Right Pulse

A New Zealand man is taking NZ Labour Party politicians to the NZ High Court to prevent the introduction of an emissions trading scheme:

Former property developer Basil Walker is seeking an injuction against all Labour Party MPs preventing the scheme being passed into law before this year’s election.

Mr Walker said he was acting in the interests of the people of New Zealand.

“I’ve taken the action because someone had to. This Government is trying to force this on the people and someone had to stand up and say that there is no evidence to support it,” he said yesterday.

It’s not clear on what legal basis this court case could be successful, but nevertheless it might give publicity to the cause. Here in Australia, I know of no constitutional power which gives the Commonwealth government the right to regulate air (carbon). It is interesting that in the Australian government advertising for the future emissions trading scheme, carbon is referred to as a pollutant - which given that carbon is one of the building blocks for life on earth, to claim it is a pollutant is nonsense.

The Australian constitution does not give the Commonwealth any direct power to regulate environmental affairs. It can only do so via commercial and/or external laws, or the like, under the Constitution. This means that challenging environmental issues on legal grounds is difficult. A government only need prove that it has signed an international treaty for instance, which happens to deal with an environmental issue, for it to be constitutional.

When it comes to environmental affairs, the Commonwealth has few legal checks and balances in place to regulate and challenge what it does. One may though challenge the Commonwealth’s assertion that carbon is a pollutant, through various truth in advertising regulations. But when it comes to the Constitution, there are few avenues that will likely lead to success.

On the other hand though, there may be a basis for someone taking legal action against an organisation for supposedly inducing climate change. Of course the link between carbon and the changing climate would have to be established in court and this may very well work in skeptics favour.

Legal researcher Dr Joseph Smith has been analysing scientific evidence for the effects of global warming and the legal basis for court action.

The work has been sponsored by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC).

Dr Smith believes scientific evidence linking climate change to pollution is now sound enough to make a civil case against businesses and governments.

If it was shown in court that business had no impact on the climate from their carbon emissions, then they may have a legal basis challenging a Commonwealth carbon tax and any associated regulation that increases liability costs or bankruptcy.

A potential political drama may be unfolding, that’s if the people making the allegations have got what it takes to see it through. The main crux of the matter is, under the Queensland Goss Government, documents were illegally shredded by the Cabinet office to cover up the sexual abuse of a child in the Queensland prison system. It now appears that the current GG is investigating the matter to ensure that the incoming GG is not implicated:

In his letter to Buckingham Palace, Mr Lindeberg mentioned the audit prepared by Sydney QC David Rofe, and The Sunday Telegraph and The Daily Telegraph’s coverage of the Heiner affair.

The audit details 68 unresolved alleged prima facie criminal charges which Rofe QC believes are capable of being brought against current and former public officials in respect of their handling of the Heiner matter.

Mr Lindeberg referred to reports in this column that Prime Minister Rudd and former Governor of Queensland Ms Bryce were among the officials associated with alleged prima facie charges by the audit.

He told the Queen that documents including the Rofe audit, an application for review and the statement of concern sent by a number of legal figures to then Queensland Premier Beattie and current Premier Anna Bligh, were lodged with the Queensland Parliamentary Crime and Misconduct Committee, in an application for a review under the Queensland Crime and Misconduct Act. The PCMC is investigating the matter.

Ms Bryce sought a report on the Heiner affair from Premier Beattie in 2003, received it, but neither she nor Mr Beattie ever made it public.

Well I have no idea as to truthfulness of the claims, but the complete lack of media coverage is in stark contrast to a previous political episode:

The treatment of Ms Bryce is in stark contrast to the very public populist witch hunt launched after it was alleged former Governor-General Peter Hollingworth had failed to act and had participated in a cover-up when allegations of sexual abuse were made against church officers while he was Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane.

Then Premier Beattie made public a private Anglican Church report into abuse by tabling it in the Queensland Parliament before Mr Hollingworth resigned as Governor-General.

The then Opposition leader Simon Crean had made the point that you cannot have people in authority who have covered up for child sex abuse and failed to act.

The allegations of prima facie criminal conduct made against Ms Bryce and several other senior Queensland politicians and judicial officers echo the point made by Mr Crean: they were made aware of allegations and failed to act.

The Governor-General’s office must now demonstrate that it is conducting a thorough examination of the matters raised by Mr Lindeberg but it is impossible to see how it can come to any conclusion before Ms Bryce is due to take up her new appointment.

Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce told a Senate inquiry this week: “FuelWatch is dead … just forget about it. It’s all over.”

Enough said on that issue. Now the real hypocrites are standing up:

The Greens, with five senators, yesterday urged motorists to instead embrace walking trails and bicycles.

Let them be the first and we shall be the last.

I gave my support to Nelson when he became leader because he better represents conservative ideals and values than Turnbull. I also gave him a year to make an impact in the polls. This was all based on assumption that Costello was going to retire. Well it now looks like this is becoming less likely, after Costello rejected a private sector multi-million dollar job working in the gold industry. I don’t believe Nelson will keep on as leader if his poll results have not improved over the next three months - he is a realist. There is every chance he will resign and hand the leadership baton over to Costello. This would have two benefits. Firstly, it would send a must needed message of Liberal unity and would potentially avoid a divisive party ballot. Secondly, it would isolate Turnbull and his left-ward leaning supporters. The Coalition has to be an alternative government and they can only do this by winning the war of ideas around conservative principles - not being a mirror image of the Government, but only with a few less cracks.

A recent article in The Australian makes me think more and more that Costello and Nelson have established a tacit agreement on the leadership:

Costello and the incumbent Liberal leader had a telephone discussion on Tuesday morning, the day Nelson left for his 10-day overseas tour. At the end of the conversation Nelson was confident he would not be challenged by Costello and that Costello would counter-challenge anyone else who did, a direct message to Treasury spokesman Turnbull, who will take over from Nelson if Costello leaves parliament.

And in case you need a list of reasons as to why Costello would be a good leader (despite being a Republican):

Costello’s experience poses a potential threat to the Rudd Government’s confidence, which is vulnerable because of its inability to shrug off the mentality of the 24-hour news cycle and the imperative to announce new things; its hyper-sensitivity to criticism; and its insecurity about managing the economy. Instead of behaving like a confident, popular new government with a clear mandate and overwhelming public support for its cultural agenda and climate change policy, Labor has jumped in fright at the mere suggestion Costello may be changing his mind. It is out of proportion to the continuing positive public response to the Rudd Government and general assumption that Kevin Rudd will not be a oncer as Prime Minister.

On Insiders Andrew Bolt made the following observation about Costello: “The less he says the more popular he is.” Well maybe, certainly he does have a range of redeeming qualities, although he is a republican but not in the same vain as Kevin Rudd with all the associated symbolism. As I have written before, Nelson has until the end of the year to turn things round for the opposition, so Costello maybe waiting too see what happens in the polls.

From the Australian Medical Association on the government’s budget decision to increase the medicare levy threshold:

AMA national president Dr Rosanna Capolingua says the Treasury modelling which suggests that 500,000 people will drop private cover as a result of the changes falls far short of what the figure will actually be.

“The AMA’s modelling was much higher than half a million. It was more like 700,000 to a million people,” she said.

This comes on the back of complaints made by Catholic hospitals. They argue that increasing the levy will just disadvantage those that most need the public hospital system - the poor, disabled and elderly - by increasing waiting times for treatment. In other words, the public system should just be a safety net for those most in need, not for people that could afford private coverage.

Treasury have also admitted, at Senate Estimates, that they have little idea as to the fiscal impact on the public system from the levy decision. That’s policy dudd 101 from Rudd. No wonder NSW Treasurer Costa is asking for Federal $$$ for the future budget impact.

Given the divide within the ALP on this issue, the opposition would be justified on blocking the policy in the Senate by explaining to people that it will not save them money, but increase the burden on public hopsitals, which invariably will require more tax $$$ to fix. Public health care is not free.

Andrew Bolt from the Herald Sun has written an article against the climate change gods and the recent Ross Garnaut report. The article has received global attention and acclaim from The Drudge report and Rush Limbaugh, the most popular radio personality in the world. Here are some brief excerpts:

Here is Prime Minister Kevin Rudd yesterday, with his own apocalyptic vision: “If we do not begin reducing the nation’s levels of carbon pollution, Australia’s economy will face more frequent and severe droughts, less water, reduced food production and devastation of areas such as the Great Barrier Reef and Kakadu wetlands.”

And here is a senior Sydney Morning Herald journalist aghast at the horrors described in the report on global warming released on Friday by Rudd’s guru, Professor Ross Garnaut: “Australians must pay more for petrol, food and energy or ultimately face a rising death toll . . .”

Wow. Pay more for food or die. Is that Rudd’s next campaign slogan?

Rudd and Garnaut want to scare you into backing their plan to force people who produce everything from petrol to coal-fired electricity, from steel to soft drinks, to pay for licences to emit carbon dioxide — the gas they think is heating the world to hell.

The cost of those licences, totalling in the billions, will then be passed on to you through higher bills for petrol, power, food, housing, air travel and anything else that uses lots of gassy power. In some countries they’re even planning to tax farting cows, so there’s no end to the ways you can be stung.

Rudd hopes this pain will make you switch to expensive but less gassy alternatives, and — hey presto — the world’s temperature will then fall, just like it’s actually done since the day Al Gore released An Inconvenient Truth.

The article went on to describe the advent of a psychological disorder that some people are suffering because of climate change propaganda. The article also highlighted how China and India are now publicly ignoring calls to reduce emissions, and because of this, any attempt by Australia to cap carbon emissions will be pointless.

I cannot overstate how big this article is. Limbaugh basically read the entire article out to his nearly 20 million listeners and millions would have seen the article on The Drudge Report. Limbaugh on Bolt’s article:

Meanwhile, while all this is going on, while the Australian government is telling its citizens, “Pay more or die,” which is about what we’re being told here, in fact, this poor kid in Australia thinks if he drinks the world’s going to die so he’s killing himself by not drinking. They had to put him in a psycho ward. Your kid could be next, folks. Now, in China, the ChiComs released their own global warming strategy a year ago, its own Garnaut report — this is Rudd’s guru in Australia — “which bluntly refused to cut its total emissions. Said Ma Kai, head of China’s powerful State Council: ‘China does not commit to any quantified emissions-reduction commitments … our efforts to fight climate change must not come at the expense of economic growth.’” The ChiComs, of all people, get it! The ChiComs!

If anybody ought to be leading the charge on this, it would be socialist communists, but the ChiComs know full well the disaster that awaits anybody who buys into the delusion and the requirements to fulfill the delusion as advanced by Algore. Mr. Bolt writes, “In fact, we had to get used to more gas from China, not less: ‘It is quite inevitable that during this (industrialisation) stage, China’s energy consumption and CO2 emissions will be quite high.’” Damn straight. They’re growing. They’re going to expand. Here’s another instance. India. India has said that it will not stop its per capita emissions from growing “until they match those of countries such as the US.”

A big dittos!

Comments given by Howard at a Perth dinner. First on Rudd:

You sometimes get the impression that my successor is more interested in the process of government than the opportunity of leadership that government provides.

Spot on. Next the budget:

The absolutely dishonest and pathetic attempt by Mr (Wayne) Swan and Mr (Lindsay) Tanner and Mr Rudd to … demonstrate to the Australian people that they had inherited an economic mess from the former coalition, that they had inherited high inflation and runaway spending, they have no shame.

Not that Rudd and his dudds have done anything to address their own accusations, which are basically false. Readers should not confuse a natural movement in the business cycle with economic mismanagement. Carbon trading:

They (coalition) are right to ask of the present Government that it not adopt policies that by going too far ahead will place this nation’s great export industries at a competitive disadvantage around the world.

On no Mr. Howard, the time for debate is over, we must follow blindly never asking questions from the new gods who say they can change the climate. All hail Rudd and his dudds, the climate changers! And Howard on Rudd’s calls for bipartisan politics:

When we were in government whenever we proposed something, by definition, the Labor Party was against it. So that’s why I say with some passion never yield the national interest to the Labor Party.

The hypocrisy of Rudd is amazing. Remember Rudd is the chap who said that the introduction of the GST was a day of ‘fundamental injustice’, or words to that effect. I don’t see Rudd moving to rid us of this apparent great fundamental injustice now.

The Poll Bludger has the Liberal victory, this time in the courts, against an ALP challenge to Fran Bailey’s 2007 electoral victory in the seat of McEwen.

The report says the court overturned a number of determinations made on individual ballot papers, with nine ballots originally admitted deemed informal and 142 that were excluded deemed formal, but the effect was in fact to increase Bailey’s margin from 12 votes to 27. The judgement can be read here.

A reader made the following insightful comment.

I actually think Labor is quite relieved Bailey hung on to McEwen. After the Gippsland shenanigans the last thing want right now is another by-election and another potential rebuff…

That would have been embarrasing.

“All talk and no action” in the words of Tony Abbott, aptly describes Rudd. The Coalition is now 10 points behind the Government on 2PP. Abbott on Nelson :

“I don’t think anyone who’s worked closely with Brendan Nelson over the last six months could fail to be impressed,” he told. “Because he’s worked incredibly hard and I think he’s made gutsy calls on a few key issues and I think people will come round.”

While Nelson’s approval rating is below that of Rudd, by a long way, he is making in roads into Rudd’s popularity and people are moving into the undecided camp before they commit to supporting Nelson. I’d say Nelson has to November to really shake things up further, to avoid a leadership challenge. The key battleground issue should be opposing a carbon trade system, by explaining to people it will have no measurable impact on the climate, but will cost businesses and consumers billions of dollars. Dollars that the government will pocket for no clear fiscal outcome. This from Access Economics:

Mr Richardson, director of economic consultants Access Economics, said many people still did not get the concept of an emissions trading scheme and much of the pressure on politicians was wrong-headed. “The whole idea of carbon pricing is that if it doesn’t hurt it won’t work,” he told Canberra ABC radio today.

In other words: “you bunch of peasants, the lady of the lake has spoken so just learn to cop it sweat while the rest of us make millions out of the climate change agenda.”