Agmates

The Newspoll survey released in today’s Australian newspaper reveals to a massive 70% of Coalition voters oppose want the Liberal / National party to reject Kevin Rudds Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme when it comes before the Senate in two weeks time.

The Newspoll survey asked:

Which one of the following comes closest to your view about the proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme?

Today’s Newspoll result is the  death knell for Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership.   From Todays Australian:

“Mr Turnbull was openly attacked by outspoken veteran backbencher Wilson Tuckey and was yesterday facing further internal revolt when he was accused of putting political expediency ahead of the national interest by supporting Labor’s emissions trading scheme.”

Liberal MP’s are as outraged at Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott’s politically expedient back flip on the ETS as I was in this article posted just days ago:

“The tragedy for rural & regional Australians and blue collar workers is that Abbott and Turnbull are actually terrified not of the coalition losing the election, which is inevitable no mater when its held in this current term, but of themselves losing their inner Sydney ‘doctors wives’ dominated seats of Warrinngah (Abbott) and Wentworth (Turnbull).

Stuff the lives and jobs of hundreds of thousands of ordinary Australians, they have to be re-elected. Its a sad indictment on them as men.”

Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership of the Coalition is untenable – more from the Australian.

“The latest outbreak of dissent came just as public opinion turns against Australia taking a world lead on climate change.

Liberal backbencher Cory Bernardi, already sacked by Mr Turnbull for speaking out, said the party would suffer for the Opposition Leader’s actions in preparing to pass Labor’s ETS before Copenhagen. “The political price of supporting something you publicly acknowledge is bad for every family, every community and the country, for short-term expediency is likely to be very high. Moreover, it is payable in the most prized of political capital — credibility,” Senator Bernardi said in a newsletter to colleagues. Senator Bernardi told The Australian he believed changes on the support for an ETS would have a big impact on the Liberal Party.”

As far as Coalition supporters are concerned both Malcolm Turnbull as Liberal Leader and passing the ETS legislation in the Senate are unacceptable.

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Agmates Editor and Founder Steve Truman

Have Your Say!

Leader of the Nationals in the Senate Barnaby Joyce writes:

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Barnaby Joyce

Mr Rudd is today lauding the vote in the United States known as the American Clean Energy Act (otherwise known as the Waxman-Markey Bill) as the indelible truth and righteousness of his position.

So let’s have a close look at what actually happened with this vote.

More than 200 Democrats voted for it and 44 four voted against it.

In Australian parlance those 44 would be describes as ‘crossing the floor’, eight Republicans voted for it, likewise crossing the floor, in the other direction and 168 voted against.

The vote got through on a razors edge of 219 to 212.

Is Mr Rudd therefore endorsing the Democratic principal so well demonstrated in this vote that if you don’t believe in something you don’t vote for it?

Is Mr Rudd brave enough, if he truly believes in this principal and truly believes this global warming issue, to accord the people in his own party, who don’t believe in the Combet-Wong-Rudd Bill, to not vote for it on the premise that those on the other side of Parliament, who do believe in it, that they can.

Is Mr Rudd willing to have the Democratic principal break out in the way people vote or does he want the totalitarian dictate of what I say the Labor party must do and not only the Labor party but everybody else in the Parliament as well?

Don’t laud an American position if you don’t want to emulate the principals that brought it about.

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QLD farmer and Chairman of the Carbon Sense Coalition Viv Forbes writes:

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Viv Forbes

Soon our elected representatives will be asked to vote on Senator Wong’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

This scheme is not about carbon or pollution. Its main effect is to provide for a cap on the human production of carbon dioxide, a colourless harmless natural gas. Carbon dioxide is no more a pollutant than oxygen or water, the other two atmospheric gases on which all life on earth relies.

The bill will also levy a tax on whatever carbon dioxide is produced, and levy an excess production tax on anyone whose production exceeds the legal cap. It is a carbon dioxide Cap-n-Tax Bill.

There is no human activity whatsoever that does not generate carbon dioxide. Therefore any attempt to measure, cap and tax human production of carbon dioxide must eventually extend to every human activity (the UK government already floated the idea that every person be issued with a personal carbon ration card).

This is a very serious proposal, with wide-ranging implications for all aspects of economic life and personal freedoms.

Click on the cap-n-trade Maze to see full size

It could only be justified if there was a clear and urgent danger that additional human production of carbon dioxide is highly likely to cause dangerous global warming.

There is no evidence that this is the case just computer models and scare forecasts. Neither the scientific questions, nor the cost benefit analysis has been subject to any critical independent analysis.

The Cap-n-Trade Maze diagram  illustrates the sequence of decisions that should be made before this bill gets assent.

If the answer to ANY ONE of the boxed questions is NO, there is no justification for Australia rushing ahead with its Cap-n-Tax Bill.

This Maze, although light-hearted, has a factual basis and conveys some very serious messages.

It is highly unlikely that anyone could honestly answer Yes to every question, which is what is required to justify passage of the bill.

This suggests that there is a high likelihood that the bill will have NO CLIMATE EFFECT WHATSOEVER and thus a costly exercise in self delusion.

The Carbon Sense Coalition’s strong recommendation is that all Parliaments reject all Cap-n-Tax Bills.

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Nationals Senate Leader Barnaby Joyce writes from Parliament:

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Barnaby Joyce

The problem with the ETS is most Australians are unaware of the impact it will have on the cost of living or the reality of what happens to those industries that’ll be left to shoulder the cost.

The role of the Parliament on a major piece of legislation is to make sure that Australia is fully aware of what they signing themselves up for and what it will achieve if they buy the ETS ticket.

The longer the debate goes on the more people understand and if the debate goes all next week all the better for all Australia.

All over Australia views on the ETS issue are changing as people understand that they face increased costs to consumables like power and food.

The ETS is the employment termination scheme for regional Australia and the Nationals have led the way on this debate stating that you can reduce carbon emissions; if that’s what you really feel you have to do, without destroying the living standards of huge belts of Australia.

At the same time the National Party has been at the forefront of saying there are two sides of the debate and our Parliament shouldn’t be scripted into only allowing one.

If people don’t believe in global warming then that’s their right and no less a right than the person who believes in it fervently.

There are a range of views across and within all parties and wouldn’t it be nice if we had a debate where everyone could express their genuinely held beliefs in a truly democratic institution.

This is the most crucial economic policy in recent time in Australia and it’s vital we keep the debate going. If we get it wrong then the economic ramifications for Australia will be catastrophic.

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Breaking News:

• Coalition Senators and Independents Steve Fielding & Xenophon delay renewable energy laws

• Steve Fielding to have ‘get back to you’ meeting with Senator Wong Later today

Have Your Say!

QLD farmer, Chairman of the Carbon Sense Coalition Viv Forbes writes:

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Any politician interested in preserving Australian jobs must vote against The Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. It will destroy real jobs faster than green jobs can be created.

Even with a crash-through program of investment in alternative energy Australia will suffer a triple whammy of job losses.

Watch this video of US Congresswomen  Michele Bachmann explaining the impact the transfer of the Spanish economy to renewalbles has had … 17% unemployment.

The first round of job layoffs will  come as a tax whammy.

Most industries will have to pay for their cap entitlement  ie they have to pay to do what they have previously been doing for free. Even after they have paid for production up to their rationed entitlement, any business which wishes to return to its pre-Rat scheme production levels (above the cap), must buy new ration permits in a speculative Emissions Permit market. This is another tax which has to be recovered from customers, other businesses or shareholders.

The first law of fiscal policy is this: If you tax something, less of it will be produced. This is the real aim of the CPRS Scheme and it will achieve that aim.

There are always marginal businesses in all industries. An increase in taxes will cause a few of them to close their doors or move to a more enlightened country. And there are always nervous bankers ready to pull the plug because of the extra risk in the speculative carbon trading market.

In the green new world there is also no room for new projects or new jobs in traditional industries  any new project will need to force closure of an old project by buying its Ration permits on the market.

These new and uncertain taxes on existing production will cause the second round of job losses.

Even those businesses that survive the production cap, the ration fee and the excess carbon tax, will be forced to increase their prices to recoup the extra costs. This makes them less able to compete with imports in the Australian market, or with other exporters in the world market.

Countries such as India, China, Brazil and South Africa, who have no intention of embracing the shackles of a RAT Scheme, will be the chief beneficiaries. Overseas is where the real new jobs will be created.

This unfair competition from foreign firms will cause the third round of jobs layoffs.

To date we have only looked at things from the perspective of existing industry. There is also a whole gamut of global warming policies that will directly or indirectly subsidize regulators, inspectors, auditors, lawyers, bankers, carbon traders, international conferences, and the manufacture and operation of subsidised facilities such as wind farms, solar arrays, carbon forests and facilities granted exemptions from the costs everyone else must bear.

The second law of fiscal policy is this: If you subsidise something, you will get more of it.

We will thus get more of these costly subsidised things the Climate Change Industry looks like becoming the biggest industry in the world. It will compete with real industry for materials, labour and rationed energy, but will not put cheaper food on our plate, cheaper or more reliable electricity into the grid or make a net contribution to tax revenue.

The growing costs of the Climate Change Industry must filter back to the real economy, causing more job layoffs.

Three places in the world have already tested the Green Job Creation Myth  Spain and Denmark with massive wind and solar power developments and California which tries to lead the world in everything green.

All three have seen loss of jobs as industries close or relocate because of costly or unreliable electricity supply. A recent study in Spain has concluded that more than 2 real jobs were destroyed for every green job created. In addition Spain has 17% unemployment, electricity shortages, and power costs up by from 30% (homes) to 100% (businesses). Denmark is selling unreliable wind power at a loss, and Californians climate madness has caused a huge loss of jobs and tax revenue.

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Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, John Cobb writes:

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Farmers will go broke and food prices will rise, are the main findings of ‘official’ Government modelling into the cost of the Rudd Government’s Emissions Trading Scheme on farm production released today.

The Rudd Government’s ETS would be an expensive folly which will lead to higher food prices, less farmers and more imported food, with no net benefit for the environment.

The ABARE report, Effects of Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme on the economic value of farm production, finds that agriculture will be hit hard from day one under the Rudd Government’s ETS.

The ABARE report states;

‘Even if the agriculture sector is not a covered sector under the CPRS, agricultural producers will face increased input costs associated with the use of electricity, fuels and freight and may face lower farm-gate prices for their goods from downstream processors. These will have implications for the economic value of farm production’.

Graziers will be hit particularly hard and producing beef will be next to impossible with returns expected to drop by 22 percent. Producers of wool, mutton and lambs are also set to take a whopping 17 percent cut to their income.

Grain growers aren’t missed either with their income predicted to fall by 14.5 percent.

The dairy industry, already struggling because of low export prices will lose another 1.9 percent off the bottom line because of the Rudd Government’s emissions tax.

I am dismayed that the Rudd Government was ignoring the cost of Global Warming and Government policy on the food security.

Without viable productive farmers, food will become prohibitively expensive.

Every family needs a farmer to survive, but no farmer can survive a Rudd Government cut of 22 percent to their bottom line.

We are finally starting to see some figures on the cost of the ETS to food production and even the Government’s own modeller can’t hide the shocking affect its ETS will have on farm productivity.

Where does the Minister for Agriculture, Tony Burke and the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd think their food will come from?

Far from helping our food producers cope with global warming and the Government’s ETS, the Minister for Agriculture, Tony Burke has slashed research and development which is needed to increase food production to feed the worlds growing population.

You can read the ABARE report for yourself here.

Addition reporting from today’s Australian Newspaper – Rural income to be cut by a quarter

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Have Your Say!

Max Rheese of the Australian Environment Foundation writes:

Hi Steve,

Please advise the Agmates members that the e-postcards to Senators are now available on the ListenToUs website

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Oppose the ETS: Send Your Senators a Message

The Rudd Government is postponing the introduction of its flawed emissions trading scheme (ETS) by one year, but the ETS Bill is still going to parliament this June.

Every vote will count in the Senate.

Let the Senators in your state know your views by sending them an eCard from our list below.

Choose the card whose message you support most strongly and check the box or click on the send link.

That will generate an eCard. The card will go to every senator in your state and you can add your personal message to it.

To see all of the easy to send e-cards click on the image to visit the Listen to Us web site.

This enables a message to be sent to all senators in the state of the sender, either a tailored or individual, opposing the ETS legislation.

This is on its way to the Senate – the process has started!

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Have Your Say!

Don’t forget to tell your friends and relatives. Use the Share This button below to email this page onto them and post it to your Facebook, Twitter, Myspace sites if you have them.

Below  is National Party Leader in the Senate – QLD Senator Barnaby Joyce’s speech to the National Press Club in Canberra today. I call this the speech the National Party Manifesto. A brilliant piece that succinctly sets out the future role of the National party in Australian Politics.

In my opinion this speech is proof that Senator Barnaby Joyce is a once in a life time Politician, blessed not only with an extraordinary intellect but an enormous dose of common sense. The following is a 4,500 word essay / commentary of Australian politics, political party’s, the demise of State governments,  and commentary of Labors handling of the Australian economy and our national indebtedness, the ETS, the ACCC, and much more. An fascinating, enlightening and enthralling read.

You’ll want to email this onto everybody you know.

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Senator Barnaby Joyce
Leader of the Nationals in the Senate

NATIONAL PRESS CLUB OF AUSTRALIA

ADDRESS : MONDAY 11 MAY 2009

After the last election – and I believe for the 16th successive poll going back to the 1969 Coalition victory – learned opinion-writers commented on the twilight of our Party.

And the time-honoured retort from a National Party politician in that circumstance is of course to note that we’re still here, and that one ought to check the pulse before pronouncing on the corpse.

Well, I’m not going to do that. The 2007 Federal election loss was a devastating event for the Federal National Party, not only because it saw us out of Government in every single jurisdiction in Australia, but because it underlined the drift from our Party’s history and traditions that we permitted for a decade or more in the name of unity.

It is also a low ebb in terms of our representation, exacerbated by three key features of our electoral performance since the end of the Fraser Government:

1. the loss of long-term strongholds to independents who in some cases express our traditional Party values better than we have;
2. the departure of Members to independent status, on at least one occasion because of a feeling that we had betrayed our heritage;
3. the concession of core seats to the Liberal Party, from who we had become insufficiently distinct or losses of blue collar conservatives who prefer Labor to a mute National or suburban Liberal.

In Australia there is a highly powerful political force. It has no name but it is instrumental in the determination of every election result. It has no policies but its desires are analysed and reanalysed and mused over and assumed and purported. It runs no candidates in elections nor does it have a party machine, yet everyone aspires and claims that they represent it.

In fact, this political force is the epicentre of our Nation and it lies at the heart of our system of government. That force has been brought about by the right and obligation of all to vote in elections.

In a country where voting is compulsory you do not have to inspire people to get out of bed to vote – they have to or they get fined. The trick is to somehow harness that vote, particularly the swinging voters. The swinging voters are the key to electoral victory.

The challenge for a major political party is to cultivate that centre group so that they swing to your beliefs or swing away from other’s mismanagement and put you and your political associates into Government.

In seeking to capture those swinging voters promises are made to win Government and then broken once elected where expedient to do so to stay in Government.

Playing only to the centre however has its dangers. In the desire to be opaque, lukewarm, inoffensive and passionately politically tepid, there are flanks that open up to the left and to the right of the centre.

The Labor Party strategy is very adroit in that their flank is covered by their able lieutenant, the Greens, who orchestrate political pas de deuxs on issues where it is inconceivable that the right could outflank them on the far left.

But when it really counts, that is election time, and on crucial pieces of legislation as seen in the stimulus package and alcopops tax, the Greens can be completely relied on to support the Labor Party. Good luck to the left in that they have a very clever political formula – this formula helped the Labor Party get 43% of the vote and win an election.

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Agmates member John Mikkelsen writes:

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IT’s good to see sanity prevail with the deferral of the Federal Governments controversial Emissions Trading Scheme for 12 months in light of probable further job losses.

You could see the backflip coming, with mounting opposition from all sectors even though Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Environment Minister Penny Wong kept insisting it would be introduced as planned in July next year.

Mr Rudd finally saw the writing on the wall and announced a deferred and modified plan last Sunday. Oops, did he forget to tell Ms Wong? Her letter promoting the urgent need for the ETS to actually  save  jobs, under the heading of  ‘Can’t sit on our hands on climate change’ was published in The Observer on Monday.

A footnote from the editor stated the ministers letter had been received on the previous Friday, May 1.

Ms Wongs letter pushed the familiar claim stated as fact, that ‘carbon pollution’ was causing climate change, which was threatening jobs.

But she didn’t use the often-repeated term, ‘the science is settled’ , possibly because it is becoming increasingly clear it is not settled at all.

Let me make this clear – I hate pollution in the form of poisonous chemicals, litter and noxious emissions. Who wouldn’t? And I don’t deny ‘climate change’ is real.

Neither do the growing ranks of international scientists questioning any link between the atmospheric trace gas carbon dioxide and climate.

You would have to be a real dill not to acknowledge the obvious fact climate has always been changing since the days of the dinosaur.

The scientists questioning the role CO2 emissions play in all this are certainly not dills. Their ranks include one of Australia’s leading geologists Professor Ian Plimer, Queensland’s own ancient climate expert Professor Bob Carter of James Cook University, and Dr David Evans, who actually spent years working with the Australian Greenhouse Office developing carbon modelling projects such as those the ‘true believers’ in man-made global warming rely on.

Dr Evans recently described himself as ‘the rocket scientist’ who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia’s compliance with the Kyoto Protocol. But further research and knowledge has made him change his mind.

“The world has spent $50 billion on global warming since 1990 and we have not found any actual evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming. None.”

Now that it matters, we should debate the causes. Townsville’s Prof Carter has been speaking out on the topic for years:

‘Climate change has always occurred and always will, the appropriate action is to have in place reactive response plans to manage the change when it occurs.’

He recently told the Senate Select Committee on Climate that the ETS would cost Australian families an estimated extra $3,500 a year to gain a theoretical temperature reduction of less than one-thousandth of a degree C.

Adelaide’s Prof Plimer has just released a book ‘Heaven and Earth: Global Warming,  The Missing Science‘ which has been hailed as the sceptics Bible. He said that to link carbon emissions with climate change would require ‘many non-scientific leaps of faith.’

There are now thousands of international scientists joining the ranks of the sceptics. Noted UK botanist and TV presenter David Bellamy, claims he has been banned by the BBC for his outspoken views that climate change is part of a natural cycle.

‘The world is now facing spending a vast amount of money in tax trying to solve a problem that doesn’t actually exist,’ he said.

So no, the science is far from settled, despite what we have constantly been told. And repeating a non-proven, hotly disputed claim doesn’t necessarily make it a fact.

Now the ETS has been deferred, a proper public inquiry should be conducted to allow scientists on both sides of the climate debate to present their views.

The truth is out there. We deserve to know if climate change is real problem or just political hot air.

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First published as a comment by John here.

Have your say!

Northern NSW Farmer and Australian Beef Association Chairman , Brad Bellinger [pictured] writes:

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I wish to draw the attention of Australians to the following facts that the Brazilian Government is moving to assist its Beef Processing Industry with a $Aus 800 million loan facility through its State owned bank.

Meanwhile, the US Government is bargaining for a doubling of the US beef EU quotas to give it four times the access that Australian beef producers have, despite the fact that the USA has no National Livestock Identification System (NLIS) or National Vendor Declarations (NVDs).

Contrast this with what the Australian Labor Government is doing to our Beef industry :

• Doubling of AQIS inspection fees to increase to full cost recovery

• Forcing producers to pay the highest levies at $5 per head of cattle sold to the Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA),

• Paying for the most costly ID systems in the World

• The proposed Emissions Trading Scheme that will charge farmers for bovine methane emissions,

• The proposed Carbon Emission Trading Scheme directed at the processing Industry, which will be passed back to the cattle producers as soon as the scheme commences.

• The Queensland Labor Party, using vegetation regulation in banning re-growth clearing which will effectively remove the beef industry in QLD.
  

Despite the afore mentioned Government regulations, Australian producers receive the second lowest prices in the developed world and sees Australian consumers pay some of the highest prices for beef in the World.

Australian cattle producers are now receiving 27% of the consumer dollar, whilst the UK producers are on 50% and US producers on 47%.

Two thirds of the Australian land mass – the western side of a line from Adelaide to Townsville, now has only one (dysfunctional) export abattoir (it once had 8).

The big producer operators – the AA Company, Consolidated Pastoral Company, Georgiana Pastoral Company and Great Southern are all selling or trying to sell.

As returns from the mining industry continue to fall, one would have thought that export income from the beef industry was vital to help stem our burgeoning overseas debt.

Governments thinking must be on another planet – the brainless bureaucrats and mindless politicians responsible for this increasing sellout need re -educating in Brazil or the USA.

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