Green Taxes and Poverty

Australia Commits Economic Suicide as Parliament Passes Divisive Carbon Tax

October 12, 2011

Telegraph - One of the worst aspects of living in these apocalyptic times is that whenever you look around the world, wondering where you might escape to, you begin to realise that everywhere else is just as bad if not worse.

Take Australia, an island built on fossil fuel with an economy dependent on fossil fuel. What would be the maddest economic policy a place like that could pursue as the world tips deeper into recession? Why, to introduce a carbon tax, of course. Which, for reasons just explained above, means a tax on absobloodylutely everything.

Which is exactly what Julia Gillard's Coalition (why is it that word always makes me want to reach for my Browning?) has just gone and done, obviously.

What must be particularly galling to all the Australians (the majority) bitterly opposed to this lunatic measure is the unutterable feebleness of the arguments the Coalition is using to justify it.

Here, for example, is its Chief Scientist Ian Chubb in action:

"With respect to this cooling stuff, I have seen the claim, but the evidence that I have seen is that the last decade has been the warmest decade that we have ever had on this planet, so I do not know what this cooling stuff means.”

Let's just run that one by you again, in case you thought you'd been overdoing the Cane toad juice. The man who came up with that scientifically inaccurate, historically ignorant, Greenpeace-like enviro-hysteria drivel is AUSTRALIA'S CHIEF SCIENTIST.

What this lunacy will do the Australian economy Gaia only knows. But one thing's for certain: Opposition leader Tony Abbott has got the next election in the bag.

Here's what he had to say on the subject when the carbon tax package was voted in by just the tiniest of margins (74 votes to 72):

“I am giving you the most definite commitment any politician can give that this tax will go. This is a pledge in blood, this tax will go.

“If the bills pass today this will be an act of betrayal on the Australian public. We will repeal the tax, we can repeal the tax, we must repeal the tax.”

A promise like that, as Andrew Bolt notes, is not one he's going to find easy to break. Had he made his promise merely "Cast Iron" on the other hand…

Green Taxes Could Force One in Four into Fuel Poverty

October 12, 2011

Daily Mail - One in four households will be driven into fuel poverty if the Government pursues controversial green energy targets, ministers have been warned.

‘Radical policy change’ may be necessary to protect millions of struggling families from biggest household price shock since the 1970s, according to City analysts.

The warning comes as middle-income homes are already suffering an ‘unprecedented collapse’ in living standards as inflation and poor wages wipe thousands off incomes.

The Government faces demands to tear up or delay plans to force through a £200billion shift to wind turbines, wave power and new nuclear power stations.

Energy industry analyst Martin Brough, of Deutsche Bank, warned that a quarter of households could be driven into fuel poverty by 2015. He said:

‘Our analysis suggests rising energy bills and sluggish income growth will make household energy less affordable than at any time since the oil shocks of the 1970s.’

Energy tariffs have leapt by around 20 per cent in the past year, pushing up the annual average bill to £1,293. Deutsche Bank predicts bills will rise by another 25 per cent – around £325 – by 2015, taking the figure to £1,618,

The shift to green energy is being driven by the EU and commitments made by both the last Labour government and the Coalition, based on the support of Energy and Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne.

But Dr Robert Gross, director of the Centre for Energy Policy and Technology at Imperial College, insists families will be better off by switching from fossil fuels.

‘Cutting support for renewables would slow down the UK’s progress in reducing dependence on imported fossil fuels,’ he said.

Meanwhile, on the eve of the release of the worst unemployment figures for 17 years, the Institute for Fiscal Studies found families are about to endure their biggest income drop since the 1970s. A typical couple with two children is likely to be £2,080 worse off in 2013 terms than they were last year as their real income falls from £30,056 to £27,976, it said.

The IFS warned that the next two years will be ‘dominated by a large decline’ in incomes, with median incomes set to fall by 7 per cent after inflation has been taken into account – the sharpest drop in 35 years.

Robert Joyce, of the IFS, described it as the ‘delayed effect’ of the recession.

‘Real earnings didn’t fall for a while after the economy started contracting, partly because inflation was very low,’ he said.

‘But inflation has risen sharply and earnings have not done so in response.’

The IFS also forecast that 600,000 more children will be pushed into poverty by 2013, taking the total living in ‘absolute’ poverty to 3.1 million.

It says the Coalition’s tax and benefit reforms will drive down incomes, and the new Universal Credit system will fail to make up for the losses of the poor.

But universities minister David Willetts said:

‘We have tried to hold down fuel duty, we are freezing council tax, we have increased the income tax allowance, we have tried to do things that help, but you can’t ignore the basic rules of economics, that when you inherit a situation where an economy has shrunk by 7 per cent there isn’t the money there.’

Figures today are expected to show unemployment is getting worse, with the total number of jobless expected to top the 2,521,000 recorded in 1994.

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