Nice work Vince, completely agree with your views.
Australia is no different, they act without thinking, particularly the last government, Howard was Bush's 'mini-me' whatever was good for the US was good for Australia
This government although different, the left wing, errs too close to the right, and has greenies controlling the puppet.
Carbon tax is not what Australia needs, we definately dont want our kids jobs being done in China, or mine for that argument either
What we need is better awareness of our environment and governments to be pushing China etc. into better performance and controls on their emmissons. No good Australia and a handfull of 'environmental friendly' countries, paying for the worlds pollution by making businesses pay more tax to manufacture on our shores.
It is just a huge vicious cycle, factories will close in Australia, they will then open in China etc. where there is no regard for the environment, pumping more pollution out as they don't have a regulatory body like the EPA to put any controls at all on emmissions.
End of the day, all adds up to higher unemployment in our country.
I am pretty passionate about this as I work in the aluminium industry, to make aluminium takes a huge amount of electricity, more than enough to power the whole of the city I reside in.
If and when a carbon tax is introduced, I dont think our company will be able to continue to be viable, as it is owned by a multi billion dollar US giant, who own many plants worldwide, I don't know all the locations but they definately have plants in Russia and Brazil, now I am positive that, when Aluminium in sold in USD per tonne and with the high AUD in which is has to buy in equipment and pay labour, there is no way our plant will be able to continue to compete, the only reason it is still open at the moment (with the high AUD against the USD) is that it is so old that they have paid the location out completely and only have to pay for its upkeep now.
They have a graph they keep showing us in the doom and gloom sessions showing all the plants worldwide if you are not above the line they are fairly quick to cut their losses and shut it down. We have been hovering just below for a little while, I think the carbon tax would be the nail in the coffin, they could sut down sell off assets and build a new plant somewhere where it makes better economic sense.
A little off topic but this is the biggest possible decision that could damage the Australian economy in recent years, just like the adhoc decision to halt all beef exports, that was only a blip on the radar in comparison, carbon tax will put our economy into reverse gear. Lets try to get the rest of the world on board or at least get some parity before another typical decision by our goverment pulled by the puppet master
