Tim Blair
From: The Daily Telegraph
February 28, 2011 12:00AM
Thank you for making the weather nicer by forcing us to pay more for
everything.
Who knew that fixing the global climate was so simple?
Still, one or two questions remain about your new plan and a few related
matters.
Yours in climate justice,
Tim
BY how much will your carbon dioxide tax reduce Australia's temperature?
IF after five years there has been no recorded decline in temperature, will the tax be
abandoned?
MULTIPLE choice! How much money has already been wasted by Australian federal
governments on pointless climate change initiatives that have done nothing:
a - $2,000,000,000
b - $3,500,000,000
c - $5,500,000,000
IF taxing Australians at a certain level will make us more competitive with the rest of
the world, as you claim, then surely taxing us at even higher levels will make us more
competitive still. Universal taxation at, say, 80 per cent should make us a global
powerhouse. Why are you holding Australia back?
YOU claim that Australians want this new tax. How about testing your theory at an
election?
IF I announced on television that I was going to kidnap the federal Cabinet and put
them through a series of deadly Saw-style torture tests, do you think I could avoid
charges by asking the police to stop going on about "semantics" and "word games"?
DO you have any experience in herding cats? This might be important during your
coming 16 months of negotiations with the Greens, who you seem to have forgotten
are completely insane.
CONSIDERING Labor couldn't run a simple grocery pricing website and Labor's
attempts to insulate houses ended up setting them on fire and killing people, what are
the odds Labor can successfully run the country's largest and most complicated tax
regime?
LABOR promised to reduce the number of boat people arrivals. As with everything
else, Labor's policies resulted in exactly the opposite outcome. Now you're trying to
change the weather. Where should people hide?
CARBON dioxide contains two oxygen atoms for every one carbon atom. Shouldn't
we call it an "oxygen tax"?
IF the aim of the carbon tax is to change behaviour, why are you planning to
compensate so many households? They'll just keep killing the planet and get no
penalties at all.
AT what point does carbon dioxide's necessary presence in the atmosphere become
"pollution"?
IF the carbon tax is definitely going to be introduced on July 1, 2012, how come Tim
Flannery is going to be paid $720,000 over the next four whole years while he roams
the country "explaining" it?
ISN'T explaining new taxes your job? Or, more specifically, Wayne Swan's?
For that matter, where was Wayne the other day when you announced this massive
new tax? You were there, and so was Bob Brown and Christine Milne and Greg
Combet and Tony Windsor and the Hairy Princess. But no Wayne.
The next time you see Wayne, could you ask him why he said this last August: "What
we rejected is this hysterical allegation that somehow we are moving towards a
carbon tax." This question should really be asked by journalists, I guess, but they're
too busy making excuses for your hilarious lies.
WHAT is the point of building a $27 billion national broadband network to deliver
computer connectivity across the nation when Greg Combet is telling people to turn
off lights and televisions?
ANOTHER thing: how much more cost will be added to the NBN courtesy of the
carbon tax?
AGRICULTURE, which produces around a quarter of our carbon dioxide output, is
exempt from the carbon tax. You're not really serious about this whole "carbon
pollution" deal, are you?
WHY don't you just ban the mining, burning and export of coal? Your boss Bob
Brown wants to. He thinks that coal caused the Queensland floods (or "water
pollution").
YOU'VE said that people shouldn't be worried about media estimates of the amount
they will be penalised. Why should they believe you?
HOW does taking money off person A and giving it to person B help the climate?
You'd be surprised, Ms Prime Minister, you really would, at the way clever lawyers
can shift investments and capital around so that the source becomes "agriculture".
IN 2007, Labor Resources Minister Martin Ferguson said that a mere $30 carbon tax
on local flights would "kill the Australian aviation industry both domestically and
internationally".
If he was right, what does that mean for all Australian industries facing a carbon tax?
WHAT level of bureaucratic expansion will be required to deal with the intake and
spersal of something like $10 billion per year?
WILL your compensation plans take into account Australia's regional differences in
living standards?
Because if they don't, hard-up families in Sydney are going to be giving money to the
well-off in Adelaide.
WHAT percentage of revenue from the carbon tax will be lost in bureaucratic churn
between it being collected by your Government and handed out in compensation?
INSTEAD of creating a tax system that eventually gives people their money back,
why not just let them keep their own damn money in the first place?
ACCORDING to you, "there will be no carbon tax under the government I lead".
Would you mind telling us who does lead this Government, then? Otherwise I've sent
this to the wrong person.
