Just Grounds Community

Real People - facing the forgotten issues with friendship and a little fun.

GET TO KNOW YOUR ETS, TAKE IT OUT TO DINNER

It has become apparent that there is a general lack of understanding in the community about exactly what an ETS is. People may understand the sentiment that surrounds it but they don’t really understand how it works and how it will affect them.

The ETS, which will be the Employment Termination Scheme or the Extra Tax System, take your pick, has not been properly explained to the Australian people away from the politics that surround it. There is a need to explain exactly what it is and how much it will cost the Australian consumer.

Over the weekend I addressed a meeting on the Tweed and clearly most people I spoke to were not aware of what Mr’s Rudd’s proposed scheme is going to cost them.

This morning while getting a lift on the Gold Coast the gentleman driving me said the same thing, “we don’t actually know what an ETS is”, so I think that we in politics have a duty to start telling the Australian people exactly what the ETS means in very simple terms.

If your actions in work, enjoyment or at home, away from you actual breathing, involve the emission of carbon dioxide then you have you a problem and the Government is going to tax you to stop.

Let’s look at some examples to bring this home to the dinner table. If you live in a cave with a candle you would probably be OK, but if your house is wired up for power then every electrical appliance will be attached to a power generator which in all likelihood will pay a tax and that tax will be passed on to you, the consumer.

The price of toasting bread has just gone up, the price of ironing the school uniform has just gone up, the price of vacuuming the living room has just gone up and the price of watching the Sunday afternoon game on TV has just gone up.

If you live on a diet of naturally grown wild berries and lentils, which you scavenge for in your back yard, then you’d also probably be OK. But if you’re associated with the consumption of food, that’s either grown with the use of carbon intensive processes, or if you like to eat beef, mutton or lamb, which involves the emission of methane and is apparently a super form of carbon, then under Mr Rudd’s proposal, you’ll potentially have to pay for the privilege.

Put simply, a single beast, which ends up on our supermarket shelves as steak, roast, mince or sausages, emits about 70 kilograms of methane and according to the Kyoto protocol this has to be multiplied by 21 which means that each beast is responsible for emitting around a tonne and a half of carbon.

Utilising NAB modelling on the price of a carbon permit, a tonne and half of carbon, multiplied by about $50, is equivalent to an additional cost to the farmer of approximately $75 dollars per beast per year.

$75 dollars per beast per year = no beef industry in Australia!

If the consumer wants to eat beef and can afford to pay for it then you will be buying it from a country that doesn’t have an ETS.

The price of beef in Australia will be above the price paid in other countries that don’t have a beef industry which will result in you paying better than $100 dollars for a prime cut roast.

Quite obviously the quality of the Australian standard of living, as reflected in our diet, will be reduced.

When it comes to lamb and mutton, sheep emit around 10 kilograms of methane, so using the same formula; this means around 210 kilograms of carbon per year, per sheep which equates to Australian sheep farmers being slugged about $10 per sheep annually and this will ultimately drive sheep meat out of the market.

So, if you decided to have a lamb roast for dinner this Sunday, which the gentleman in the car giving me a lift today said he was planning to do, then expect to pay almost $100 dollars at the butcher for it.

This is the sort of reality that we as Australians have to understand we’d be signing ourselves up for if Mr Rudd gets his way with his ridiculous Emissions Trading Scheme.

Penny Wong has said publicly that she would not accept the proposition put by Malcolm Turnbull that would exclude agriculture, so lets not play ducks and drakes here, agriculture in Australia is going to suffer massively if Mr Rudd gets his way and the biggest losers in all this will ultimately end up being the consumer as they struggle to pay to fill the family shopping basket each week.

If Mr Rudd’s plan was actually going to make a difference then it would be slightly plausible, but the fact is, it is not. Mr Rudd’s ETS will not result in the planet being cooled and has not even the slightest prospect of doing anything for the global climate.

Mr Rudd’s ETS is merely a gesture, a token. There are all sorts of wonderful gestures we can offer as comfort for the world’s problems, however if imposing a tax on consumers, which Mr Rudd wants to do, is the right way to deal with things, then we may as well impose a tax to bring about world peace.

Mr Rudd keeps coming up with all these peculiar ideas.

Imposing a crippling tax on consumer’s, forcing us to pay massively inflated prices at the supermarket for the food we eat and forcing Australian farmers out of business is implausible, short sighted and dangerous.

Tags: Barnaby, ETS, Emissions, Joyce, Scheme, Trading, beef, farmers, food, lamb, More…mutton, prices

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Dale Stiller on July 26, 2009 at 3:40pm

I've already linked this over at the PRA group page but I'll thrown in David Flint's article on Quadrant Online. Flint has titled his article as "Rudd's dangeroius obsession" Below is a quote.

"Mr. Rudd and Senator Wong are demonstrating the same blind faith as the Bolsheviks did on collectivization, which was imposed at massive cost on the Soviet Union. It ruined the nation’s agriculture and was even responsible for the outbreak of famine. Like collectivization, the ETS is a dangerous and damaging obsession.
The public are not being told the truth about this."

Further on Flint says:
"So why do our political and media elites endorse attaining an ETS with the passion with which the Bolsheviks endorsed collectivization? You get the impression that when Senator Wong coldly speaks of “deniers”, she is looking at them as if they were class enemies, some sort of antipodean kulaks. The effect is chilling."

Permalink Reply by Allan Maurice Taylor on July 26, 2009 at 5:06pm

Hi Barnaby

You are our only hope left to instill some sense into the Liberals about opposing outright Labor's ETS.
It is all nonsense and threatens to destroy the Australian economy, and the Greens then will be well on the way to achieving semi-world domination with their mind-contracted eco-religion. We normal people may have to migrate to Russia or China to escape its effects!

I have just been reading an account of Wilson Tuckey's attack on MT and his "stategy". Good for Tuckey but how pathetic was his argument using the Green's terminology as if it was true! Tuckey talks about "polluting industries" (coal-fired power stations etc) when he should have first checked the dictionary to find out what the word "pollute" actually means, and ask the Green's (and MT) how can atmospheric CO2 gas be a pollutant??

Tackle them on semantics and get the enemy to define the words they are using. If they are using a word wrongly then their proposition will fall in a heap. The Greens are always changing the meaning of words and cunningly can make black equal white, or green equal red and so on. As does Al Gore if you watch him carefully!

In conclusion, CO2 gas is a wonderful minor component of the atmosphere and their should be more of it, not less. This would benefit every living creature on Earth.

Permalink Reply by Allan Maurice Taylor on July 26, 2009 at 5:15pm

The reason is that they ARE reincarnated Bolshevicks with world domination as their LT objective, with the help of the United Nation's IPCC. Enough said.

Permalink Reply by Christopher Leeds on July 26, 2009 at 5:24pm

I find it rather deceiving how the ALP is so hell bent on this ETS which will turn off the lights and park the cars in the working class suburbs even cost them their jobs and at he same time it will turn on the party lights and crack open the bottles of champane in the wealthy suburbs all payed for with the profits of carbon credit trading and creation. One only has to study the gleeful predictions of profits these carbon trading investment houses are predicting to see the real intentions of this ETS Rudd is trying to bring in, it should also be noted that Mr Tumbull used to be a partner in Goldman Sach's who own at least 10% of the Chicargo Carbon exchange and do stand to make billions of $ if these ETS's can be successfully imposed on the world community. It is down right offencive of the ABC which is supposed to be owned by the Australian people to take it opon them selves to blandly promote an ETS while at the same time disguising the true effect and facts from the comunity they are supposed to be serving.

Permalink Reply by Barnaby Joyce on July 26, 2009 at 6:37pm

Rob,

The unlike the GST, the ETS applies to everything made of Carbon, food the lot. It's a tax on production.

Permalink Reply by Barnaby Joyce on July 26, 2009 at 6:43pm

Jeff,

Good point. Thats another reason this legislation is so dangerous. There are 2 types of powers, Legislative powers which requires the parliament to vote on it and Regulatory powers, which means the Minister responsible can basically wake up in the morning and change the law.

Vast parts of the Rudd governments CRPS once passed are Regulatory.

The answer to your question -

"what is there to stop the reduction figures from being increased by Executive order to say 40% or 80% reduction to appease the green lobby pressure,"

Is ...... Nothing.

Permalink Reply by Rob Moore on July 26, 2009 at 6:44pm

Congratulations, Barnaby for setting up your site-Agmates is the future supermarket of ideas of common sense. You are the leading Politician dealing in common sense. In their own good time if you could bring a few others in this will become quite a powerful medium. Our enemies love to divide and rule and the site puts a lot of motivated people under one roof. Thanks, Rob Moore

Permalink Reply by Allan Maurice Taylor on July 27, 2009 at 12:44am

Hi Von
The ABC is terribly biased and something should be done about it.
The Climate Sceptics Party are asking for ideas about having a broader policy, and this will get a lot of publicity when it is announced.
Why not devise some sort of policy that would keep in check how the ABC operates, like having a balanced presentation on controversial topics and how to enforce it . The least it would do would be to give them a bit of a scare. I'll leave it up to you and other Agmates.

Permalink Reply by Allan Maurice Taylor on July 27, 2009 at 1:29pm

You had me wondering for awhile what you were talking about with your Energy Termination Scheme, and had me visioning South Australia covered in useless windmills, a stupid idea promoted by the Rann Labor Government. What's going on, I wondered, until.....

Now it has clicked and you are talking about Labor's Emission Trading Scheme (ETS). I agree with all that you say about it. Its enactment would be a disaster to the Australian economy... like being devasted in a World War.

To avoid any depression from thinking about the ETS I suggest you switch you mind away from all that doom and gloom and adopt a positive attitude about the benefits of more atmospheric CO2 and promote this ideal. Let the global warmers wallow in their stupidity for they WILL be defeated in the end, just pretend you are Winston Churchill! Up and at'em.
Cheers
Allano

Permalink Reply by John C Fairfax on July 27, 2009 at 3:09pm

Lookout Barnaby, looks like Malcolm Turnbull is lashing out at you as well.

Imagine how many voters he and his party will lose from this, also impacting Nationals. See:

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/global-warming/turnbull-lashes-ou...

Permalink Reply by John C Fairfax on July 27, 2009 at 6:03pm

Ben,
Adults dying due to malnutrition fear they are not going to get any more proper food. The fear is likely similar for each of the 25,000 children that die daily due to malnutrition related causes. Talk about a fiasco, and all managed by so-called experts that have never had so much data and other knowledge at their fingertips. There is need for more than just faith and prayers. Real solutions can be challenging and interesting.

Permalink Reply by Allan Maurice Taylor on July 27, 2009 at 6:07pm

I hope I am not over doing it today: It annoys me all this negative attitude about the ETS (which wont be passed) because people have the wrong (Wong) understanding of GW.

I have a had basic training in chemistry (PhD in geochemistry) and have no qualms about stating that the global warming belief system is b*******.

The Wongs and Rudds (and Al Gore ) in this world have had no training in science and wouldn't know a carbon atom if they fell over one. They have never passed Chemistry 101 and they are a menace to the reputation of good science.

I object to the global warmers trying to demonize carbon and CO2 which are the most wonderful element and compound in the Periodic System. Pox on them!

Let's up and at'em and shoot down their stupid and dangerous belief system.

Cheers
Allano