Klaas,

>Are we on right track with a carbon price or not? The evidence of climate change is unmistakable, right here in Australia and elsewhere. If anything, we should do more, much more. Be a leader for other countries dragging their feet.<

Be a leader - with a Carbon Tax? You have got to be joking.
We should be doing more towards energy self-sufficiency and overall resilience - with greater investment in solar, funded by removing subsidies to the fossil fuel industry; capping electricity prices to force the generators to become cleaner, more efficient and to convert to gas; introducing a progressive emissions cap and penalizing energy-intensive industry to induce these to become more energy-efficient, whilst also providing incentives for new energy-efficient industry and technological innovation; develop a water-security scheme to divert flood flows from the nation's north to the headwaters of the Darling River to facilitate irrigation in the dry inland areas of NSW and provide optimal flows to the Murray, Coorong, South Australia and Adelaide.

We also need to seriously consider nuclear energy - Thorium. We've apparently got masses of the raw material, the technology is supposedly far safer than uranium reactors, and disposal of waste material is supposedly not much of a problem. What are we waiting for?

Lead? We are small fry. We should do our own thing in practical ways, for our own benefit, and use diplomacy to induce the Big Polluters to up their game.
Carbon Tax? Achieves nothing. It is just money-shuffling and more bureaucracy. (With handouts to impress gullible voters.) A sham.

Neo-Liberalism - thrust like a dagger, but signifying Nothing.
The Libs are Not in the pocket of the oligarchs, but they may have a far better appreciation of Keynesian theory and application than Labor would ever embrace in its Neo-Socialist time-warp.
Aus is pricing itself out of world markets, and business as usual can only take us all the way down the drain.
Time for a major reality-check.

Seems the academia now need decide about their own major overhaul.

"Gillard to pull $2.3bn of funding from unis to pay for Gonski reforms"

Perhaps these Gonski related financial re-arrangements may re-connect them with ordinary Australians who pay their wages.