After last week’s ignorant (sorry, no other word for it) carbon price effort, BS’s Gotti returns with an equally eccentric piece today in support of Direct Action:
When Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and Hunt go to next year’s Paris climate conference, they will now have some cards to play…
The essence of the Hunt Direct Action plan is that enterprises compete for proposals that deliver the best value in carbon reduction. While there is an irrevocable guarantee that the government money will come (which can be used as a security for bank funding), the government money does not transfer until the carbon-reducing project has actually been implemented and can be seen to deliver what was promised.
The chaos and wealth reduction that the badly-designed ALP carbon tax created in many ways has set Australia back in carbon reduction.
Greg Hunt is probably the first environment minister since Robert Hill to understand that Australia would need to be smart in carbon reduction and not simply go along with the extreme greens and achieve carbon reduction by slashing growth and national wealth. We have to use technology and better practices so that increased productivity and efficiency becomes the driver of carbon reduction.
Sigh. Direct Action can work as a policy but only if it is funded. The Abbott Government has explicitly not funded it, with Treasury estimates of the shortfall as much as $8 billion per year by 2020 if we are to meet our existing carbon reduction targets, let alone any more aggressive ones.
As well, in what economic universe does a government reverse auction of cash for carbon reduction programs operate more efficiently than a universal price on carbon? Answer: none. In one system you’ll get big rent-seekers crawling all over government and bureaucrats making narrow decisions versus the other in which the universal price drives every single individual and business to new levels of efficiency, innovation, investment and technological breakthrough based upon the consideration of price.
There are arguments in favour of Direct Action. One could rightly argue that the politics of the carbon price made it unworkable, or that financial markets would have Shanghaied it, or that nobody else was going to do it and thus Direct Action is a better option. But you can only argue that if it is properly funded. Right now it’s nothing more than Direct Inaction.
Gotti can dress it up for the locals but the truth for the world is that Australia has remounted to its carbon mitigation blockade and the only thing it will be taking to Paris is a target on its back.
