Al Gore's poem

I'm glad he wrote it too.

Rudd Censors the Internet

The tests may have been a complete fraud but thats not going to stop the government.  We will soon be joining those great free nations China and North Korea with mandatory internet censorship. There's no need for it and its an attack on our basic freedoms. The government is using the old excuse of protecting our children. Well, that's the parents responsibility. Any parent can install a net filter, in fact the Howard government purchased a license to one and made it freely available. The Rudd government let the license lapse.

This is a chance for the Liberals to stick to their principles of freedom and responsibility. I know some like Alex Hawke and Jamie Briggs feel as I do. The Australian Liberal Students are against it too. The question is what will Tony Abbott do? Will he revert to a ban it for our own good conservative, or will he fight the nanny state?

Sarah and me

Ok, I'll admit it. Im a fair dinkum, di Aussie, Going Rogue reading,  fan of the Fisherwoman from Wassila, the Artic Fox, the Sarahcuda , Gov Sarah Palin. I mean, whats not to like? The woman is a cross between Margaret Thatcher and Annie Oakley. She's a fearless defender of liberty, hated  by left  but loved by millions of ordinary Americans. Her memior is a best seller and she has had thousands turning out to her book signings.Frankly I can not think of any other politician in the world today I like more. Havn't felt this way about a leader since Ronald Reagan.

And she has the X Factor. See below.

Robert Manne attacks Abbott

Howard hater Robert Manne has found a new target to aim his venom at, Tony Abbott. His attacks on John Howard never made much sense to me and his attack on Howard Abbott is not much better. Lets have a look at his latest:

With Tony Abbott, the hard-Right Howardites have taken over the party. In part this is a matter of personnel: Ruddock, Minchin, Bishop, Andrews and Abetz. And in part it is a matter of policy reversion. Abbott will now campaign without ethical restraint on the question of asylum-seekers.

Ruddock a member of the hard right? bullshit. The return of Ruddock and Bronny Bishop is about using your best assets not moving to the right. Mr Ruddock is the longest serving pollie in Parliament. Having Yoda there as a non voting member of the shadow cabinet makes sense. Bronny is Shadow Minister for Seniors again makes good sense. She is a formidable woman and the right age to connect with older voters. Regarding asylum-seekers, the Shadow for immigration  is Scott Morrison, another moderate.

No denialist is more ignorant or cocky on climate change than the new leader of the Liberal Party, the natural successor to John Howard. It is certain that Abbott will now try to make ground over climate change by the deployment of the kind of politics of populist conservatism that Howard pioneered. It is important for the future of the Liberal Party and vital for the good name of the nation that he does not succeed.

The ignorent person here is Manne. Abbott accepts AGW and has consistently said he accepts the governments 5% emissions cut. Now, I'm skeptical on his claims to be able achieve this without a carbon price, but lets see what he comes up with. Note Greg Hunt still has his old  Climate Change Shadow job.

The simple reading of this is that while cosmopolitan Australians care about the coming climate catastrophe, the numerically far larger mainstream can be influenced by a scare campaign about even minuscule personal financial costs of climate change action. Whether this simple reading provides a clue to our political future, only time will tell.

More Manne crap: According to Manne Abbott is going hard right to pick up the mainstream vote. By definition the mainstream is the centre, not the left or right. What Manne really objects too is that the centre of Australian life is conservative in character. Abbott, unlike Manne likes ordinary Australians and can connect with then.

Abbott goes for the bogan right

For the Liberal Party to gain office they have to gain the support of the working class conservatives, the Howard battlers or as I call us the Bogan Right. That requires a leader who can connect with ordinary Australians. John Howard could do that  which was why he was swept into power in 1996. He was able to keep our support until 2007 when Kevin Rudd took those votes from the tired Howard government . Malcolm Turnbull was always seen as an eastern suburbs toff and could never connect. Tony Abbott has a chance of gaining  our trust and will be doing all her can to get those votes.:

"Obviously, if you are going to win the election you have got to secure the people who regard themselves as rusted on Coalition voters and then you have got to reach out to the middle ground," Mr Abbott told Fairfax Radio today.


"And 'Howard's Battlers', to use that phrase, were basically working people who respected John Howard because he thought that, in his own way, he was one of them.


"We can reach out and claim those same people ... maybe this could become Abbott's Army."Mr Abbott said in the weekend by-elections in Bradfield and Higgins there were big swings to the Liberals in "blue collar" areas.


"I have a feeling this emissions tax is really going to bring them (Labor) unstuck," he said.

How successful he will be remains to be seen.

The Kristina Keneally Song

Elite foodies against Maccas

What a bunch of elitest wankers.

Plans by fast-food giant McDonald's to open a restaurant in Nuriootpa have upset some of the Barossa's most high-profile food and wine identities, including celebrity cook and food manufacturer Maggie Beer and wine legend Margaret Lehmann.


"We need to protect the culture of the valley that brings us so many tourists," said Ms Beer, the long-time Barossa champion whose TV show The Cook and the Chef was mostly filmed there. "We have to keep working on the Barossa as a gourmet destination.


"For me, McDonald's would be like a thorn in the valley's side. We would be seen as talking the talk, but not living the life."

However its good to see freedom fighters coming out:

However a 763-member Facebook group "Let McDonald's come to the Barossa" wants the area to "get with the times".


Group creator Russell Payne, 19, of Sandy Creek, said Red Rooster and Subway had not dented the area's reputation.


"In a community which is largely dominated by rotating shiftworkers, a local place that is open very early to very late would make it easier on a lot of people," he said.


"The times are changing and the Barossa is expanding. The tourists will come and eat at the slow food places but the locals need the fast food option as these days people have to work harder and longer."

The main reason they don't want Maccas is because they can't stand the competition, can't have all those tourist buying cheap hot cakes and coffee for breakfeast.

No third party please

The Bradfield and Higgins by elections were good news for the Liberals and Tony Abbott, despite the recent upheavals and being targeted by the government for their anti-ETS stand they won the seats comfortably.  Which hopefully will help kill the formation of another political party:

But with Mr Turnbull biding his time on the backbench, after losing the leadership ballot 42-41, some are also urging him to establish a new "third force" political party, an idea they say he canvassed privately before becoming Opposition leader.

While Mr Turnbull yesterday described any such plans as "science fiction", colleagues say he raised the idea only three years ago with the idea that it would be free-market, pro-republic and committed to fighting climate change.

Those he spoke to say Mr Turnbull saw this as one way of finally getting rid of the conservative Right of the Liberal Party, which eventually pushed him out of the leadership over the climate change issue, installing Mr Abbott in his place.

Former Liberal leader John Hewson publicly backed the idea this week.

Chris Joye, a leading investment banker and former professional colleague of Mr Turnbull's who also worked with him at Goldman Sachs and sat with him on the previous government's Home Ownership Task Force, this week used his blog to promote the new party idea.

That it has the support of  John Hewson should tip anyone off its rubbish. How would a third party work in the Australian system? You would get a few people in the Senate but thats about it. It would be the Australian Democrats all over again. The Liberal Party is the home of both the Conservative and Classical Liberal forces in Australian politics.  It requires both groups to work together and a leader who can unite them. Clearly Malcolm Turnbull was not that man. The party rank and file were up in arms over the ETS. Is Tony Abbott that person? Well, we will see. 

Turnbull: Is there a costless way to cut emissions?

A few days ago Tony Abbott was talking good sense and seemed open to real alternatives to the ETS. I'm not so sure now, he has apparently ruled out a carbon tax.  Malcolm Turnbull has pointed out the obvious, theres no costless way to cut carbon emissions.

While there are some energy efficiency measures which pay for themselves over the long term, the simple fact is that there is a cost of moving to a lower emission economy. That is because the cheapest form of generating energy in Australia is by burning fossil fuels which emit a lot of greenhouse gases. And the cheapest coal, brown coal, is the dirtiest.

To give you an example; one of the major generators recently told us that their brown coal power station in Victoria produced 1.3 tonnes of CO2 per megawatt hour of electricity. A new combined cycle gas turbine generator produced 0.3 tonnes of CO2 per MW hour.

So if you substitute wind, solar, nuclear or even gas for coal your electricity will result in less emissions but will cost more.
However, by putting a price on those CO2 emissions the cleaner, less emissions intensive forms of generation become more competitive because they have a lower carbon price to pay.

Similarly with the great opportunities for CO2 abatement by increasing green carbon or agricultural offsets, there is a cost. If a farmer is to plant trees as a carbon sink or change his land management to raise soil carbon levels, somebody is going to have to reward him or her for doing so.

By the same token, an Indonesian farmer is not going to protect the rainforest if there is money to be made by cutting it down and no reward for leaving it as it is, let alone replanting it.

Now whether these carbon abatement techniques are driven by an ETS, a tax, regulation or by massive government subsidies they all have a cost and we will have to pay for it.

The reason an ETS is the preferred approach around the world (and indeed was the policy of the Howard Government) is because it is more efficient and offers the lowest cost abatement.

So if we rule out an ETS or a tax what are we left with? We could pass regulations to require power stations to clean up their act or use more renewable energy (that is what the Renewable Energy Target does now). This increases the cost of power and so electricity prices go up.

We could pass regulations to make farmers plant more trees and change the way they manage their land. That increases the cost of food and fibre.

How do we address these price rises? Well if you dont want to pass them on to consumers, presumably a Government would raise taxes so that either subsidies can be paid to generators to offset their increased costs or compensation paid to households for the higher electricity prices.

Whichever way you look at it, going green is going to cost money and the challenge for any alternative policies to an ETS is to demonstrate that it will deliver lower cost abatement. In other words there is no point cutting emissions by regulation if the cost to the economy is greater than by using an ETS.

While I look forward to what emerges from the the new policy development efforts, I note in passing that many of us would find it incongruous if a free enterprise party, the Liberal Party, abandoned a market based means of pricing carbon and reducing emissions and replaced it with heavy Government regulation and the increased bureaucracy to administer it.