About this time last year, I was just beginning to wade into the ill-defined, ill-reasoned mire that was my political opinion. I was sloughing off my indifference. A year on, and here I am - once again indifferent, not because my views have regressed, but because a government as poor as this, and indeed, as sparse a political stage as this, makes it very, very hard to care.
But I've dredged up some interest (probably because my Liberal instincts sense what everyone else can - a Labor bloodbath), so I'll have a chat with regard to this goddamn carbon tax.
I have discussed this before, if memory serves (it's possibly one of the posts destroyed by mid-composition internet screwery though, so if you can find no trace of such, that's why), but I think I better revisit my main gripe - i.e. this tax will not actually help anybody or anything. It's taxing a gas in the air, (one that we actually breathe out, for fuck's sake) and if the package thus far outlined is correct, the reduction of carbon dioxide will be minimal, and easily eclipsed by the emissions of bigger, more densely populated nations. So it does not help the environment in any meaningful way.
And though the compensation package currently outlined may protect ordinary households to a great extent, the idea that a tax on some of the major pillars holding up our economy won't have a serious adverse effect on that economy is ludicrous. It's all well and good to talk about leading the way - right now we have the economical strength (even if this is not reflected in the Federal Government's actual cash reserves) and the delicately balanced political situation which politicians can afford to promote that sort of patriotism. But if that tax comes into place (I'll explain why it's 'if' later), we will very soon be doing the very opposite because tax-burdened and 'dirty' Australian companies will be unable to compete. In other words, the tax will harm our economy (and I repeat, without any discernible benefit for the environment).
Even if you don't accept that there will be a serious effect, or even an adverse effect, it is at best unrealistic and at worst dangerously blind to think that something as wide-ranging as the carbon tax won't affect the economy in some way. Our entire market from flagging retail to booming minerals is interconnected within itself and with the greater world. You can't pull a string at one end and not expect a bell to ring at the other.
But I'll move on - after all, following today's Neilsen poll results, http://www.smh.com.au/national/gillard-down-for-count-20110717-1hkak.html, everyone knows just how against this thing the vast majority of the population is. At that brings me to why I doubt the carbon tax will ever actually be implemented, regardless of the $25 million ad campaign and the very loud shouting of the people who are increasingly being revealed to be running against the tide of popular opinion, rather than riding an unassailable wave to the shore, as so many of them like to portray. You simply have to look at the players in this game.
1. Julia Gillard.
The woman is floundering. She's found herself saddled with this line of 'I am committed to putting a price on carbon', and her behaviour in the media, particularly in the past week, has demonstrated just how unable she is to deal with that fact. She keeps parroting the same words, the same vague concepts, over and over and over again, with no real understanding of the fact that no amount of saying them slowly and clearly (as if the voters were stupid - some of them are, yes, but no-one likes condescension, and even stupid people can spot that sort of thing) is going to make people suddenly go, "Oh, Julia! You are so right - we can totally forget the complete failure of your government thus far, and the fact that all your promise of action has yielded even more spin and even less action than we were choking on when Rudd was in power! We looove you!" Excuse the heavy sarcasm there, but it all honesty, there is no turning this around. She stays in power because the Greens and the independents keep her there.
2. Bob Brown
Technically, this man is our Prime Minister. I am utterly serious about this - this carbon tax is the Greens' baby, and everyone knows it. What's more, Brown's recent call for a inquiry into the media in the wake of Britain's 'News of the World' scandal shows how much Gillard is a thrall to his whims. The below was sourced from http://www.news.com.au/business/bob-brown-calls-for-inquiry-into-australian-media-and-wants-a-new-watchdog/story-e6frfm1i-1226094759334#ixzz1SSGzohts, and is Gillard's reaction to Brown's suggestion.
"I'm also not surprised to see that in Parliament, or amongst parliamentarians, a conversation is starting about a need for a review," she told the National Press Club.
"And I will be happy to sit down with parliamentarians and discuss that review that people are obviously contemplating."
Two major problems - firstly, Parliament is not currently in session, which is why she had to correct herself with 'amongst parliamentarians' - there's been no actual parliamentary discussion. Secondly, 'people are obviously contemplating' gives the false suggestion that it was more than just Brown who instigated the idea - and thus far we have seen no evidence of that. Essentially, this is Gillard saying, "I'll get right on that, Mr Brown."
Suggestions like the media inquiry and dictating policy in this manner would all be perfectly within his brief - if he and his party were a majority government, or any sort of government at all. That is, in order for his level of influence to be appropriate, he would have to be PM in fact as well as in practice.
And people are well aware that his role and his power is far more than it should be, which only drags down our actual Prime Minister even further. She's a puppet, and we can all see the strings.
3. Tony Abbott
As a Liberal voter, I am going to put my hand up right here and now and say that I don't actually much like the guy. I feel he and his party would best represent my views if they were in government, but that doesn't mean I don't think he's quite a full-on, potentially problematic Opposition Leader. His current status as preferred PM is a huge mark against Gillard rather than for Abbott, and it's a sign of just how little respect and authority she currently commands that the majority of people are choosing him over her, because let's face it - he can be more than a little scary. But that scariness would probably stand him in good stead for cleaning up the unworkable mess the current government is certain to leave. In other words, in Tony Abbott there is a recognisable alternative to the Punch and Judy...sorry, Bob and Julia show.
4. The Independents
Andrew Wilkie, Tony Windsor, Rob Oakeshott and Bob Katter. Of those four names, only the last was well-known prior to the last election, and then largely as the gimmicky politician from country Queensland with the Akubra. BK is pretty much in the back seat now, having sided with the Liberals against the eventual winners in the Labor-Green camp, but the fact is we still have four people in the government who are, despite public appearances, under no real obligation (or at least, no obligation that can't be broken) to stay in their current positions.
We've all gotten used to this minority government thing, and it feels solid, but I sincerely doubt that that is the case when you get underneath the surface. Windsor and Oakeshott might bargain together, but they're still only two men, and can't possibly reap the rewards of supporting Gillard to the extent that the Greens do. Wilkie will probably stick with Labor regardless, but it's hard to predict what any of them will do. It seems to me that sooner or later, one of them will have to crack and jump ship, hanging the parliament all over again. My money is on Windsor because he has an ultimately National ideology, but it could be any of them, for any reason.
And once the government can't perform the basic functions of governance, i.e. getting bills passed into law, it ceases to be a government, and hey presto! It'd be election time again, and judging by the above-linked poll, the vast majority of people holding positions of power currently would either be relegated to the Opposition benches, or lose their seats altogether.
So:
The carbon tax will likely never eventuate, simply because the government attempting to push it down our throats probably can't survive that long. Why else the election-style campaigning? Why else the constant talk of an election supposedly more than two years away? It's because everyone from Julia Gillard right down to little old me knows it's going to be sooner than that, and possibly even sooner than we think.
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