Taxpayers' hard-earned cash at risk in this climate

WITH the second rejection of Labor's ETS Bill, Kevin Rudd has no option but to call an early election. Rudd previously stated that global warming is the greatest moral challenge of our time and that our children and grandchildren would suffer if Australia did not pass his legislation.

He should not now walk away from the challenge he personally set down for the nation. But he has. He has called for the Bill to be reintroduced next year. Failing to go to the people on this issue now again demonstrates the hypocrisy which underlies Labor policy strategy. Under the guise of addressing the issue of climate change, the Rudd Government sought to impose the greatest structural change to the Australian economy since Federation. In NSW, the Independent Pricing And Regulatory Tribunal has already signalled that the price of electricity to householders could rise by as much as a staggering 60 per cent. That price hike will flow into every product made or transported in the nation. While it may feel good to drive a hybrid car or ride a bicycle, those who supported the ETS legislation have remained unable to answer the simplest of questions about it. Would passage of the Bill have reduced the global output of CO2? No. Would the Bill have changed the temperature of the Earth? No. Would there be any change to the temperature of the world's oceans? No. Would the Barrier Reef be miraculously affected? No. Those who would have been affected were the taxpayers whose hard-earned dollars would have gone to pay off the scheme. But the cycles which have seen the polar ice caps freeze and thaw and freeze and thaw again since the Vikings settled Iceland and Greenland will continue. Those who thought the ETS Bill would make a difference to the height of the tides at Bondi have been conned. Those who thought the ETS would alter the life-span of a single polar bear have been utterly fooled. Now Rudd, through deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard, says the Labor Government is giving the Opposition one more chance to pass an ETS Bill. Rudd has to look the Australian people in the eye and tell them how his legislation will alter the temperature of the planet. He has to take this opportunity to explain how Australia's putative 5 per cent reduction of carbon dioxide, a necessary gas for life on this planet, a reduction of 5 per cent in our contribution of 1.4 per cent to the total global emissions would actually change anything. Few people are opposed to mopping up pollution globally, fewer are opposed to conserving energy, using less wasteful appliances, adopting more fuel-efficient means of energy production, but none of these measures needs involve the imposition of a new tax. Now the Rudd Government has given itself two more months to convince an increasingly sceptical electorate that its Emissions Trading Scheme legislation is anything other than a tax disguised in a giant con. And it is also the duty of the Opposition and the new Opposition Leader Tony Abbott to expose this nation-destroying fraud for what it is.