Australia commits suicide

What's that you say, Skip? They've all topped themselves?

One of the worst aspects of living in these apocalyptic times is that whenever you look around the world, wondering where you might escape to, you begin to realise that everywhere else is just as bad if not worse.

Take Australia, an island built on fossil fuel with an economy dependent on fossil fuel. What would be the maddest economic policy a place like that could pursue as the world tips deeper into recession? Why, to introduce a carbon tax, of course. Which, for reasons just explained above, means a tax on absobloodylutely everything. Which is exactly what Julia Gillard's Coalition (why is it that word always makes me want to reach for my Browning?) has just gone and done, obviously.

What must be particularly galling to all the Australians (the majority) bitterly opposed to this lunatic measure is the unutterable feebleness of the arguments the Coalition is using to justify it.

Here, for example, is its Chief Scientist Ian Chubb in action:

"With respect to this cooling stuff, I have seen the claim, but the evidence that I have seen is that the last decade has been the warmest decade that we have ever had on this planet, so I do not know what this cooling stuff means.”

Let's just run that one by you again, in case you thought you'd been overdoing the Cane toad juice. The man who came up with that scientifically inaccurate, historically ignorant, Greenpeace-like enviro-hysteria drivel is AUSTRALIA'S CHIEF SCIENTIST.

What this lunacy will do the Australian economy Gaia only knows. But one thing's for certain: Opposition leader Tony Abbott has got the next election in the bag.

Here's what he had to say on the subject when the carbon tax package was voted in by just the tiniest of margins (74 votes to 72):

“I am giving you the most definite commitment any politician can give that this tax will go. This is a pledge in blood this tax will go.

“If the bills pass today this will be an act of betrayal on the Australian public. We will repeal the tax, we can repeal the tax, we must repeal the tax.”

A promise like that, as Andrew Bolt notes, is not one he's going to find easy to break. Had he made his promise merely "Cast Iron" on the other hand…

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