Greg Combet has decided to have a go at me for actually answering a straight question on Lateline last night.

The paradox of course is that Greg won’t answer a straight question. The paradox of course is that when I ask Greg a straight question the answer will be silence.

How much will your Green-Labor-Independent carbon tax, Greg, cool the planet? What will be the reduction in temperature from an $11 billion carbon tax imposed on a country that produces 1.5 per cent of the world’s emissions?

You will never hear anyone in the government give a straight answer to this straight question. Until they are upfront with you, you should understand that they are trying to inspire guilt and faux righteousness in proxy for facts?

The fact that they ignore is that a carbon tax on Australians is a gesture. It’s a gesture whose only discernible effect will be to exacerbate the problems so clearly evident in last quarter’s record decline in GDP.

The tax will fall on people who can’t pass on the tax and become poorer as excess cash is taken from their lives. Why should these people be used to assuage the feigned guilt of people who are doing vastly better.

I also note that Greg Combet announces the support of financial market economists for a “carbon” price as some kind of victory.

If I were the prospective trader of carbon credits I would definitely find myself a suite of economists to bestow the beauty of me making squillions from punting paper on a colourless, odourless gas.  It would be a splendid idea not because of what it is going to do to the climate but what it would do to change the renovations to my house. It would be a splendid idea because it would make the jacuzzi a real possibility.

So Greg Combet you support the people, and good luck to them, who have seen you coming and are going to make an absolute bucket load, and I’ll support the people who are going to have to pay for it.