Do-nothing humiliation as states mull own carbon prices

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Revolution! From The Australian:

South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill has warned the states could defy the federal government and introduce carbon prices in their respective electricity sectors “in the absence of national leadership”.

…Mr Weatherill, who will join his state and territory colleagues at a Council of Australian Governments meeting in Canberra tomorrow, said he would be “pressing” for states to implement their own schemes.

“Our first instinct is of course to seek a national scheme, a national scheme that should be bipartisan in its character so that there can be long-term certainty so that investors can make the much-needed investment in new forms of generation,” he told ABC radio this morning.

“Instead we have a federal Liberal government which is very firmly bought and sold by the coal club. We’ve seen that in the space of the last 48 hours. An emissions intensity scheme that they were going to press ahead with, they’ve binned.

“We have in the same few days approving $1 billion worth of investment in a coal mine in Queensland and essentially a government that’s beholden to sectional interests and is not prepared to act in the national interest.”

Scott Morrison retaliated, saying the state governments were “running around with red” renewable energy targets set at 50 per cent, which he claimed were “completely driven by ideology”.

That’s a helpful response, Scott. You’re own advisors are saying get a carbon price and in the absence of it the states are going it alone. It was you that destroyed the national scheme that would have rendered the RET moot. It is your idiotic party that is at war with itself, science, the majority of Australians and now the states governments as well, despite most of them being Coalition.

Just resign, mate, get out of the way. Go back to realty where you belong. Give some grown-ups a go.

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About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.