Enough already, Julia

PRIME Minister Julia Gillard cannot be believed - on anything.

he doesn't just tell a lie, she finds it necessary to compound it. Just like a child caught telling fibs, she doesn't know when to stop talking. In the past week she appeared on the ABC's Q&A, a program sympathetic to the Left, and gave an address to the Don Dunstan Foundation, a natural platform for a left-wing Labor prime minister. Wholly expectedly, her media sycophants were gushing in their appraisal of her staged performances. Only a few in the media braved Gillard's wrath - she has begun naming her media opponents: myself, Andrew Bolt and Alan Jones - to actually examine what she was saying. She may have thought she would be able to get away with porkies when pandering to handpicked audiences, but transcripts of her remarks nail the lies. As Paul Kelly noted yesterday in The Australian, she faltered when trying to explain her carbon dioxide tax scheme by trying to explain her broken promise by claiming if she had formed a majority government she would have pressed ahead with an emissions trading scheme. As Kelly noted, her campaign policy, on the contrary, was for a citizens' assembly to test this issue. Gillard said in the campaign she would act only "when the Australian people are ready". She also tried to bluff her way through the reality that Australia's proposed (and meaningless) emission cuts would in some miraculous manner have resonance in China which, she argued, was closing down dirty coal-fired power stations at the rate of one every week or two. Kelly again set her straight, noting that overall China is expanding its coal-based electricity generation. But there was a lot more humbug in Gillard's Q&A remarks that went unchallenged. Australians, she said, don't need nuclear power because, "We're a country with abundant solar, wind, geothermal, tidal - you name it." Wrong, Prime Minister; the reason we don't need nuclear energy right now is because we have coal and plenty of it. We will need nuclear energy in the future, however, if Labor carries out its lunatic scheme to tax coal power out of the reach of consumers and industry because the renewable energy sources Gillard and the Greens are talking about are incapable of providing sufficient reliable power to run a village, let alone a city or the nation. In her Adelaide address she went into full-on fear-mongering mode. Humans were causing global climate change and the consequences were more extreme bushfire conditions and droughts, falling crop yields, loss of species, increased cyclone intensity, more days of extreme heat, coastal flooding as sea levels rise, bleaching of our coral reefs and a substantial decline in alpine snow cover. Phew! But there is not a reputable scientist in the world who has yet said any of the above has been directly caused by global warming, let alone pointed to the hand of man. Gillard relies heavily on Labor's paid advisers to come to the party whether they be the failed weather forecaster Tim Flannery or the avuncular economist Ross Garnaut. Garnaut has not disappointed with his regular updates on global gloom and his economic solutions which generally dovetail with the views of Treasury and include elements of former Treasury Secretary Ken Henry's much-ignored report. In his haste to hit the airwaves, however, it would seem Garnaut has skipped important sections of the Henry report or, surely not, is trying to bamboozle the Canberra claque with his strings of figures and acronyms. When Gillard told the Dunstan Foundation Professor Garnaut's latest report indicates that the need to act is greater than ever and the scientific consensus is stronger than ever, she was only half-right. The scientific world is more divided on the evidence and more questioning of the data than it ever has been. Garnaut's effort seems aimed at buying off critics of the Gillard carbon dioxide tax with promises of tax cuts. Unfortunately, about a third of Australians don't pay any income tax so this proposal seems flawed. The Government released its paper on Australia's Future Tax System (AFTS) for review last year. Garnaut would do well to read it. It recommends tax cuts for some but, as the carbon dioxide tax would be applied, it would appear that the Government is simply giving with one hand and taking away with the other. Importantly, and Garnaut has not addressed this aspect of the carbon dioxide at all, under Gillard's proposal the carbon dioxide tax (which she wilfully and wrongfully attempts to equate with the GST) would keep increasing each year with a clear impact on the cost of living. No matter how she paints it, unless there are massive handouts increased each year, all people will eventually be worse off. Those on incomes between $37,000 and $80,000 would see their marginal rate increase from 30 to 35 per cent and the tax bill for all individuals with incomes between $46,000 and $165,000 would rise. All without a carbon dioxide tax. But the real nonsense could not be more starkly apparent than when Garnaut makes the heroic assumption that all of our competitors are prepared to take the same lunatic measures as he and Gillard propose and tax their industries to death. China and India will not, the US will not, the Europeans are re-examining their commitment to this insanity. If we lock in the sort of carbon dioxide tax Gillard and Garnaut are flirting with and others do not, we will simply drive our industry offshore and euthanase our economy. That's not fear-mongering. That's reality.