Well, this should allay our fears about the Prime Minister’s sincerity. He’s decided after 10 months of having the plans on hold to put a new tax on, wait for it–smoking. What a stroke of genius. I suppose it’s a carbon abatement scheme of sorts, but I don’t think this is the one he took to the election. It is, though, a good reflection of the proportional relevance of his policy delivery. He talked about an emissions trading scheme to reduce billions of tonnes of carbon, but what he gave us was the removal of a few durries, with another moralistic sermon as a bandaid on his street cred which is more than a little bruised of late.
While in November last year, Mr Rudd said that any delay on climate change action would be “political cowardice ... an absolute failure of leadership ... and ... an absolute failure of logic", he has now managed to gather the courage to introduce what he called today “an unpopular” move to increase the cost of cigarettes by 25%.
This may be a good move in the interest of health, but it’s not going to cure Mr Rudd’s lack of credibility. It will be called for what it is – ‘a government desperate to do anything to avoid attention because the reality is that they’ve done nothing’ story.
Mr Rudd says this is not a diversion from the ETS, so why wasn’t it announced as part of his health reform package or the budget? He doesn’t have the conviction to get the “Great Big Tax on Everything” up through a double dissolution, but he can put a tax on the individual emissions from the smokers of Australia. Maybe a tax on cigarettes is a more authentic exposé of the depths of his political complexity and belief.