Before Kevin07, John Howard (with Malcolm Turnbull as Environment Minister) announced that Australia would be having an emissions trading scheme.
After 30 years in parliament, Howard did not make announcements like this without having had the bureaucrats do the homework on at least the basics. Unlike Kevin07, Howard liked to have his ducks in order before calling a press conference.
Malcolm Turnbull was able to introduce the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act 2007 which passed the parliament in September 2007. This act's purpose is 'to introduce a single national reporting framework for the reporting and dissemination of information related to greenhouse gas emissions, greenhouse gas projects, energy consumption and energy production of corporations'. It's no wonder Turnbull the opposition leader supported Rudd's thrice defeated CPRS legislation - he laid the foundation for it. The CPRS was defeated as it was unpalatable to the opposition as a big new tax and not harsh enough on polluters for the Greens. Had Combet's speech in 2009 (http://www.climatechange.gov.au/~/media/Files/minister/combet/2009/Speeches/May/cprs_bill.pdf) included more than a passing reference to compensation and welfare system change, the CPRS may not have been so easy for the opposition to attack.
Judging from these events I think we can assume that an ETS of some form has been in the bureaucratic pipeline since 2006. This concept has therefore survived a change of government, another election, a change in the balance of power in the Senate and is on it's third Prime Minister and god knows what the count is for Climate Change/Environment Ministers. Which really begs the question: Can the bureaucracy make policy a fait accompli?
I think it can. It appears they have just had to wait for a decent sales pitch for an ETS to get through. The elected representatives spend so much time berating each other and pseudo-campaigning that they probably don't have time to actually drive much in the way of policy. They just tinker at the edges. The short electoral cycle makes this problem worse as the stable and incumbent bureaucracy can be the only ones with a long term outlook. It took the Hewson/Howard Liberal party three elections and seven years to get a consumption tax past the electorate, but treasury and business had been crying out change before Hewson lost the 'unloseable election' in 1993.
The GST and the Carbon tax are big ticket, major reforms. How many minor pieces of legislation are driven through because the wheels of bureaucracy push it? We hear very little about it in the sensationalist press. Is this where plain tobacco packaging has come from? It's a nothing act whose biggest effect will be for do-gooders to pat themselves on the back when it passes. I'm sure this is how Victoria got a charter of human rights. No one campaigned on the issue. It just got introduced.
So it appears that faceless, unelected bureaucrats are the real drivers of some policies. The politicians just have to mould the package to sell it to an ignorant electorate. It appears that Howard's ETS became Rudd's CPRS which has become Gillard's Carbon Tax. It should be noted that the Carbon Tax is VERY similar to the CPRS.
Still just because it's got fancy paper and a ribbon wrapped around it, you're still pretty disappointed when someone gives you a turd.
No comments:
Post a Comment