You know you’re in trouble when the loony Greens make more sense than you do:
Greens leader Adam Bandt, who appeared on ABC Radio immediately after the treasurer, again called for windfall profits tax. He also called for Labor to place price caps on the energy market.
“I think it’s clear that privatisation has failed. The market approach to electricity has failed. The government needs to look at capping prices. These price rises that have been driven by coal and gas and fuelled by international events are really hurting people.”
You can’t cap the prices of electricity. That will just send all of the producers broke as they still pay crazy fuel prices.
You have to cap the fuel prices, both gas and coal. And put in super profits taxes to collect the war windfall.
The two combined are more cumbersome than the ideal solution of export levies but they add up to the same thing.
None of the policy options is the problem. Only the weak-kneed pollies are:
A Labor source said Dr Chalmers was still “scarred” from the failed “super profits” mining tax in 2010 when he was a senior adviser to then treasurer Wayne Swan, and that he did not want to revisit the idea.
Sniveling poltroon!
