No, that can’t be right – Tony Abbott and Great Big New Tax in the one phrase. Isn’t it Julia Gillard and the Labor Government that’s addicted to the Great Big New Tax – on Everything! Well no. Not to be outdone by Julia, Tony has his own Great Big New Tax – in his ‘Direct Action Plan’ for combating that heap of ‘absolute crap’ – global warming.
Take a look at it. You need scroll only to page two to see that the estimated cost is $3.6 billion, which presumably will come from the ‘Emissions Reduction Fund’ it intends to establish. But the Fund has no money. So they will have to put some there. Where will it come from? Where else but from you and me, the taxpayer, $3.6 billion of your money and mine? It will not descend from the ether on the wings of a dove, or arise from ashes like the mystical phoenix; it will not come out of some surreptitiously funded treasure chest kept for Coalition purposes, or out of that mysterious source called ‘consolidated revenue’ which carries the aura of being money that somehow just arrived without pain, and from no one’s pocket.
We all know all of this is nonsense. Any money the Government has comes from taxpayers: individuals, small business and large companies, and from interest earned on funds collected. So the $3.6 billion is a Great Big New Tax, a la Abbott.
Now the Coalition will argue that it’s not a tax, it is simply redirecting money already collected. So what money is this? Is it money allocated to education or health, or border security, or defence, or infrastructure, or any other Government item of expenditure? If so, the tax you paid for these services will be ripped away from its intended purpose to fund the $3.6 billion the Coalition intends to spend on combating climate change. No sleight of hand can disguise that this a blatant tax grab – grabbing your taxes that were meant for something else and using them to combat climate change. By any measure it is a GREAT BIG NEW TAX.
But we have to combat global warming lest the planet perish and all of us with it, I hear you say. Of course we do, but recall that the Coalition has said over and again, and it’s on page one of its policy, that it would do this ‘without the need for a great big new tax.’ If you don’t believe that,
take a look. It has the temerity to tell us this and then tell us it will cost $3.6 billion of OUR MONEY. If that is not a Great Big New Tax, what on earth is it? Some fictional sum that will be painlessly extracted from us or painlessly ripped out of existing programs, something none of us will notice or feel? What cynical hypocrisy is this? What sort of con job is being laid on us here? Yet have you heard one squeak from the media about Abbott’s Great Big New Tax? It’s as if they are mesmerized – how could Tony Abbott be imposing a Great Big New Tax when half of his every working day is spend cauterizing Julia Gillard and her Government for their Great Big New Taxes? They cannot see through the fog of disinformation that emits from Abbott’s mouth hour after hour to see that he does not have bags of money ferreted away to use as he pleases. He can get his money from only one source – US.
But Folks, that’s not all.
A review prepared by the Department of Climate Change and released on 2 March,
“…estimates the Coalition plan would force Australia to spend an extra $20 billion buying international carbon permits and would be costing households an extra $720 a year by 2020.” So $3.6 billion is not $3.6 billion, it is $20 billion more than that, over six times more. What a confidence trick! The best the Opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt could do in rebuttal was to reject the review, saying it was just part of a campaign by an ‘increasingly desperate government’. What a pitiable response. He quoted no figures, made no financial arguments to dismiss the attack; he simply fell back on tired old ‘desperate government’ rhetoric because he had nothing better. You can be sure that if he did it would have been out there illuminated by Murdoch media floodlighting.
So now we have Tony Abbott’s $23.6 billion Great Big New Tax. But that’s not all Folks.
How is he going to spend this $23.6 billion?
Unbelievable as it might be to rational human beings, he intends to use it to pay the polluters - yes PAY THE POLLUTERS!
He’ll pay them to reduce their polluting. While the Government plans to tax the polluters to dissuade them from polluting, Tony Abbott will actually pay them. So we would all be paying a Great Big New Tax so Tony Abbott could use our taxes to pay polluters!
Despite all the misinformation Tony Abbott, the Coalition and the compliant media have spread, the truth is that the Government plans to tax the polluters, not the citizens. In fact the citizens will be compensated for the rise in electricity and other affected prices, while it is the polluters who will pay, which is just the opposite of what is generally believed. The Coalition misinformation campaign has been very successful. Once established, the Government’s carbon tax will revert to a price on carbon, so the tax will be temporary.
Tony Abbott will tax the citizens so he can pay the polluters; householders will shell out another $720 per year in increased taxes, and yet he offers NO compensation to them. If that’s not a Great Big New Tax, what is it? Yet Julia cops all the flak and Tony escapes? How come?
So let’s stop all this nonsense about Great Big New Taxes. Its repetition, day after day, is primary schoolyard stuff.
Grow up Tony Abbott, concede that you are into a Great Big New Tax to fund your ‘Pay the Polluters’ plan, that no matter who tackles climate change, they will have to pay to fix the mess, that in the end the people pay, but that it is possible to ease their burden with sensible compensation, something you decline to do. You paint yourself as the champion of the people; you are just the opposite.
Folks, what do you think about
Tony Abbott’s Great Big New Tax to ‘fix’ climate change by paying the polluters?
By the way, before any of you Coalition supporters try to dismantle this piece, take a long hard look at the torrent of words that emit daily from Coalition lips in pressing its disingenuous claims. You wouldn’t want to be the pot calling the kettle black, would you?
