Note: ABC Breakfast host Virginia Trioli made this “you’re crazy” hand twirling gesture after interviewing Senator Barnaby Joyce on the issue of the ETS. Trioli obviously didn’t realise the cameras were still on. She later rang Senator Joyce to apologise, he quipped to the Punch that he couldn’t quite hear because he had been placed in an asylum.
Apparently some television commentators think that I’m the insane one.
Maybe that explains the place where I work.
Obviously, if I’m not me who am I?
But I think the true insanity is that so many media commentators think that this ETS thought bubble won’t turn into an economic nightmare.
The debate as to whether our nation is inflicted with a massive new tax, euphemistically called the CPRS, is entering the end game.
I am sitting in a coffee shop in Brisbane and I am thinking about the things for which the price will go up, because of this tax.
Well, I flew here on a plane and there will be taxes on aviation fuel, so the price for that will certainly have gone up. I am having a milkshake and as milk processing uses power, lots of power, the price of this milk will go up.
I am watching a television, with some people dressed up as dogs on it, and as there will be a tax on electricity, the price of that will go up.
The lady working in the coffee shop is washing the dishes in a dishwasher, so the price of that has just gone up. She is wearing a pressed new apron, lately washed and the cost of washing that has just gone up.
On the menu is lambs fry, and ovine ruminant potentially has a huge tax on it. I could go for the vegetable stack and that requires fertiliser to grow and diesel to harvest so the price of that has gone up.
I am looking at a newly opened shop across the road but the steel purlins and trusses require coal to manufacture and so the price of those has gone up. The glass for the shop windows has a huge carbon footprint, so the price of that has gone up.
The concrete that makes the structure will probably be imported, so the price goes up.
Outside is a gas bottle to run the kitchen, there is a direct tax on that and price of that has gone up.
Everywhere you look this insidious tax will be in your life. You don’t have to put in a tax return to pay it, you don’t have to make a profit to pay it, you just have to live in Australia and you will be paying it.
This tax has the potential to put our dairy production, our beef cattle production, our sheep meat production, out of business or to make them more reliant on other nations to feed our nation.
Now the most important thing to remember after all of this is that the current climate will remain exactly as it would have, had the tax never been in place, nothing will have changed.
As far as the climate goes, the tax is pointless. It reminds me of the story where the Roman Emperor Caligula marched his legions to the coast of France, where he told them to pick up seashells and then he marched them back to Rome.
When people asked why he did that it was assumed the only reason was that he was barking mad. Every now and then, the rulers of a nation do things like that.
Apparently, the only reason we are going down this manic path is that we are going to be world leaders.
Now I don’t think that last night Barack rolled over, tapped Michelle on the shoulder and said, “Darling I just can’t sleep. I am so worried about what Kevin is up to regarding his climate policy. I think he is going to steal my thunder.”
Or Hu Jintao, Chinese President, broke from the 60th anniversary of communist China to have a meeting about Australian climate policy.
Or Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India, has decided to put on hold lifting his people out of poverty because of Kevin’s climate policy. This tax will collect an estimated 17.5 billion dollars by 2012-13 for the Treasury, (source, Senate Economics Committee). It will make billions of dollars for the banks and share brokers but money does not grow on trees and someone has to pay.
And that someone, my dear friend, is you. I cannot find a friend for the ETS. I have vainly sought them out on talkback radio and at town hall meetings but they only exist in the big banks and in a couple of rooms in Canberra.
Don’t rely on Canberra to stop this lunacy; you have to. And you better do it soon because, just between you and I by the way, I am part of the group that is pretty well insulated from the effects of the ETS.
You pay for my plane ticket, you pay for my fuel, you subsidise my accommodation so if the price goes up so does my subsidy and I don’t have to make a profit.
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