy; And the condition of public health in this country is such that they will take out private health insurance anyway.

Tristan

Your spruiking shows you have just some much in common with the world's worst example of a socialist.

Adolph Hittler was a socialist and led the National Party of Germany ... that led to fascism.

He started out spruiking equality through social engineering of social policy and went though a stage of deciding what was best for his people until his ultimate determination ... the final solution.
He was the ultimate populist ... during his rise, and once he had power he just continued to socialisms ultimate conclusion. Gillard has similar traits, just look at how she recently ignored the will of the Australian people when she rejected the majority vote of the peoples voice ... in both our senate and our parliamemnt.

That's dictatorship.

Thankfully most of us learned the lessons of history and reject utterly those who think they know what's best for us all.

That's why labor is polling 27% and the greens 10%.

The fat lady is singimng for labor and bob brown.