According to government propaganda, their tax on carbon dioxide will produce great benefits but no one except "the big polluters" will feel its corrosive cost.
There are three deceptions here.
Firstly, for the carbon tax to achieve its goal, consumers using the products of carbon energy (almost everything) must feel the pain so that they are driven to use less of these products.
But if most consumers are to be compensated and feel no pain, no carbon dioxide emissions will be eliminated. Therefore, the tax will be useless.
Secondly, the so called "big polluters" are corporations, which are just paper legal entities for collecting, holding and disbursing money. It is impossible to tax corporations without the hurt being quickly and insidiously passed on to real people. The tax on electricity generators will be passed on to consumers of electricity; as the carbon tax cuts profits in steel, cement and manufacturing, shareholders and retirees will suffer as dividends are cut; the tax on waste companies and councils will be passed onto ratepayers; and as the carbon tax sends carbon-consuming businesses overseas, it is employees who will lose their jobs.
Finally, carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, and does not control climate.
So this is merely a big tax/compensate churn, creating nothing useful – just a huge bureaucracy to keep the whole mess churning.
And we ordinary Aussies will pay for it all.
Viv Forbes, Chairman, The Carbon Sense Coalition, has spent his life working in exploration, mining, farming, infrastructure, financial analysis and political commentary. He has worked for government departments, private companies and now works as a private contractor and farmer.
Viv has also been a guest writer for the Asian Wall Street Journal, Business Queensland and mining newspapers. He was awarded the “Australian Adam Smith Award for Services to the Free Society” in 1988, and has written widely on political, technical and economic subjects.
