Tony Abbott's Environment and Climate Change policy can be read here (pdf) if you have the stomach for it.

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This is the key phrase in the entire policy.  The traditional question then becomes how will they pay for the policy?  After all another statement is:

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So Abbott’s policy is to find $3.2 billion over 4 years, that’s $800 million a year without any new taxes and without any increased costs.  Surely this shows Abbott and perhaps the Coalition itself are living in a fantasy land.

Barnaby Joyce, Shadow Finance Minister gives the game away on Lateline:

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Tony Abbott’s Coalition will find “those savings” by cutting back expenditures in other areas of the Budget but they are incapable of saying where as Senator Joyce makes clear.  It does not matter where in the Budget these expenditures are cut, it will result in “increased costs to Australian households and families.”

The only way this proposal and the other proposal in Abbott’s Environment and Climate Change policy can be made tenable is by deficit spending.  Tony Abbott has all ready argued against the current stimulus spending which has taken the budget into deficit as has Barnaby Joyce.

So, either the policy is not credible or the coalition is ignorant to the hypocrisy within their policy.

Yes they could cut back school hall spending, which would increase the cost that schools would have to pay for school hall spending underway.  Which will ultimately translate into an increased cost for households and families.

The very thing the policy denies will happen

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By cutting any costs that the government is spending, it increases the costs that the private sector has to pay for that service.

The policy outlines quite clearly that they will pay for it without increased costs or new taxes.   This is clearly a lie but probably one spoken in haste, not through any ill-intention.

Senexx wrote on Feb 6^th, 2010 at 6:33pm:



We pay for everything already. The government is an instrument of the people, not the other way around.

Well said, FD!

All carrot, no stick. Straight from the horse's mouth. Carrots grow on trees, BTW.

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That's not what I said. What I said was, using a pricing mechanism will get you the reduction in GHG emissions you want for the least impact on our economy. If you want to become a hippy all of a sudden and hold hands round a campfire sharing carrots with mining executives, knock yourself. Just don't pretend it is economically rational.

How so?

Soren wrote on Feb 6^th, 2010 at 6:42pm:


I agree.

Soren wrote on Feb 6^th, 2010 at 6:44pm:


I agree.  However whether a cost is cut by the government, no matter what goods or services, it will increase the cost elsewhere.  We call this opportunity cost, it is a trade-off, all policies have this - except this one apparently.

The policy clearly states it will do this by not increasing the cost of anything.