Australian Government Repeals It's Carbon Tax Scheme

abc.net.au

9 points·jschulte··6 comments

We sure have our share of rednecks on sundecks in Australia. The only thing more retrograde and embarrassing is the fact that Abbott was going around trying to form some sort of 'coaltion of climate change denying countries', whose sole purpose was to oppose action on climate change. I seriously don't think I've ever heard of anything so stupid in my life. Normal people create alliances to achieve something like 'reduce poverty', 'increase economic growth / trade' etc, but Abbott wants to be the first to create an alliance to not do something.

The Australian government has repealed the carbon tax scheme punishing polluters in favour of a "direct action" program of providing financial incentives to reduce pollution.

A damn shame. ANU just published a study finding the carbon price was effective at curbing emissions too [1]. Oh well...

[1] https://ccep.crawford.anu.edu.au/publication/ccep-working-pa...

So instead of carbon costs being passed onto consumers, their taxes will be used to provide green subsidies instead? Seems like some perverse economic incentives there.

You really need both the carrot and the stick, what is an incentive for one organisation may not be for another.

But funding green initiatives is not in this government's agenda as the vote to strip ARENA of $432 million went through, apparently leaving it only $100 million to invest in new projects over the next four years.

On top of that, the most likely thing is that they will increase the GST to fund this, which of course has the most relative impact on the less wealthy.

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