Holden boss Mike Devereux says the carbon tax has placed an unwanted
additional burden on the company as it struggles to keep its Australian
operations going.
A day after he asked workers to
take a pay cut, Mr Devereux suggested the company wouldn't be considering such
action if the carbon tax had been axed.
"There is no question that a
tax on electricity, in making it more expensive in input costs, makes it more
difficult for me to make money building cars," he told ABC radio in
Adelaide.
He said anything that raised the
cost of making cars made it harder for the company to make money and "then
we have to look for that money in other places".
No Shit. My tip is we’ll see a lot
more companies find a spine in the coming weeks and months to finally complain
what a turd of tax Gillard’s Carbon Tax is.
Bring on the election now so these ecotard fools can be
disbanded.
Most of Australia's coal reserves will have to be left
unburned if the world is to avoid catastrophic global warming, according to a
major new report from the federal government's Climate Commission.
The report puts the key science advisory body on a collision
course with some of the nation's biggest export industries, and marks the first
time a government agency has
endorsed calls for fossil fuel industries to be phased out because of
their contribution to climate change.
Its findings mean that most of Australia's known coal, oil
and gas reserves – many of which are already subject to minerals production
licences held by companies such as BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto – must somehow be
left alone if the world is to avoid dangerous climate change.
The Climate Commission acknowledged its conclusions were
"sobering" and that the potential for economic disruption could be
serious, but said there was no alternative if the world was to avoid dangerous
climate change.
So these fools from the Climate Commission now “legitimise”
the complete
phase out of Australia's second biggest export after iron ore - exports
that brought in over $43
billion in revenue in 2010 and responsible for hundreds of thousands of
jobs.
In an interview on ABC’s
Insiders, Greens former supremo Bob Brown freely admitted the “Carbon Price”
has to result in shutting down the Australian coal industry.
BARRIE CASSIDY: But when you say
negligible impact do you also say then that no coal mines will closed?
BOB BROWN: I would expect that in
the future we are going to see some of the most polluting enterprises in the
country have a struggle. That's the nature.
BARRIE CASSIDY: And how quickly
after the introduction of the tax?
BOB BROWN: Well, we're still negotiating
a scheme.
BARRIE CASSIDY: But it could close
down some of these mines overnight?
BOB BROWN: I would not figure that
in because they are just so highly profitable.
But that has to be the outcome. You
know the coal industry has to be replaced by renewables.
BROWN: "Sorry Chris, but
Treasury has no intention of shutting the (coal) industry down."
UHLMANN: "No, but you
do."
BROWN: "No, I'm not ...
"
UHLMANN: "Didn't you say, in
2007, that we have to 'kick the coal habit'?"
BROWN: "No, I did not.
You're looking at the Murdoch press where I said back in 2007 we should look at
coal exports with a view to phasing them out down the line."
UHLMANN: "It wasn't the
Murdoch press, it was a comment piece you wrote. So you want to phase out the
coal industry?"
BROWN: "The world is going
to do that because it is causing massive economic damage through the impact of
climate change."
UHLMANN: "But the simple
question is, how would you replace the $50 billion a year in export income that
comes by way of coal, an industry that you'd shut down?"
Only Brownomics would suggest we continue to pour tens of
billions of dollars into useless renewables. That worked a real treat for
Spain. By failing to control the renewable’s cost, Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero
saddled Spain with at least 126 billion euros of obligations to
renewable-energy investors. The spending didn’t achieve the
government’s aim of creating green jobs, because Spanish investors imported
most of their panels from overseas when domestic manufacturers couldn’t meet
short-term demand.
So I gather the Climate Commissions recommendation is to replace
a perfectly good exporting industry earning $43 billion a year with an import
industry that has already cost Spain $126 billion euros?
The Greens say renewable energy will create thousands of
new jobs.
Wrong.
A2009 university study
into Spain’s renewableenergy scheme finds that green renewable power
kills jobs. The study calculates that since 2000 Spain spent €571,138 ($1.03
million) to create each “green job”, including subsidies of more than €1
million ($1.8 million) per wind industry job. The study calculates that the
programs creating those jobs also resulted in the destruction of nearly 110,000
jobs elsewhere in the economy, or 2.2 jobs destroyed for
every “green job” created.
Even today, every job in Britain’s wind farm industry is
effectively subsidised to the extent of £100,000
per year(about $163,000 AUD).
I also hope Tony Maher, mining president of the Construction
Forestry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), who described
the then Greens
deputy leader Christine Milne's push for a ban on new coalmines as
"a pathetically shallow analysis
that is unworthy of any serious player or party" reiterates the same
condemnation to the Climate Commissions anti-coal industry rhetoric.
Besides there is nothing to worry about as researchers have recently discovered a stunning new process that takes the energy from coal without
burning it - and removes virtually all of the pollution.
If LNP MP Scott Morrison manages to stop the boats then he should
become Australian of the year, but I fear the momentum is so strong at best the
coalition will only make a small dent.
However there is a solution to finally stop this illegal
invasion.
Australia is well within its rights not to accept anyone who
originates from Indonesia. These “asylum” seekers fly into Jakarta or Kuala Lumpur with their passports from places like Kabul (Afghanistan), Tehran (Iran), Bagdad
(Iraq) and Colombo (Sri Lanka) so they have already “safely” escaped their
country of origin and therefore we are no longer obligated to follow the UNHRC charter on asylum
seekers (they have actually found “asylum” in Indonesia).
But no one has the ticker to enforce this because they are
too shit scared of the bleeding hearts who’ll whinge and moan about it. But
this action would break the illegal immigration trade in one fell swoop. Only
the Labor part chooses to accept these illegals as “asylum seekers.”
So if Morrison and Abbott are fair dinkum, all they need to
say is “anyone who comes on a boat that
originates from Indonesia or Malaysia will not be deemed an asylum refugee, but
as an illegal immigrant and will be deported immediately back to their country
of origin.”
This is a must read
article by the Australian’s foreign editor, Greg Sheridan
This boatpeople phenomenon is essentially a determined
Muslim immigration. It is important to confront the sensitivities of this
situation head-on. The overwhelming majority of Muslims in Australia are
law-abiding and productive citizens. They should not be made to feel unwelcome
or uncomfortable because of the necessary debate about this huge, unregulated
Islamic inflow. But to dodge the debate because of that sensitivity is a recipe
for continued, disastrous policy failure.
The case of convicted Egyptian terrorist Maksoud Abdel Latif
illustrates how the security system is overwhelmed by the present numbers, but
it is not the key policy question.
Assume that 40,000 of those who have arrived so far are
Muslims, mostly low skilled and with limited English. Assume that eventually
they will all stay in Australia, which is the only rational assumption if
policy doesn't change radically. Then assume that, on a very conservative
basis, each is responsible, eventually, for one family reunion immigrant,
whether a spouse, fiancé, parent or sibling. That is a cohort, so far, of
80,000 low-skilled Muslims with poor English predominantly from countries that
have the most radical and extreme jihadist traditions in the world.
Of course, most Muslims in any country are not extremists.
But after the latest terrorist atrocity in London, former British prime
minister Tony Blair, while acknowledging that most Muslims were moderates,
commented: "There is a problem with Islam - from the adherents of an
ideology which is a strain within Islam. We have to put it on the table and be
honest about it. Of course there are Christian extremists and Jewish, Buddhist
and Hindu ones. But I am afraid the strain is not the province of a few
extremists. It has at its heart a view about religion and about the interaction
between religion and politics that is not compatible with pluralistic, liberal,
open-minded societies ... At the extreme end of the spectrum are terrorists, but
the world view goes deeper and wider than it is comfortable for us to admit. So
by and large we don't admit it."
…Thus the boatpeople phenomenon entrenched in Australia is a
big, organised crime industry.
There will be many consequences beyond this.The Immigration
Department's figures, released last year, revealed that five years after
arrival the rate of employment - not unemployment but employment - of Afghans
was 9 per cent, while 94 per cent of Afghan households received Centrelink
payments. From Iraq, 12 per cent were employed while 93 per cent of families
received Centrelink payments. Overall, households that came under the
humanitarian program had 85 per cent receiving Centrelink payments after five
years. The family reunion cohort had 38 per cent, and skilled migration 28 per
cent.
So the illegals get 3 hots and a cot, and yet the homelessness
would be lucky to get 1 hot let alone a cot each night.
$8.1
billion is budgeted on intercepting these illegal immigrants over the
next 4 years – imagine if that same amount of money was spent fighting the causes and care
of the homeless then we’d mostly likely wouldn't have a homelessness problem.
I also understand that after the illegals spend around 6-9
months in detention, they manage to save approximately $10 000 in "welfare
payments" from the Australian Government. They then send the money home
and arrange for the next family member to come here on a boat.
This means we are actually paying for the continuous flood
of illegal boat people via the welfare payments provided to them.
And you can squarely blame federal Labor and state Labor gov’ts
from 2007 onwards for blowing the dough.
Australia’s net debt figure is almost twice the 10.6 per
cent estimate you’ve been told is so comforting – the real number was around 20 per cent in 2012-13.
Importantly, this has exploded off a sub-zero base in 2007 when we had
allegedly no net debt.
Excising the influence of the Future Fund and “other
investments”, total government net debt rises to roughly 25 per cent (see above
chart).
When financial markets consider a company’s riskiness, they
focus on the gross level of borrowings relative to assets. We can do the same.
In 2007, the Commonwealth and states owed about
$150 billion. These were just the bonds on issue and ignore other borrowings.
By December 2012 Commonwealth and state government debt on issue had more than
tripled to $500 billion. That’s nearly 35 per cent of GDP and excludes
government-guaranteed companies. The true gross debt-to-GDP ratio is probably
circa 40 per cent. While that is still relatively low, it is not the
ultra-benign image that has been projected.
