With Greg Hunt boasting on ABC 7.30 about yesterday’s deal with Clive Palmer, as well as the repeal of the “carbon tax”, Lachlan Barker looks at his dubious claims about lower electricity prices.

FEDERAL ENVIRONMENT MINISTER Greg Hunt was in high spirits on the ABC last night aftersealing a deal with coal mining magnate and Federal MP Clive Palmer to establish a Soviet-style fund to pay Big Carbon taxpayers’ money to voluntarily stop polluting.

He was in such good spirits some unkind people have even suggested that he may imbibed one too many celebratory champagnes after the press conference announcing the deal and before his interview with Leigh Sales on7.30. This seems unkind, though there certainly did not seem to be much sensible information emerging from his mouth.

One of the things Hunt did want to gush out ‒ and did so, over and over again, speaking over Sales, much to her annoyance ‒ was that he had also recently managed to repeal the carbon tax, “lowering electricity prices” for consumers.

Indeed, Hunt and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann have both recently released press releases crowing about a drop in electricity prices and how this is due to the repeal of the carbon tax. None of their media spin, however, mentioned why power prices are so high — network charges, the gold plating of the poles and wires. What’s worse, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) even says, literally in black and white, that it is impossible to quantify to effect of removing the carbon tax on electricity prices.

read more: http://www.independentaustralia.net/environment/environment-display/greg-hunt-and-the-paid-polluters-electricity-prices,7048

Of course, Palmer was lying when he said that the "direct action was dead in the water"... The deal he has made with Hunt on behalf of turdy Abbott is not worth the ink from the MMMM, which also stains the BBC... Reporters, journalists have no clue as to the way the goose was cooked... Cheaper electricity by a measly fist of dollars while the planet will burn. Idiots... Greedy stupid idiots.

Greg Hunt vows emissions trading is dead and won’t be revived for 20 years or more. But he has quietly given himself the power to bring back a form of carbon trading, and he has advice that if he doesn’t use it, Australia cannot meet the climate promises it has made to the world.

The seeds of an emissions trading scheme are buried in the deal Hunt did with crossbench senators. And the power for them to bloom into a new form of carbon trading also rests with him.

The catch is, if he doesn’t allow this to happen, Australia is very unlikely to meet its 2020 emissions reduction targets, and has almost no chance of meeting the deeper targets it will have to commit to after that.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/30/emissions-trading-back-in-the-game-direct-action-proves-ineffective

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Crap... Usually Lenore Taylor is more astute than this. The whole purpose of the Palmer/Abbott (Hunt) exercise is to get that ghastly direct action up and running no matter what — while giving THE ILLUSION OF KEEPING OPTIONS  opened till the next elections... More lies, more lies, more lies, more lies, — this time disguised as an option which the Abbott regime has NO INTENT to even look at, just bait the gullible public with it.... 

The terrorism scare isn’t going very well for the Abbott Government lately, with people more worried about the cost of living than ISIL, writes Bob Ellis.

THE HOME-GROWN ISIL BOGEYMAN isn’t playing very well for the Liberals lately.

The boy they shot dead was seventeen. The boy in the recruiting video was a teenager too — red-haired and blue-eyed and clearly naive. It seemed wrong he should go to gaol for twenty-five years, or be targeted for assassination by drone in Iraq or Syria. And the Australian master terrorist Mohammad Ali Baryalei, now reportedly dead – killed perhaps by a fighter bomber ASIO gave information to – didn’t kill any of us, though he probably wanted to.

So the score, thus far, is two of them dead, none of us.

And yet no Australian on Australian soil has died of ‘terrorism’ since January 1915 — three months before Gallipoli, 100 years ago.

And so little is the issue resonating that a rise in the price of petrol of 40 cents a week has overwhelmed it.

People feel safe enough with the Muslims they know and they’d rather gripe about petrol prices.

read more: http://www.independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/yesterdays-bogeyman-and-the-petrol-tax,7049

Former Liberal minister Jackie Kelly has referred to the Abbott government as “lying, lying, lying toads” for betraying western Sydney on the Badgerys Creek airport.

Kelly, the Howard government star who resigned from the Liberal party two weeks ago over its failure to reform, has accused her former friend Tony Abbott of treating western Sydney residents “like schmucks” just “so the north shore can get their curfews”. Tony Abbott’s electorate of Warringah is on Sydney’s north shore.

In his first infrastructure statement to parliament this week, Abbott said the decision to go ahead with Badgerys Creek airport was “irrevocable” and would be supported by a range of infrastructure, including roads and rail.

“That’s a crock,” Kelly told Guardian Australia. “They are lying, lying, lying toads.”

“They haven’t planned for it, there is no money on the table … Badgerys Creek will be a 24-hour airport mostly for freight.

“It will put even more trucks on our roads. The north shore can get their curfews but we schmucks in western Sydney don’t deserve caps and curfews. We deserve better representation.”

Kelly said a Badgerys Creek airport would not attract “cheap airfares” because it would mainly cater to freight and so western Sydney residents would still have to trek into Mascot to fly out.

She said she has had many people asking her to run as an independent in the next federal election but she has ruled it out at this stage. However, Kelly committed to helping the No Badgerys Creek Airport group run candidates and a campaign at the federal election, and she believes the group will garner enough support to tip seats away from the government.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/oct/31/jackie-kelly-calls-abbott-government-lying-lying-lying-toads

What did she expect?... It was well known before the elections that Tony was lying through his clinched teeth as not to spill his dog's breakfast of bad bad policies... Yet her former electorate fell for the Turdy Tony con-trick.. Now they regret it...

From Bob Elis

it is worth noting how big a fool Abbott has made of himself with his ‘shirtfront’ threats and the harm he has done to his country.

He has accused a world leader of complicity in a mass murder and asked him for money in recompense for it. Though it is unlikely Putin knew of the incident before it happened, he has asked him to take responsibility for it, and, in effect, pay a fine – if he is a good fellow – though he has not spoken of any consequences if he does not.

This was after he threatened to ‘shirtfront him’; then, backing off a bit, ‘have a robust conversation with him’, and then sat beside him for an hour avoiding his eyes and not saying a word to him, showing palpable fear of one who is, after all, the most powerful man in the world.

If the ‘compensation’ he has asked for each dead Australian, or Australian resident, was, say, $450,000 the money that Putin would be then said to owe the 298 victims’ families is $134,100,000. This is greatly in excess of the $800 Australia pays for a wrongly killed child in Afghanistan, but let us imagine this is the total owed.

But is it Putin that owes it?

He supplied weapons to an insurgent force, as America did to the Contras in Nicaragua, who killed, inadvertently, some innocent people in the path of their advance, just as they supplied weapons to the secret force that killed Che Guevara, but they have not yet paid a fine for this wrongdoing to anybody...

read more: https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/the-shirtfront-chronicles,7085

By year’s end an equally strong majority appeared resolute in their rejection of the Abbott government, consistently telling pollsters they were inclined to boot out the Coalition.

The prime minister seemed stunned by this rapid reversal of fortune – the endlessly repeated soundbites had served him so well for so long. But concessions aren’t really part of his crash-through style.

A few weeks later he gave another soul-searching interview about why things had gone so wrong, this time to 2GB’s Ray Hadley as a conduit to all the Coalition’s frustrated “fans in the stands”.

Again he insisted the problem was one of communication, not substance.

“Maybe our communications could have been more effective; maybe at times when we were preparing the budget we should have been also communicating the strategy as well,” he said.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/dec/19/politics-in-2014-the-coalition-dished-out-slogans-and-its-sentence-is-clear

The man (Abbott) has no substance, talks shit and is promoted by right-wing spruikers and the merde-och press as the messiah... 80 per cent of the media in this country is still supporting Tony Abbott, most making excuses and blaming others for his infantilism, his dishonesty, his pettiness and nastiness (the Royal Commissions he has set up are not designed to find the truth but to be vindictive). Despite this strong support from the media, about 70 per cent of the population hate his guts.  He acts like a dope — a bully whose idea of actions is punching someone... and he lies, lies and lies...