Senator Wong’s personal yacht Fantasia has apparently run into the rock of pragmatic politics. As was always to be expected the world does not have much to gain when all Australia has to offer to the global warming debate is a new form of bureaucracy underpinned by a massive new tax.
Finland gave us Nokia; the U.S. split the atom, gave us Silicone Valley, computers and modern production techniques; Japan gave us Toyota, Sanyo and the Bullet Train; China gave us everything cheaply and Mr Rudd is going to travel to the G20 and deliver Australia’s climate based aspiration for a massive new tax and supporting bureaucracy. Not surprisingly the world’s not very interested.
If he really wants to assist the climate, Mr Rudd must deliver something at the forefront of technology. The inspiration for the development of a mechanism to deliver a higher level of carbon efficient production, not the regression associated with an inhibitive new overhead and associated bureaucracy entrenched in the massive new tax system of Australia’s CPRS.
Developing nations must do what they have to do, which is to develop. They shall do this regardless of Mr Rudd’s or Ms Wong’s proclamations on environmental global leadership. Not just the developing world but the world in general will politely hear a nation that represents approximately 1.5% of the world’s GDP and then they will promptly forget about them and go on with business as usual.
The salient lesson for Australia is if the rest of the world thinks our scheme is economically suicidal then maybe we should take the cue from them and not implement it. If Australia’s approach is manning the life raft as the economic boat steams happily over the horizon leaving us forlorn and destitute in an economic ocean of grief completely of our own making then what sort of example is that to the world. More to the point as the economic ship cruises away from us we will be little more than a passing memory of some well meaning but rather peculiar fellow travellers of a distant past.
The world is never led by the soft option of bureaucracy and taxes. The heavy lifting is done by the proven efficiencies of new technology that win on commercial terms on equal footings. It appears finally that Mr Rudd and Ms Wong are coming to this conclusion but the insanity of it all is that they still insist in casting us into the economic life raft from a ship that hasn’t even got a sign of a leak.
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David Allender
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