Looks like the Carbon Tax is DEAD

[nero_bolt]

Looks like the Carbon Tax is DEAD and GONE.

A massive Labor failure, a very costly one that has hurt Australian and clobbered business.  But then thats the Labor and Greens way, they hate business 

Carbon tax repeal bill: PUP to support legislation, 

The Palmer United Party has backed down on demands that the carbon tax repeal legislation be applied retrospectively, in a move that boosts the chances of the bill passing the Senate.

The party's leader, Clive Palmer, still thinks companies should be entitled to a full carbon tax refund, but says he is prepared to "compromise".

"Our party policy was that if it's a bad tax, it should be repealed back to the day it was first introduced," Mr Palmer has told the ABC.

"But I mean, I guess on those sort of things, we're prepared to compromise to a certain degree."

However, the mining billionaire is insisting that the Government amend the repeal legislation so that power companies are required by law to pass on any savings.

The Government says power bills are forecast to be about 9 per cent lower and gas prices about 7 per cent lower once the carbon tax is removed, providing a $550 per year saving to the average household.

[tall_bearded01]

What I love is the old saying “what goes around comes around” and when it does it may well bite you on the….

I can recall the howls of indignation when the carbon tax was first introduced.

 I can recall the then leader of the opposition waiving documents in the air, which he said clearly showed that once the carbon tax was introduced electricity and gas prices would skyrocket, a sentiment, which by some, were replicated here.  I mean I can still recall, one noteworthy fellow (or maybe lass) who on these boards complained bitterly that the price of pizza from his favoured pizzeria was about to skyrocket because (as he/she was told by the owner) the pace of gas to cook it) was about to double in price.

Now it seems that same tax, some say, is about to be repealed.  And guess what?  Is the price gas or electricity about to plummet by 50% or 40% or 30% or maybe a much more modest 20%?  No, now wait for it, it’s going to go down by a whopping less than 10%, which is exactly the amount the then government said it would increase when the tax was introduced.

But then there is the flip side.  Say you are a family of five (mum,dad and 3 kids) with an electricity bill is 3000 pa.  Yes they will gain by their electricity bill will go down by about $300 pa, but that is only 10% (in rounded figures) of what they will loss in family benefits

[boris1gary]

Taxing the truth on carbon pricing

Two years after Australia started pricing carbon, the economy is growing above trend, unemployment has fallen and inflation is comfortably in the Reserve Bank's comfort zone.

And now the government is promising to scrap carbon pricing next month with the assistance of Clive Palmer – and economic growth will fall and unemployment will rise.

That wasn't the story the Coalition has been telling Australia for four years.

You might remember that the sky was supposed to fall on July 1, 2012.

Many Coalition voters apparently believed that, as the gap between their consumer confidence and that of Labor voters blew out to an unprecedented margin, as measured by the Westpac/Melbourne Institute survey.

The second half of that story was that the economy would to take off on a surge of household and business relief when the carbon "tax" was scrapped.

OK, the election pitch wasn't quite that simplistic – there was also the scrapping of the mineral resources rent tax and stopping the boats.

The reality is that the national accounts showed real GDP growth of a very nice 3.5 per cent in the year to the end of March.

The unemployment rate stayed at 5.8 per cent last month and 105,000 more jobs have been added over the past year.

Joe Hockey's first budget says growth will fall to 2.5 and the unemployment rate will rise to 6.25 per cent. So much for axing the tax being the economy's panacea.

It is of course ridiculous to blame the forecast downturn on replacing carbon pricing with a Micky Mouse "direct action" program – just as it was ridiculous to blame carbon pricing for the economy's challenges two years ago.

What the numbers do show indicate is that our economy has handled the introduction of a carbon price with little effort. Reducing the price to low traded figure would be no effort at all.

But the circus of Australian politics doesn't work like that.

Several swifties have been pulled on the electorate by both sides, but one of the more amazing is the idea that the Coalition will in fact scrap the carbon tax. A surprising number of people from both sides seem to believe that.

As a simple fact: the government intends to maintain a carbon tax – it's just being disguised in general revenue.

The $2.5 billion for the vague "direct action" spend is raised by taxation, not being printing plastic notes.

If you wanted, you could probably call it the "carbon sequester element of revenue" – anything but the "tax" word.

The vast majority of free-market oriented economists believe a pricing mechanism would be more effective than "direct action", but the vast majority of climate scientists believe there is a climate change problem requiring urgent action and the government mainly dismisses them too.

Michael Pascoe is a BusinessDay contributing editor.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/comment-and-analysis/taxing-the-truth-on-carbon-pricing-20140613-3a1o...

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/comment-and-analysis/taxing-the-truth-on-carbon-pricing-20140613-3a1o...