Created 1 37 pm 8/3/12
They shoot profiteers, don't they?
The Australian [8/3 Cut carbon price to $10, Labor told] is supposed to be pro - business. In publicising business' recommendation that Julia and her mob cut the price of 'carbon' to $10 - they will effectively stifle my profiteering plan.
I want to be buying permits from the collapsing European hot - air / carbon permits - trading market at just under $10 and rort the Oz system by on - selling the permits for anything over $10.
Think of it: I will be the only person trading / profiteering from waffle / AKA hot air!
Unless Swan / Gillard deem making profits a capital offence - AKA Stalinism.
I will not go gently into that good night.....
GS
| Do not go gentle into that good night | ||
| by Dylan Thomas | ||
 | ||
| Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night.  Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sightBlind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. | ||
The outgoing head of the Australian Industry Group, Heather Ridout, who this week took up her seat on the Reserve Bank board, warned that industries slugged by the high dollar could "ill afford" to pay the $23 a tonne slated to take effect from July 1, when other international prices were less than half that.
She said the gap between the legislated Australian price and international prices represented "a tax on industry, and I think it's not what it was meant to be".
Business Council of Australia chief executive Jennifer Westacott called for the $23 a tonne price to be scrapped, and the price set at $10.
"It is clear there is a substantial gap between the international permit price and the starting price in our fixed-price period, and this is a concern for the competitiveness of Australia's industries and the impact this might have on our economy," she said.
The two comments came after economists Judith Sloan and Warwick McKibbin called this week for the government to lower the rate of the carbon tax.
"A figure of $10 a tonne would be closer to the mark," Professor Sloan wrote in The Australian on Tuesday.
Her comments were echoed by Professor McKibbin, a former Reserve Bank board member, who said: "It is in Australia's national interest to have the price of carbon on July 1 this year starting at closer to $10 per tonne."
Wayne Swan, asked yesterday whether the government would reopen the carbon package after Professor McKibbin's call for a $10-a-tonne price, said: "No."
The renewed pressure on the government over the starting price of the carbon package came as Julia Gillard, with NSW Liberal Premier Barry O'Farrell by her side, announced Sydney as the headquarters for the government's new Clean Energy Finance Corporation.
Mr O'Farrell's presence represents something of a political coup, given the federal opposition's policy of scrapping the carbon tax and the corporation.
Ms Gillard said the agency would create 40 jobs, and Sydney had been chosen as the location because of its financial and professional networks.
Ms Ridout was a key business ally of Kevin Rudd's carbon pollution reduction scheme, but as the current package was being assembled, the AI Group argued that given the slow pace of international negotiations on a global carbon price and the high Australian dollar, Australia's price should start at $10.
Ms Ridout said the carbon price had been set at the $23 level because it was broadly in line with world prices at the time. But the European scheme, the world's largest, is now trading at about $10.70 a tonne.
Ms Ridout said the dollar was going to stay high "so the industries that are paying this tax are going to be heavily impacted through the competitive pressure this is going to generate, let alone having this other competitive pressure put on them".
"They need to sit down and work out a way we can address this major gap that is opening up and looks set to stay open," Ms Ridout said.
Writing in The Australian Financial Review yesterday, Professor McKibbin said Australia was in danger of introducing a carbon price that was between three and four times the world price, which had recently been varying between $6 and $9 a tonne.
He said the current policy risked the carbon price falling from $28 a tonne to $15 a tonne on July 1, 2015, when the carbon price reverts to a floating scheme.
"It is not sound policy to have such wild swings in a carbon price, yet it is a very likely scenario."
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Energy fund is a risky gamble
- The Australian
- March 08, 2012
This week, Wayne Swan is on the defensive for descending into the politics of envy. The Treasurer has attacked some of the nation's most successful miners with the sort of workers-versus-capital rhetoric popular in the 1890s. Yet the Prime Minister wants to impress the big end of town with her largesse. In a market short of capital, the merchant bankers and speculators will be licking their lips at the prospect of accessing $10bn of taxpayers' money to underpin clean energy projects. Her announcement yesterday was simply that the Clean Energy Finance Corporation will be based in Sydney's CBD, which is hardly surprising. Melbourne's financial district might be miffed but no doubt they'll still access the money. The fund's headquarters will employ 40 people and, on that score, NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell welcomed the decision -- even though he opposes the carbon tax that will pay for it. While we understand Mr O'Farrell welcoming new jobs in his capital city and the promise of extra funds to lubricate its financial markets, he would have done better to keep his distance from this announcement. Because the corporation is the epitome of the wrong-headed policy that has sprung from Canberra's Labor-Greens alliance.
A modest scheme to price carbon was sensible policy, but the Greens insistence on this massive pool of funds for green-energy speculation was always a mistake, and we said so at the time. The major rationale behind the carbon tax is that it should provide the price signal to encourage private investment in low-emissions technology, yet this corporation will appropriate public money to finance clean-energy projects. This repeats the old folly of government attempting to pick winners. The intervention should not be necessary, and we know from past experience that there will be no shortage of enthusiastic entrepreneurs, well-meaning innovators and self-serving spivs lining up for funds. We can also say with certainty that much of the money
will be wasted on projects that fail to meet expectations or are complete disasters. We can only hold out hope that at least some of the investments prove worthwhile.
The announcement came when the Prime Minister should be carefully reconsidering her carbon tax proposal. We have already suggested the government should consider delaying its implementation because of the lack of international progress on emissions trading.
And now eminent economists such as The Australian's Judith Sloan and former Reserve Bank governor Warwick McKibbin are highlighting that the legislated carbon price of $23 a tonne will be about three times higher than the European price.
The government's response has been to disregard the warnings and maintain the schedule with no adjustments. This sort of dogged determination is often seen as Ms Gillard's most admirable attribute, but in the world of risk-assessments and speculation where the fund's investments will be made, such a lack of flexibility in the face of changing circumstances would not be tolerated. The traders in Sydney's CBD will not pause to wonder how the government can justify its $10bn fund -- they'll just busy themselves devising the most imaginative proposals to win the largest share of the investment available.
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Bob Brown had another reason for not shutting down Australia's mining industry when pressed by Chris Uhlmann on ABC television's 7.30 on Tuesday. Senator Brown would keep the mines going because "I drive a car" and "we all need metal". Not even Senator Brown has enough hot air to power a steel works, where coking coal is an indispensable ingredient in the production process. And his quaint logic was at odds with the Greens' policy to oppose new coalmines and the expansion of existing mines and with his earlier view that coal had to be replaced by renewables.
Senator Brown trumped Wayne Swan's rhetoric of envy with the extravagant claim that Australia's mining billionaires are "threatening the whole future of this planet". Just in case it survives, Senator Brown wants the billionaires to stump up $5 billion for schools, dental care, a national disability scheme and high-speed rail between Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne.
But when the mines are filled in and covered with windmills, Australians will be buying cars made with dirtier coking coal exported from elsewhere -- unlike Senator Brown's Prius, which was probably made with steel produced with Australian coking coal.
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