FUELLING THE BALLOT BOX

Did I miss something? Hasn’t Prime Minister Rudd been telling us for months that you can’t cut the petrol excise?  It’s economically irresponsible and his very responsible government couldn’t even countenance the idea. Even suggest it and you’re talking heresy.

Isn’t that what that economic and political charlatan Brendan Nelson has been talking about? What a bad man. What a joke.

And so today we get the much-vaunted Green Paper on climate change. And what does it include? Well, on the surface petrol will be included in the emissions trading scheme (the ETS) which will drive the price of gas up even more.  But motorists will be compensated by a cent for cent trade off.

For every cent that the cost of petrol goes up through ETS – they’ll knock a cent off the petrol excise. That will apply for three years after the scheme is implemented – to get them through the next election – and then it will be reviewed. Which means they’ll push it away for another three years.

The government, as the old song says, has ‘one eye on the pot and the other up the chimney’.

As Michele Grattan says in The Age today ‘ The Government has thrown in the towel on petrol. It is protecting its back, spurning its expert adviser Ross Garnaut, and giving the Opposition a rhetorical victory. It doesn’t make policy sense.’

Maybe not. But it makes political sense.  Since I announced last week that I now believed ‘the emperor has not clothes’ and had become a vocal climate change sceptic I have rarely had such a positive response from listeners.

The 3AW website was swamped with listeners’ hits.

I said then: This is not to say that we should not be environmentally responsible. I have said many times we treat this planet as if it belongs to somebody else. But at least let some experts pour some cold scientific water on some of the more outlandish claims.

One sceptic is Professor Jeffrey Sachs, from Columbia University who is also an adviser to the United Nations’ Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon.

He says an emission trading scheme will never win global support. He told a conference at the ANU this week that the concept was ‘ highly disliked’ by the Chinese and other developing countries and they would never agree to it. And there will never be a global agreement to introduce an ETS.

He also said on the ABC’s Lateline:
 It only covers a fraction of what needs to be covered, it's hard to implement, it's hard to monitor, it's non transparent, it's highly political, highly manipulative, which is why the banks love it. The banks all want to trade. This is an investment banking dream.’

And he pointed out that in Europe ‘there are a few power plants, a steel mill and a few others that account for 90 per cent of the emissions.’

Of course while Australia leads by example  China and India keep pumping out more carbon in a few hours than we would in a year.

But the Chinese are right on top of things. We learned today that one of their ways of fighting pollution in Beijing for the Olympic Games is to move the air quality monitors to the suburbs. Leaves a better impression.

A bit like what’s happening in Canberra.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2008