Agmates

The Federal Government has ruled out a deep cut to Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions before 2020, believing the world will not get its act together on climate change soon.

- Emission cuts 15% at most
- Emissions trading to start July 2010
- Business gets many free permits
- Power, coal to get $4 billion aid
- Electricity and gas bills to rise about $6 a week

You have to admire the fact that Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is a realist. I have been concerned that Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong had been swayed by the the deep-green lunies screaming for 25-40% cuts.

You’ve seen them too,  like John Connor from the Climate institute, Clive Hamilton, Barry Brook and all those upper middle class, inner city university educated  green snobs. The mainstream media loves to quote these people as if they represent the majority of Australians.

Kevin Rudd has shown he is a clever politician. He could not completely walk away from his election promise of a carbon emission reduction scheme so some sort of scheme had to be announced.

Rudd has heeded the concerns of rural & regional Australians expressed here on Agmates. He has listened to the unions and most of all he has listened to ‘Howards Battlers’ or as Rudd labels them ‘Working Families’. They are the millions of people who live in the outer suburbs of Australian Capitol cities.

Union Boss Paul Howes was speaking on behalf of not only his members, but all working Australians when he said:

My members and their wives, husbands and children are getting pretty tired of being told their jobs are dirty and polluting…

What Rudd realizes is that to listen to the vocal lunatic-green fringe and commit Australia to deep cuts in carbon emissions would hurt not only rural & regional Australian’s but the Mc-Mansion dwelling inhabitants of Western Sydney. To do this would be political suicide.

Rudd’s announcement may have enraged those deep-greens who live in the leafy inner city, where public transport is available, the tofu co-op is a block away and the local cafe serves fair-trade soy Latte, but at the end of the day there vote isn’t enough to keep him in power.

I’m enjoying watching the screams of horror from the lunatic greens -

Australia’s targets will enrage conservationists, but the Government says it’s unlikely the world can forge a strong greenhouse agreement so its targets are realistic.

Indeed, Mr Rudd was subjected to heckling by a female protester at the launch of the emissions trading scheme.

The female protester, believed to be a member of a Newcastle-based group, screamed ”No!” as Mr Rudd began announcing details of the emissions target. …

from The Australian

PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd’s launch of his greenhouse gas reduction plan was disrupted when three protesters approached him and were wrestled to the ground.

During a televised speech at the National Press Club, three young female environmentalists rose from their seats, walked towards Mr Rudd and heckled as he detailed his plans on climate change.

“We need hope,” one yelled.

“We’re not going to walk away from (action on) runaway climate change,” called out another.

“No, no” the protesters chanted as Mr Rudd spoke of emissions targets.

And why are these people so shocked and horrified?

It’s because they read & believe the Green alarmist hype thats printed in the likes of Rupert Murdocks News Limited Newspaper and the ABC National broadcaster that have been running an outrageously biased green agenda for years.

What they don’t realize is the Australian public is not stupid. Real Australians had stopped lsitening to their Green global warming alarmism hype some time ago.

Kevin Rudd today demonstrated that politically he’s smart enough to know this.

Have Your say!

The mainstream media is full of summaries of what kevin Rudd has achieved in the last 12 months.

As the 24th of November approaches, lets take a look at it through the eyes of Rural & Regional Australia.

Despite promising on election night ‘to be a Prime Minister who will govern for all Australians’ once you look at it like this you’ll see that in its first 12 months, the Labor government has done virtually nothing for farmers or rural & regional Australia.

Photo of PM giving his victory speech on the evening of the 24th November 2007.

November 24th 2007 - After almost 12 years in power the Coalition Government is ousted by the Kevin Rudd lead Labor party.

November 26th 2007 - Results in, Nationals Lose two seats. Now only have 10 seats in federal Parliament. Agmates calls for a change of party leadership.

November 29th 2007 - Brendan Nelson wins Liberal Party Leadership

December 2nd 2007 - Warren Truss elected by party to lead the Nationals after Mark Vail steps down over dismal showing in polls.

December 3rd 2007 - Kevin Rudd sworn in as new PM and ratifies the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change.

December 4th 2007 - A 38 year old Lawyer, Shop Steward, Union organizer who knows nothing about rural Australia is appointed as the new Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries & Forestry. Meet Tony Burke.

December 5th 2007 - Northern Territory Country Liberal Party Senator is elected as the Nationals Leader in the Senate.

February 1st 2008 - Federal National party meet in Sydney to consider the recommendations of the party review compiled by former party leader John Anderson strategist Michael Priebe.

February 13th 2008 - Prime Minister Rudd’s historic Apology to the ‘Stolen generation’.

April 20th 2008 - Australia’s 20/20 Summit, attended by 1,000 of Australia’s ‘best & brightest’ to come up with ways to move us forward as a country.

May 13th 2008 - Treasurer Wayne Swan hands down his first budget with a projected surplus of $21.7 billion. The Budget is full of bad news for farmers.

• Over $1 billion cut from the Agriculture Fisheries and Forestry Budget
• Scrapping the successful Farmbis training program.
• Savagely cutting food innovation grants.
• Closing CSIRO agriculture research sites in Queensland, Victoria and WA,
• Broken election promise for support to rural research and development.

May 27th 2008 - Rudd Government breaks first election promise to the bush. $63 million in cuts to CSIRO research, including 100 full time staff and the closure of agriculture research facilities across Australia.

June 22nd 2008 - 60 years of a Single Desk wheat marketing structure in Australia is ended when Agriculture Minister Tony Burke gets the Australian Export Wheat Deregulation Bill through the Senate.

July 16th 2008 - Climate Change Minister Penny Wong releases the Governments green paper on an Emissions Trading Scheme.

July 28th 2008 - National Transport Shutdown commences

August 12th 2008- CSIRO report predicts fuel will hit $8 a litre as Oil peaks in July at US$147 a barrel.

August 12th 2008 - ACCC hands down the findings of its inquiry into grocery prices. Finds in favour of the Australian Supermarket Duopoly over farm suppliers. The inquiry’s findings are lambasted as a sham.

September 1st 2008 - Climate Change Minister Penny Wong admits Government is spending $9 million on Climate Change TV ads. Ends up being $14 million.

September 3rd 2008 - Wheat growers Vote to relinquish control of one time monopoly wheat Exporter AWB.

September 6th 2008 - Disaster for the Federal Nationals as they lose the Federal seat of Lyne in a bi election after former Leader Mark Vale quits politics. The Nationals now are down to just 9 Federal MP’s. In better news for Western Australians the Liberals & Nationals sweep to power in the state election.

September 10th 2008 - Federal Water minister Penny Wong announces that the government has stepped up it’s Murray darling Water Buyback scheme with the $23.75 million dollar purchase of Toorale Station Near Bourke NSW.

September 16th 2008 - Malcolm Turnbull defeats Brendan nelson in a party room vote to become the new leader of the Liberal party.

September 16th 2008 - Senator Barnaby Joyce is elevated to be leader of the the Nationals in the Senate as Senator Nigel Scullion steps down from the position.

September 24th 2008 - US President George Bush in an address to the world speaks on what was then a crisis on Wall Street but was to quickly become the Global Credit Crisis.

September 27th 2008 - Independent Senator Steve Fielding forces the labor Government to exempt farmers and regional tourist operators from the Luxury car tax. The exemption is worth $40 million.

September 30th 2008 - Professor Ross Garnaut releases his final report into Australia’s Emissions Trading Scheme. Grim reading for farmers.

October 7th 2008 - RBA cuts interest rates by 100 basis points. The biggest single reduction in 16 years.

October 12th 2008 - PM Rudd announces the Bank Deposit Guarantee.

October 15th 2008 - Treasurer Wayne Swan announces the $10.4 billion dollar economic stimulus package. Estimated that 2.9 million rural & regional Australian’s will get $4 billion of the cash hand out.

October 17th 2008 - Federal Ag Minister Tony Burke summons rural industry leaders to Sydney for a global credit crunch crisis meeting.

October 20th 2008 - PM Kevin Rudd announces the government will inject $600 million into local governments infrastructure projects.

October 31st 2008 - Productivity Commission recommends Governments scrap all drought assistance payments to farmers after June 2010.

November 4th 2008 - RBA cuts offical cash rate to 5.25%

November 5th - 2008-09 budget forecast slashed from 21.7 billion to just $5.4 billion.

Have I missed anything?

Have Your Say!

The much laundered new era of Federal - State cooperation has fallen apart.

The Federal Governments battle to gain control of the Murray Basin Water took an ugly turn this week with Federal Water Minister Penny Wong dropping a ‘water bomb’ on the Victorian State Labor Government Premier John Brumby [pictured] .

“In an aggressive play that was dropped on the states by surprise, Federal Water Minister Penny Wong declared that grants for small-scale farmers to cease irrigating will be paid only to those whose home state has agreed to the Commonwealth’s demands over abolishing certain trading rules.

The move has renewed tensions between the Rudd and Brumby governments over reform in the Murray-Darling Basin and forces the Brumby Government to effectively choose between two groups of farmers.”

Struggling small irrigators have been lining up to take advantage of the exit grants scince they were first announce 2 months ago.

“Pressure from the Commonwealth intensified over the weekend when Ms Wong declared that farmers could not access the grants - worth up to $150,000 - until their home state had met the Commonwealth’s demands.

The incentive package has been offered only to “small block” farmers - those with less than 15 hectares of land - and is of most significance to farmers in Victoria’s Sunraysia district.”

Once again small farmers will be left high and dry whilst the Brumby government digs its heals in.

“The Brumby Government vowed to continue fighting to protect the 4% trading cap until late 2009, when it is scheduled to rise to 6%.”

It would be a real treat and a novelty for Australia to have just one State Political Leader who’s planning and policies had a longer time frame than the next State election.

Can there be a better example than the Murray Darling fiasco for the need to rid ourselves of the blight on our nation that is our system of State Governments?

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Have Your say!

Todays Music Video is inspired by Senator Ron Boswells article written on the Governments pledge to move ahead with the carbon pollution reduction scheme.

I hope the Doobie Brothers will forgive me for using their song “What a Fool Believes” as a political satire, but it and the film clip are perfect.

As you watch the Video, think about the fact that Senator Boswell and a ground swell of eminent people are saying pressing ahead with the carbon-tax is very foolish.

Then see the Guy in the Video as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd & the Girl as Climate Change Minister Penny Wong. Think about their blind, wild romance with the whole global warming thesis and their planned introduction of the ETS that is plunging Australia headlong into a carbon constrained economy - dreaming that if they lead the way and the rest of the world will follow.

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Agmates Video gallery

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A Tragic Romance: Kevin / Penny and saving the world.

The song lyrics are subtitled with My take on the Kevin / Penny / ETS Romance. See them below.

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The Federal Government released its Treasury modelling at lunch time today on the impacts of the Emissions Trading Scheme.

Nationals Queensland Senator Ron Boswell has read the report and now gives us his views of it:

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Treasury modelling released today relies exclusively on a non-existent global agreement and implementation of low emission policies.

The complex modelling is only useful if the rest of the world goes along with us on emissions policy.

If not, then the modelling is irrelevant and Australia faces an uncertain and much poorer future by giving up our comparative advantage in minerals, energy and agriculture.

Today’s Treasury modelling assumes:

‘The main policy intervention modelled is a cap and trade emissions trading scheme. This scheme is assumed to apply globally’ [Annex B].”

But there is no such scheme and no likelihood of one while the world deals with the financial crisis.

Some of the modelling assumes that Annex B countries will have an ETS up and running from 2010 (incl Australia, Canada, EU, former Soviet Union, Japan , US) with China and high-income developing countries from 2015, India and middle-income countries from 2020 and full global coverage from 2025.

This is simply not going to happen.

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Australian Professor Bob Carter [pictured] has slammed the Rudd Governments proposed emissions trading scheme labeling it a ‘a new tax’ and ‘economic vandalism’.

Despite growing opposition Australian Treasurer Wayne Swan today announced that the Rudd government will press ahead with it carbon emissions reduction scheme due to start in just under 2 years time.

“In a strongly worded speech to be delivered today, Wayne Swan will make it clear the Government will stare down critics who argue that the introduction of the emissions trading scheme should be put on the backburner during the global economic crisis.”

The Rudd government is hell bent on introducing this policy against a rising groundswell of opposition.

Liberal Leader Malcolm Turnbull says in light of the global financial crisis it ‘defies commonsense’ to push ahead with the policy. Turnbull correctly states that Australia does not even know what the rest of the world is going to do and we won’t until after Kyoto 2 in Copenhagen in December 2009.

Sydney Radio 2GB broadcaster Alan Jones interview on the subject with Professor Bob Carter is a great listen.

Professor Carter says the ETS is ‘Economic Vandalism’. In the interview with Jones he talks about:

• The whole global Warming thesis has failed as evidenced by global temperatures falling for the last 10 years while CO2 levels have sky Rocketed.
• The growing world wide groundswell of sceptics. 80% in Britain.
• Auditing Cattle and Sheep emissions is a complete fantasy
• Minister Wong’s Green paper contained 7 scientific mistakes in the first sentence.
• Rudds policy is where the science was in the early 1990’s.
• Global warming is diverting our attention from the real threat to life on the planet.

Hear the interview by following this LINK. Professor Carter’s interview can be heard immediately by moving the ’slider button’ to just before the half way mark. Although Jones take on the Global Financial Crisis that is before it is worth listening to.

Have Your say!.

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I am offended by the Rudd Government and more particularly Climate Change and Water Minister Penny Wong [ pictured ] spending $14 million dollars on climate change ads since July.

Back on the 1st of September we nominated these ads as worthy of our Bullshit Watch award.

In the article I stated that these ads are just blatant propaganda.

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The Government has set aside almost $14 million for a four-month climate change campaign, which started in July and ends next month.

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If the government is fair dinkum about tackling climate change why wasn’t this money put into alternative energy. It could have been spent on installing solar hotwater in 7,000 homes at a $2,000 rebate a home.

They could have invested it in developing an accurate, reliable and simple to use accounting methodology for soil carbon. It could have been used to lobby the UN to accept soil carbon sequestration or a myriad of other constructive ways to cut our CO2 emissions.

The other reason it is outrageous is because it would suggest that Minister Wong is being a hypocrite.

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“When in opposition, Senator Wong, as Labor’s spokesperson on public accountability, repeatedly attacked the then Howard government for running government advertising before legislation has passed the parliament.”

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There is nothing that turns us off a politician more than them being an obvious hypocrite.

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Have Your say!

I hope you all got a chance to watch the ABC 4 Corners program “Buying Back The River” last night.

The northern end of the Murray Darling basin is a subject that is very dear to me. My formative years were spent growing up on a property in the Gwydir Wetlands. My work as an adult has enabled me to spend over a decade traversing the western river systems and in fact I’ve lived on the banks of the Warrego River at Cunnamulla , on the Bullo river at Quilpie and near the Darling River at Broken Hill.

When Penny Wong and the federal government purchased Toorale station I awarded her an Agmates “Onya” award and watching the program just confirmed to me that the government is doing exactly the right thing in buying back the water licenses.

Reading that article will give you a backgound to what I’m about to say.

The fact is that poor Regulation and Negligence by successive state governments have put the Murray Darling system in crisis.

State governments have allocated licenses on a river by river basis in total ignorance of the fact that the Murray Darling Basin which covers one seventh of Australia’s land mass is the sum total of the contibution of all the rivers in it.

Where I grew up in the Gwydir Valley is just a case of gross government stupidity. In the 1976 Copeton Dam was built at Inverell to supply water to the Gwydir valley, my great uncle and aunt still own a property just below the dam. Cotton development went berserk to such an extent that Copeton dam was 100% over allocated.

The impact on the Gwydir wetlands is catastrophic. In the 70’s the Gwydir wetlands were inpenetrable by anything other than horse. We used to muster cattle in there, but it was an enormous struggle to get them out.

The wetlands were teaming with wildlife - from feral pigs, the biggest black & brown snakes you’d ever see, scorpions, centipedes, to the most magnificent water birds and bird life. Thousands of acres of it, all in a thick maze of huge river red gums, lignum and native grasses.

The Murray Darling is grossly over allocated. What the current drought has done is just graphically illustrated that fact. The only way to fix the system is for the federal government to buy back enough of these licences that were issued in error by state governments to take the strain off the system.

The plight of the Murray Darling is not the fault of the irrigators. They purchased and developed their farms in good faith. The state governments issued the licences for the development of agriculture for the national good.

It is an unfortunate fact that the Australian tax payer must now bail out the Murray Darling River System, to save it from the incompetence / stupidity of the variuos state governments. Has there ever been a better example of why we should abolish the states?

Finally I can’t leave without commenting on Senator Bill Heffernan’s appearance on the program.

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BILL HEFFERNAN, NSW LIBERAL SENATOR: I mean if the Government’s that stupid and the taxpayer’s that generous well good luck to them but I’m saying it’s a national disgrace.

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Senator Heffernan had 10 years in government and did absolutely nothing about the situation. His statement that buying Toorale is a waste of tax payers money shows that he has zero knowledge of how the western river system works.

This is the advice that Heffernan offerred to Penny Wong and the Wentworth Group of Scientists and the Murray Darling Catchment Authority:

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The referee as I say is Mother Nature. No one is listening to the referee so we’ve really got to go back and replan the entire system based on the science of the future and not the history of the past.

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And that is about as good as it ever got from Heffernan over the past 10 years when he was the government. The good Senator would do well to keep his mouth closed. The old saying rings true for the Senator - “Better to have people think you’re a fool, than to open your mouth and prove it to them.”

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Have your say.

Professor Ross Garnaut in his final climate change report does see a silver lining for farmers and rural communities. The potential revenue for biosequestration for farmers at a carbon price of $20 a tonne is $5 billion dollars a year.

Opposition climate change spokesperson Greg Hunt [ pictured] is a biosequestration enthusiast:

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“We have been talking of a conservative target of 60 to 80 million tonnes a year of natural sequestration, he says.

Garnaut has gone for a bolder figure of 250 million tonnes from a combination of soils, pastures, woodlands and forests.

I don’t think that is outrageous or unreasonable in terms of its potential for Australia. At a carbon price of $10 a tonne, that is $2.5 billion going to rural Australia each year.”

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One of the major stumbling blocks for Australian farmers to realize this potential is that the Kyoto protocol does not recognize carbon sequestration from soils, pasture, woodland or forests established pre- 1990.

The second impediment is a globally accepted accounting method for sequestration by soils and pasture.

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The current and former heads of ABARE have joined the growing chorus of Agricultural Economist who are warning that the Emissions Trading Scheme will have dire consequences for Australia’s trade exposed Agricultural industry.

Dr Brian Fisher, former head of ABARE for 18 years has expressed grave fears for the future of Australian Agriculture under the proposed Emissions Trading Scheme.

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“Introducing a scheme ahead of other nations was not prosecuting Australia’s national interest, it was prosecuting somebody else’s and we are going to be damned if we do.

There is absolutely nothing to be gained by going first here. We are a very, very small country. We constitute about 1.3 odd per cent of emissions on the planet.

The government should focus its domestic climate change policy on adaptation because it will be “years” before there is an international agreement on emissions trading between the 190 countries involved in the ongoing negotiations.”

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Dr Fishers views reinforce what Agmates said in the article: “ETS in Aust & NZ will Zero impact on global emissions”

In fact if you are one of the 1,000’s of informed Agmates readers you will have know for at least 2 months that the ETS in its existing form is disastrous for Australian farmers. Rural Press finally 10 weeks later have picked up on that fact. On the 5th of July we wrote:.

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“What the main stream media have missed in the flood of coverage is the potential devastation to rural Australia the emission trading scheme will be.”

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Dr Fishers successor at ABARE Phillip Glyde [pictured below], supports his views. He points out that regardless of whether or not agriculture was included in the ETS from 2010, the impacts on farming through the use of emission intensive inputs would be significant.

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“In the cropping sector, 39 per cent of the input costs to cropping came from emission-intensive inputs, while in livestock those costs were about 17 per cent.

There’s only one solution to all of this, particularly while the rest of the world doesn’t introduce an ETS or have emissions trading schemes excluding agriculture - it is to continue down the path of productivity improvements.

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The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE), located in Canberra, is the Australian government’s own economic research agency and is respected for its professional independent research and analysis.

It is incredulous that the chief architects of the Emissions Trading Scheme Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Agriculture Minister Tony Burke and Climate Change Minister Penny Wong are ignoring their own Economic experts advise.

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Have your say!

Q. Why do you think that the architects of the ETS are going to knowingly cripple our Agricultural industry with an ETS that will have zero impact on global emissions?

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Got a tip off, article or have you seen a video or item you’d like to be seen by the Agmates Community? If so please email it to us at news@agmates.com

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