It is a very sad day for most Australians that we are about to “move forward” with legislation to redesign our economy on a colourless, odourless gas that quite obviously will put up the price of power and put pressure on real jobs in the real economy.
It is a very sad day when we approve a new broad based consumption tax delivered to every house whether they can afford it or not via the power points above their skirting boards, via the heater that keeps them warm, via the air conditioners that keep them cool, via the power that cooks their food, via the washing machine that cleans their clothes.
It is a very sad day when a government seems oblivious to the economic turmoil of the world and belligerently sets the ship of state blindly into precarious waters where the carbon tax we pay will be far in excess of any other scheme in the world, and our own government fails to acknowledge that the vast majority of the world has no such scheme at all.
It is a very sad day when the Australian people are taken for granted, deceived with a platitude addendum that “don’t worry about it; they are just simple souls, who’ll forget about our deceit and get over it.”
It is the height of conceit to think that other nations such as India or China, which the IMF states that by 2016 will be the largest economy in the world, will somehow be influenced by the legislation of our nation at the expense of their people.
We are more guided by Al Gore than by common sense and the chambers of this building have become fascinated with a highly naïve view that disregards the reality that we are merely 32 billion dollars away from our debt ceiling, the point at which on presentation of the nation’s credits card the checkout operator will say “transaction declined - see bank for details”.
One would think that we would be doing everything we can at this juncture to make our nation’s economy strong; to dispense with wondrous thoughts and replace them with utter pragmatism. We should look to the core requirements of core Australians which is to keep control of their cost of living and, more to the point, do nothing to exacerbate the loss of real jobs that require cheap power as their only competitive advantage over other nations who have cheap labour in abundance.
Yet today will end in a back slapping, hugging, kiss-a-thon that will be the bitterest of pill for those away from Parliament House who make the ultimate payment on this absurd tax.