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posted by janrinok on Friday July 18 2014, @04:12AM   Printer-friendly
from the let-the-taxpayer-pay dept.

Australia's Senate has voted to repeal the carbon tax, a levy on the biggest polluters passed by the previous Labor government. Prime Minister Tony Abbott, whose Liberal-National coalition beat Labor in an election last year, had made the repeal a central aim of his government.

Politicians have been locked in a fierce row about the tax for years. Labor says it helps to combat climate change, but the Liberals claim it penalises legitimate businesses. The Australian Senate voted by 39 to 32 votes to repeal the tax. Introduced in July 2012, it charges the 348 highest polluters A$ 23 (£ 13; US$ 22.60) for every tonne of greenhouse gases they produce.

The Climate Institute think-tank said in a statement that the move left Australia "bereft of credible climate policy".

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbot said the carbon tax had been "useless and destructive". He says he plans to replace it with a A$2.55bn taxpayer-funded plan under which industries will be paid to reduce emissions and use cleaner energy.

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by clone141166 on Friday July 18 2014, @03:06PM

    by clone141166 (59) on Friday July 18 2014, @03:06PM (#70830)

    We didn't *all* vote for him. Unlike the President of the USA, the only people who voted for Tony Abbott were a majority of the people in his particular electorate; an *extremely* tiny portion of the Australian population.

    Additionally not every policy enacted or redacted by the government is expressly the fault of the Prime Minister; the entire governing party should be held accountable. For some reason the Australian media just loves to hate on him, maybe because he makes it easy to do I guess.

    Imo a carbon tax isn't a solution; it's just another tax. The CO2 is still being emitted, it's just going to cost everyone more to emit it. Allocating money to attempt to actually *reduce* CO2 emissions is a better idea in principle. Though with Australian politics being the way it is, I'm sure either party is just as capable of failing to achieve anything meaningful in the end. So mostly either scheme is just going to end up as a lot of pointless red tape, at least this way there is one less tax involved.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 18 2014, @07:03PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 18 2014, @07:03PM (#70921)

    You say that taking away the carbon tax is a good thing because that means there is one less tax to pay (which was payed only by the "big polluters", don't forget). With the new system, the money of taxpayers (mostly common people) will be used to help the "big polluters" reduce their emissions.
    This sounds to me more like an indirect raise in taxes for the common people. They won't have to pay more taxes, but instead there will be less public money for other things (like for instance education or healthcare). So, what is actually happening is: polluting companies pay less, and common people pay more. Personally I don't think this is fair!

    I don't understand this idea that taxes are bad! Irresponsible spending of tax money is really bad! taxes... we wouldn't have any western societies without them!

    For instance, they could have used the money from the carbon tax to help reduce the emissions of CO2 in the first place. On the other side, "big polluters" could just have avoided paying the carbon tax by reducing their emissions....

    I really don't see any benefit from the new system.

  • (Score: 2) by Pav on Saturday July 19 2014, @01:44AM

    by Pav (114) on Saturday July 19 2014, @01:44AM (#71081)

    ...he's hugely unpopular as this 1,000,000 view viral video [youtube.com] (and the polls) attest. To give some idea of the gradual move to the right in the Australian political microcosm here is a recent RT interview with Malcolm Fraser, a previous Australian conservative Prime Minister - he held office during Ford, Carter and Reagans presidencies. He gives a sharp and insightful critique of current western policy regarding Ukraine while not giving Russia a free pass either.

    • (Score: 2) by Pav on Saturday July 19 2014, @11:53AM

      by Pav (114) on Saturday July 19 2014, @11:53AM (#71193)

      Oops... here's the link [youtube.com].