Foxy,

Once again you are waving the party flag and viewing the issue solely through Rudd tinted glasses.

The issue was that Abbott was asked a politically sensitive question, which he answered in a fashion. The thread is about the media twisting and modifying the meaning and misreporting on it.

Secondly:

The entire ETS is a PIGO, feel good tax on everything. (Rudd's tax on everything)

With the failure of Copenhagen, the ETS even at a 25% reduction in Aus would have no impact globally, but a significant effect on the economy. (but some of us might feel better that we are doing the right thing.)

While I despair at the Copenhagen failure, I am painfully aware of the futility of Aus going alone, and the myth that Aus is a role model (or even that anyone is paying attention to what we do).

KRudd should realise that getting the ETS through at this point would be at best a Pyrrhic victory.

Dear Shadow Minister,

I'm not waving the party flag at all.
I just wish that we had a credible
Opposition is all.

Abbott's hopes that flagging the ETS as the
"Big Tax," will do the electoral trick is
shallow and opportunistic - apart from being
nonsense. Even John Howard supported an ETS.

Somebody's got to pay for the carbon emissions
and it is obvious that it should be the big
polluters not the tax payers who are the victims
of pollution. So perhaps Abbott's policy needs to
be re-examined from a realistic point of view
because he's proposing that polluters continue to
pollute at no cost and tax payers will pay for
the solution.

We can't keep on doing what we're doing and expect
different results. That's insane!

Some people blame Labor for bailing out Australia from
the global economic crisis - with tax payer's money,
and here we have the Opposition proposing to bail out
the carbon pollution with tax payer's money. The
Government has clearly stated that consumer's will
be compensated for increased energy costs from fines
collected from the major polluters. That makes sense.

If we accept the Opposition's proposal - to cover the
costs of carbon emissions from tax payer money -
we can logically
assume as has been the case with the previous Howard
Government - that cost-cutting to schools, hospitals,
health, education, roads, will have to be cut to cover
the cost. Taxes will be increased.

Of course there is the possiblity that the Leader of the
Opposition has a magic cave with funds stored away - to
fund his policies.

Foxy writes she wishes we had a credible opposition. I wish we had a credible Government. The fraudulent tax based on lies, the squandering of billions and the social engineering of this Government is beginning to make Gough Whitlam (our worst ever) look good.

Dear runner,

As I've said before - I fully understand
your feelings, and those who think like
the current Opposition. All you guys really
want is to go back to the dull, self-satisfied,
and joylessly conformist times of the Howard
years. You want an ethnocentric, inward-looking,
and changless society.

We get it!

Foxy,

What runner wants is a theocracy, a biblical literalist one. But then runner (he/she/it?) would have a problem. Runner might not be appointed to a position of importance. How could runner clutch at thin straws of presumed superiority in a state where everybody was already "holier than thou", a race that *any* liar might win. Dissatisfied with the "insufficiently biblical" nature of the theocracy runner might martyr him/her/itself to a more extreme stupidity.

Rusty

Foxy,

You are repeating and defending labor's policies without deviating from the script.

With regards subsidising the polluters, there is one issue that has been conveniently brushed over by the Rudd gov. In the early 90s, Labor started selling off the brown coal power stations in the Latrobe valley.

These assets had been badly maintained and were bleeding the gov in running costs. External companies paid large sums of money to help pay back the huge deficit the last Labor gov ran up, knowing that they would have to invest hugely in refurbishing the plants and personnel to make them profitable.

15 years down the line, when they are now starting to make the profits to repay the capital and other investment costs, the state now wants to tax them to the point of making them unprofitable.

Given the guarantees the government gave them, they would have a legitimate claim if they weren't subsidised.

I agree that there should be some form of carbon tax in line with what the rest of the world is doing, but it should be low enough not to hurt business, and should not be poured back into ridiculous schemes. Replacing some of GST with the carbon tax would go a long way.