Topic: aust govt
Whether by design or coincidence the Sunday press coverage of PM Rudd's 'white paper' on homelessness means his government sounds like Bob Hawke in 1990 making his famous and wrong claim 'no child will live in poverty' by from memory 10 years timeline. Echoes of the same egotistical assertions and hubris?
One recalls wearily that any government funding package sounds big over 12 years - in this case $6.1 billion on this social welfare policy as per page 1 Sydney SunHerald (Fairfax).
What we believe is going on, right or wrong, is that the Rudd Govt are piling on any number of potential PR announcements to offset and drown out the widespread condemnation of the emission trading scheme (ETS) policy. This was the most sensitive election related posture and will cause the most serious backlash. Both broadsheets here in Sydney - The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian - on Saturday led with the Govt's own policy architect Professor Ross Garnaut rejecting two major planks being unjustified bailouts to dirty industry, and a weak target setting a poor example to other countries. One only needs to recall that 193 other countries have similar or even smaller total emissions as Australia, and will see 5% as both pathetic, and a useful excuse too.
The great irony is that with security experts across the developed world agreeing that climate refugees will become the biggest concern in the future - imagine Shanghai or Bangladesh being swamped with tens of millions on the move - Rudd promising anything on homelessness by 2015 let alone 2020 is a tragic joke. Just last week some 70,000 PNG nationals were made homeless on the northern side of the country by big seas and king tides. That's a foretaste of the homelessness to come under dangerous climate change.
But still the Rudd Govt piles on seemingly more desperate or gimmicky PR. We notice the Naked Eye (Fairfax) yesterday column again with a "daisycutter theme" coming through. That is PM Rudd 'stealing' the limelight off Minister Penny Wong on the ETS. Of even more staff from his office and other ministerial offices bailing out as worn out cannon fodder.
It does seem that the history of politics is speeding up in this internet age. Rudd is already at the phase of NSW Premier Carr in 2003 after 8 years in government where his green credentials had turned biege, only to retire under force of devastating polls by 2005. And Bob Hawke in 1990 with his infamous and arrogant 'no child in poverty' speech after 7 years in power. Rudd has been in harness as PM for 12 months. And things are only getting harder, not easier like the climate. Just ask the insurance industry.
This is the Green Party MP Milne with some chapter and verse:
Saturday, 20th December 2008
Rudd Carbon Plan Unravelling: Urgent Review NeededThe Australian Greens say the growing discontent over the Government's
carbon trading scheme - including the Government's own advisor Professor
Ross Garnaut - now means it's imperative that an immediate review be
held of the scheme's targets and design.Australian Greens Climate Spokesperson and Deputy Leader, Senator
Christine Milne, said today's blunt assessment by Prof. Garnaut
condemning compensation for big polluters as 'over the top', echoed
other damning assessments from economists, scientists and
environmentalists.
"The scheme is unravelling rapidly as the experts assess the detail and
find it to be environmentally irresponsible, economically inefficient
and actually disastrous for Australia."
"When the Prime Minister announced the scheme it was not only scientists
who were aghast but economists who couldn't understand why the
government would reward the biggest polluters with 'over the top'
compensation that will end up costing taxpayers unlimited amounts into
the future.""Australians want to know why the government has decided that
multi-nationals like Rio Tinto and Blue Scope Steel deserve this level
of corporate welfare.""They also want to know how Woodside's Don Veolte managed to persuade
the government to be so generous to the LNG industry when, as Prof.
Garnaut says, there appeared to be no clear principles or criteria
behind the decision.""The whole point of an Emissions Trading Scheme is to reduce emissions
by putting a price on carbon to drive a change in consumer behaviour at
the lowest possible cost. But by giving away 97% of the funds in
compensation, the government has dampened the price signal."
"To drive a clean energy revolution we need not only to roll our
renewable energy but also to strengthen the existing grid, improve its
efficiency by making it an 'intelligent grid', and to extend it to areas
where geothermal, solar thermal, large solar arrays and wind, can be
located. Under the government's scheme there is no money to transform
the grid."
"Equally concerning is that the proposed cash compensation to households
will not be a sufficient driver to boost the manufacturing of renewable
energy and energy efficiency technologies, or to encourage the hundreds
of thousands of green-collar jobs needed for this transformation.""This flawed scheme will instead lock-in the coal industry and lock-out
the renewable energy sector until well after 2020, when it is clear that
the government is pinning all its hopes on its pipe-dream of carbon
capture and storage.""With the Climate Institute and the Australian Conservation Foundation
joining the Greens in condemnation of the scheme, and with the growing
concern among economists, it is essential that the government admits
that it has got the scheme completely wrong and immediately review its
weak targets, and its shocking bias and generosity to the big
polluters."
