I am confused about this whole carbon tax controversy. From page one of your 18th August paper we are told by our local member, Mr Oakeshott, that 1.6 milloin jobs will be created in Australia between now and 2020 “regardless of whether or not we introduce a carbon price”. (I guess he means a carbon tax.)
Professor Tim Flannery from the Climate Change Commission tells us that even if the whole world signs up, there will be no effect on the world’s climate for “a thousand years”.
The Government’s expensive taxpayer-funded advertising material concentrates on how generous they will be with their compensation to the disadvantaged, assuring the gullible that “all revenue from the carbon price will be used by the Government to assist households……….support jobs….build our new clean energy future”…….no mention of what the scheme will cost to administer nor where the funds to cover such costs will come from.
It would seem that this whole matter is extremely ill-conceived and is really a wealth distribution tax-churn.
The Government will not say where our base-load power is going to come from once coal is phased out and does not have the courage to even debate nuclear power as an option.
As to the question of how this will benefit our region, I suspect the short answer is that no-one knows and nor will anyone ever know.
Geoffrey Bond
