Who to trust on climate change - Gillard or Abbott?

JULIA Gillard's carbon dioxide tax makes absolutely no sense at any level, political, economic or environmental. It is as thoroughly illegitimate as the Gillard government's own blatantly false claim that it has a mandate to implement it. Stupendously false, really, because both she and her deputy, Treasurer Wayne Swan, went to the last election with not only the solemn promise not to introduce such a tax, but also with derision for anyone who suggested otherwise. Gillard, Swan and their claque of handsomely paid shills from Tim Flannery to Ross Garnaut have been trying to scare the bejesus out of the young and impressionable with their catastrophic forecasts of environmental doom, none of which have any sound scientific validity. They have shown themselves to be as philosophically corrupt as Greens leader Bob Brown and his ignorant followers - and as ready to say anything to strike fear into the uninformed. But, even if the sea level was trending to rise 1m over the next century (which it is not), or the global temperature was on a trajectory toward serious warming (which it is not), the tax on Australians would have absolutely zero effect on the temperature of the planet. Yet the diminishing number of Australians who still support the tax are being told that their action is essential to save the planet for future generations, another total lie. Further, this grotesque tax is unlikely to change anyone's habits because it has been thoroughly bastardised. For a tax to change the habits, it must hurt the population. Yet Gillard and her cabinet will begin spending even more taxpayers' money from today on massive advertising campaigns designed to assure the public that they will not suffer under the carbon dioxide tax. If everyone is to be compensated - and Gillard has said some people will even be over-compensated - where is the pain that is going to deliver the gain? The reality is that what was the greatest moral challenge of our time under Kevin Rudd has become the biggest sell-out of all time under Gillard as she uses her carbon dioxide tax to buy support for her ramshackle government from the Greens and the increasingly duplicitous independents. Australia is now faced with the most incompetent government in its history bringing in the most complex structural change yet devised. Think on that. The government that couldn't deliver insulation, computers to schools, or even school classrooms; that promised to send refugees to East Timor and then Malaysia; that sank the cattle export industry with a kneejerk response to a dodgy documentary; the government that has not been able to fulfil one major policy pledge, is now about to inflict price increases through an across-the-board tax on electricity. Some in the media are still captives of the government's spin and are suggesting that if the Gillard government was not so bad, they would be spending more time examining the opposition's policies. But the opposition plan is positive. It doesn't involve new taxes, it will reduce emissions, it won't make life prohibitively expensive. The carbon dioxide tax has nothing to do with the environment and everything to do with raising an extra $11 billion in revenue. The tax is not a reform, it is economic suicide. It will cost thousands of jobs and not only in the coal-mining sector. It will send energy-intensive jobs overseas to countries such as China - which by 2020 plans to increase its emissions by 500 per cent - and India, which is on track to increase its emissions by 350 per cent in the same period. Yes, the future of our children is under threat - from the Gillard government. Not the environment.