As I move into the 31st business day without EFTPOS (and thanks for nothing Lucy Wicks and Mitch Fifield – you have been a great help, NOT)…
Today we see the true election campaign for the Libs unfold as Greg Hunt lurches back to “electricity tax” and Peter Dutton focuses everyone on hating refugees again.
Let’s not worry that the things they say aren’t factual.
In Peter Dutton’s case, he wants us to hate refugees for both being unemployed and for taking our jobs.
To make the ridiculous xenophobic comments he made, this odious political animal has to ignore countless reports from government departments that refute his claims.
There is the 2011 report by University of Adelaide academic Prof Graeme Hugo which shows that refugees “bring significant benefits to Australia.”
Then there was the Department of Social Services report which said, “Seventy-five per cent of humanitarian entrants arrive in Australia with at least high school-level education,” and furthermore “nearly 35% humanitarian entrants have a technical or university qualification either before or after arrival in Australia – compared with 39% of the Australian population 15 years and older.”
There was also an analysis of data and literature by the Refugee Council of Australia, commissioned by the department of immigration and citizenship, which argued “refugees should not be defined as a welfare problem requiring ‘relief’ and ‘care and maintenance’ but rather as people who have problems but who also have determination to survive and put their energies into productive work that can benefit their hosts.”
Moving on to Greg Hunt’s Press Club appearance during which he renewed his claim that Labor’s policies would see a “78% increase in electricity prices,” a claim that Bernie Fraser labelled as “weird” and “misleading”.
The figure comes from Treasury modelling in 2013 and refers to wholesale prices in a scenario where Australia did nothing at all, compared with a scenario where we reached a higher target using only a high carbon price. We have already decided doing nothing is not an option, and no political party is proposing to reach a target using only a carbon price, so the figure is entirely irrelevant to the debate.
Scott Morrison claims Labor “learned nothing from the last election when voters said ‘no’ to a carbon tax” and is “bringing back … a big thumping electricity tax” that will “punish Australian families”.
Except it isn’t. It is proposing a separate intensity-based emissions trading scheme for the electricity sector, different from the ETS for heavy industry. This idea is very, very similar to one Malcolm Turnbull himself proposed as opposition leader in 2009, and very, very similar to the scheme “Direct Action” could be converted into after the election – something most in the business community assume will have to happen since Australia’s emissions are rising and Direct Action has little hope of reaching the government’s long-term target. It’s the scheme the energy market regulator – the Australian Energy Market Commission –recommended that the government adopt in a submission last year and said could operate “without a significant effect on absolute price levels faced by consumers” and which state and federal energy ministers asked that body to develop further late last year.
Labor, and those in the Coalition who understand that climate change is a thing, are actually converging in their ideas about what policies Australia should adopt. They are moving towards sectoral, and maybe intensity-based, trading schemes and towards using a suite of policies (energy efficiency, vehicle standards, regulations) to get to our targets. And every interest group with a stake in this argument – business, environment groups, investors – are desperately willing the major parties to find some kind of consensus. The Business Council of Australia said Labor’s policy could be a “platform for bipartisanship”. They are right.
And the barren, stupid climate wars and dumb fact-free scare campaigns are a guaranteed recipe for a terrible economic and environmental failure.
The Coalition is deliberately trying to steer the campaign back to what they used successfully in 2013 – “Axe the tax” and “Stop the boats”.
Surely we deserve better.
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