Ross Garnaut

The Government will be hoping that the convoluted and dense reckoning of professor Ross Garnaut will counter the slick and glib one-liners of Tony Abbott.

The Opposition has successfully been telling the public that a “carbon tax” - or on occasion the “toxic tax” - will wreck household budgets already flattened by other cost-increasing factors.

The proposed carbon price has been depicted as a financial horror which would dwarf those already-punishing family expenses.

Continue reading "Carbon pricing: At least Garnaut hasn’t been gagged" »

There was a telling first line from Professor Ross Garnaut during the launch of his latest carbon trading paper: “Well, here we are again.”

It was the release of what is now Garnaut’s sixth paper, and his tomes are beginning to take on the appearance of some tragic existentialist in terms of both their size and themes. “We are living through an awful contest of knowledge versus ignorance,” was one of his more memorable lines.

Like Garnaut’s previous presentations it was worthy, intelligent and held a message that the Government itself has been unable to articulate: that a price on carbon won’t raise your cost of living. Putting aside some problems with that theory, the real problem for Garnaut’s latest volume lies in the political realities it exists in.

Continue reading "It’s deja vu all over again for Garnaut’s carbon price" »