Yabby it isn’t too often I agree with your goose stepping ideals, but regarding the "farm" what we should do, but will not do because we are being dictated by the UN and those who "own" it, is legislate to protect our arable land and support our farmers to keep in their vocation. In post war Japan even after being nuked twice they had enough sense left to protect their farmland from sale or exploitation. That is why Japan built up and not out, but we aint got the sense of a nuked Japanese pleb.

Why is Bob Brown and his army of imbeciles not protesting about the gas bores being sunk all over the small percentage of farmland this continent has? What is green for Brown these days given the Gunn got their way on his front door step and he did not even bother to chain himself to anything like in the good old Franklin days. A Greenie, my fat brown eye he is, and I use the term brown eye because it is special to Bobby.

Rstuart,

The modelling was released with the carbon tax details by the Gillard government, that you can't trust them is an indication of the problem she faces.

@Shadow Minister: The modelling was released with the carbon tax details by the Gillard government, that you can't trust them is an indication of the problem she faces.

I have a low opinion of macro economists. Rudd went with the stimulus because that was the majority advice he got, but it wasn't hard to find a a swag economist's claiming it was wrong. When we were contemplating whether a free trade agreement with the US I googled the opinion of a few economists. After reading opinions a few I realised I was wasting my time. You could tell what conclusion they were going to reach by looking up which groups got them to speak on their behalf. The facts they were commenting on didn't seem to effect the outcome. The current mess in the US was brought about in part by a bunch of economists "if we remove all market regulations, everyone will behave in the countries best interests because that is what markets do". Alan Greenspan actually expressed surprise when it didn't happen. And closer to home here on OLO, we had two fairly high profile economists come to precisely opposite conclusions on whether banking the mining revenues in a future fund was a good idea.

The old joke that if you put all economists in the world end to end, they would not reach a conclusion is not too far from the truth. I gather you must partially agree, given your comment "The couple of points that the economic illiterate deliberately omits to mention". The economic illiterate was Oliver Hartwich, who studied Business Administration and Economics according to his bio. I didn't comment, because I had nothing to add to your observations.

That said, I am sure treasury's short term predictions are fine. Microeconomic works well enough given static conditions. But 10 years out - who do they think they are kidding?

So yes, the carbon tax is a bit of a punt. I am not sure that is a huge problem. So was the GST. What Hawk and Keating did was an even bigger one.

Watching the ABC digital News Channel this morning, I witnessed an outdoor press conference with JULIA Gillard.,in QLD, in my view, she put to rest the relentless lying about the outcome of the cost of Carbon Tax by the Opposition Leader.
It was a good expose of those lies, the coal industry and steel industry et.al are quite happy with the tax....of course the people behind the companies mining of Australia are not happy, they won't be able to satisfy the shareholders....but in W.A. most of the people are behind the carbon tax, including, I might say, some of the local mining companies., In my opinion, the people who are against it are more interested in money made from Stocks and Shares than they are climate change

Reading the news this morning, I read an outdoor interview with Morris Iemma. in my view, he put to rest the relentless lying about the outcome of the cost of Carbon Tax by the Juliar Gillard.

"Mr Iemma was the third senior Labor figure, after Transport Workers Union boss Tony Sheldon and Dean Mighell from the Electrical Trades Union, to voice opposition to the carbon tax."

"One thing is sure," Iemma said, " [Australia's] carbon tax won't change the world but it could change the government. The carbon tax at best reduces the rate of increase in greenhouse gas emissions slightly."

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/abbott-uses-iemma-words-to-hit-carbon-tax-20110721-1hpv9.html

@Shadow Minister: in my view, he put to rest the relentless lying about the outcome of the cost of Carbon Tax by the Juliar Gillard.

Well I'll be damned. Shadow has evidently found a Labor stalwart he trusts.

I'm glad I was sitting down.