Friday, 31 July 2015

Bronwyn Bishop expenses row: historic claims reveal another 15 trips

Extract from The Guardian

With the Speaker under increasing pressure to stand aside, further claims reveal that as a committee chair she claimed travel benefits even when the committee was not conducting hearings

Lenore Taylor and Shalailah Medhora

Bronwyn Bishop claimed taxpayer-funded travel benefits for her work as a committee chairwoman on more than 15 occasions for times and places when the committee was not conducting hearings, a review of historic travel claims reveals.
Bishop, who is under increasing pressure to stand aside as Speaker over the travel claim controversy, said on Thursday she would repay claims made for secret meetings with unnamed sources associated with her committee work, which coincided with the interstate weddings of two Liberal colleagues.
She said the claims were “technically within the guidelines” but “didn’t look right” and revealed she had asked the Department of Finance to review all her travel claims.
After three weeks of refusing to apologise, said she was “sorry” for “letting the Australian people down” over the travel claims and controversial helicopter flight.
Labor has questioned whether it is in fact “within the guidelines” for committee chairs to claim travel allowances or flights to conduct solo meetings that are not part of properly constituted committee hearings or meetings.
And a review of Bishop’s claims reveals at least 15 occasions in 2005 and 2006 when she claimed travel allowance as chair of the parliamentary standing committee on families and human services, when there are no records of committee hearings in that city at that time.
Senior colleagues, including treasurer Joe Hockey, refused to publicly defend Bishop after her belated public apology Thursday. Many colleagues still see her bid to continue as Speaker as untenable and the prime minister, Tony Abbott, has kept an unusually low profile this week as the controversy continues. Bishop will face a no-confidence motion when parliamentary sittings resume on 11 August if she remains in the job.
The remuneration tribunal determination on allowances from 2006 states “the chair of a parliamentary committee shall be paid travelling allowance in respect of each overnight stay in a place other than his or her home base when travelling on parliamentary committee business”. Parliamentary committee business is not defined.
The parliamentary standing orders for committees do not appear to envisage chairs travelling for solo meetings.
Bishop has said one of those claims – for $600 worth of flights from Sydney to Albury in June 2006 on the weekend of colleague Sophie Mirabella’s nearby wedding – was justified because she held a secret meeting with an unnamed source regarding her committee’s inquiry into work life balance. She justified another claim in 2007 coinciding with colleague Teresa Gambaro’s wedding by citing another one-on-one meeting with an unnamed committee source.
Other committee members at the time have said the explanation “doesn’t stack up”.
Labor frontbencher Kate Ellis told Sky News “there was a very formal process that in order to be approved to travel for those hearings, we needed to have a meeting of the committee that had a full quorum; that declared that there would be a public hearing; and that we agreed; and it was placed in the minutes that there would be official business of the committee in this city or town, on this date”.
“So the reason I found it really strange is because that determination was never made about Albury over that weekend ... I went back and I checked my diary. I went back and I actually checked the list of public hearings for that inquiry and found that there was nothing listed.
“So it was only at that point that we then heard Bronwyn Bishop come out and say ‘no, no, this was because it was entirely confidential, so confidential I couldn’t tell the committee, and that as chair I took the responsibility to go and hear this secret evidence myself, not report it back to the committee and have no further discussions’. I mean frankly, it doesn’t add up. This just doesn’t stack up. It doesn’t pass any test. It was a ridiculous explanation that was given after, I think, Bronwyn Bishop was caught out,” Ellis said.
The 15 travel claims as committee chair, outside of committee hearings or committee work with the secretariat in Canberra, cover inquiries by the committee into the adoption of children from overseas, balancing work and families and the impact of illicit drug use on families. They are for travel all over the country, including Melbourne, the Gold Coast, Townsville, Brisbane, Adelaide, Whyalla and Bathurst.
Bishop appeared on Macquarie Radio on Thursday morning to apologise for an “error of judgment” in using more than $5,000 of taxpayer dollars to fly between Melbourne and Geelong for a Liberal party fundraiser.
“I want to apologise to the Australian people for my error of judgment and to say sorry,” Bishop told commentator Alan Jones.
“You know, that helicopter, yes, I was short of time. But it is no excuse, and it was an error of judgment. And really, as I said, I want to apologise to the Australian people, because I feel I’ve let them down.”
Later on Wednesday, the Speaker appeared contrite as she fronted the media before a planned event in Sale, Victoria.
“It’s important for me to talk with the Australian people. I love this country very much. And it does sadden me that I feel I’ve let them down,” Bishop said.
Her conduct at the doorstop was a departure from her demeanour at a press conference earlier this month, shortly after being forced to pay back the $5,000 used to hire the chopper flight. Then she said: “The biggest apology one can make is to repay the money.”
The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, cast doubt over the Speaker’s motives.
“Mrs Bishop is apologising to save her job,” he told reporters. “Mrs Bishop is not apologising because she understands she’s done anything wrong.”
Hockey dodged reporters’ questions on the matter. “I’ll leave the Speaker to explain issues for herself, as she has. I have nothing further to add,” he said.
Parliamentary secretaries Kelly O’Dwyer and Paul Fletcher also refused to stand behind the Speaker when interviewed by Sky News on Thursday, but both backed her decision to apologise.

Thursday, 30 July 2015

ABC corrects Alan Jones's Q&A claim that boosted cost of wind power tenfold

Extract from The Guardian

The Conversation media outlet checked the figures Jones quoted on Q&A and found claim for cost of wind power was grossly overstated

Radio presenter Alan Jones — The error on wind power emerged after a decimal point was misplaced in a column in the Australian. Photograph: Paul Miller/AAP

Amanda Meade

The ABC has had to correct two statements made by Alan Jones on Q&A last week, including one that put the cost of wind power 10 times higher than it actually is.
“Eighty per cent of Australian energy comes from coal, coal-fired power, and it’s about $79 a kilowatt hour,” Jones said on Q&A on 20 July. “Wind power is about $1,502 a kilowatt hour. That is unaffordable. If you take that power and feed it into the grid, then every person watching this program has electricity bills going through the roof.”
Jones also made an incorrect claim connecting the former leader of the National Party John Anderson with mining companies.
Both statements made by Jones were sourced from newspaper articles – in the Australian in 2011 and the Sydney Morning Herald this year – which have since been corrected online.
The statement by Jones that wind power was unaffordable at $1,502 a kilowatt hour has been the subject of a fact-checking article in the Conversation and a Media Watch report on ABC TV.
On Thursday the ABC posted a correction which said Jones had apologised for the error. The ABC’s correction said Jones had pointed to the Conversation analysis, which found the real cost was $150 per megawatt hour. Jones had also erred in using kilowatts instead of megawatts.
The Conversation had decided to check the claim after it was broadcast last week and had contacted Jones, who acknowledged the mistake in an email to the website.
“As he has readily acknowledged, Alan Jones’s statements on Q&A on the cost of wind and coal-powered energy are not correct,” the Conversation said.
“His claim that renewable energy is having a large impact on residential electricity bills also runs counter to modelling commissioned by the government.”
The ABC also corrected an accusation Jones made on the same program in linking Anderson with mining companies.
Jones had said: “John Anderson, the former leader [of the National party], who went to Eastern Star Gas on a success fee if he could sell Eastern Star Gas to Santos. I won’t tell you what the success fee was.”
But there was no success fee. The ABC said: “Former deputy prime minister John Anderson contacted Q&A to say he received no success fee.”
“The claim was first made in the Sydney Morning Herald on 25 May 2015 but is untrue and was subsequently withdrawn and corrected by the Sydney Morning Herald.”
Last week Media Watch reported that the Jones wind cost error came originally from the Australian’s Cut and Paste column in 2011, when the paper misquoted a Productivity Commission report from the previous month.
“And, thanks to a stray decimal point, multiplied the cost of wind power tenfold ... knocking it up from $150 per megawatt hour to $1502 … and doing the same to rooftop solar which it blew up from $400 to $4004,” Media Watch said.
The Australian’s editor, Clive Mathieson, told Media Watch the error would be corrected online. “We have no way of determining who exactly was editing C&P for the June 15, 2011 edition but I suspect it was someone who has since left the newspaper. As such, we do not know where the information came from. It does look like the information is inaccurate.”

Wednesday, 29 July 2015

Poll finds 60% believe carbon tax had little or no effect on electricity bills

Extract from The Guardian

Only 21% of voters polled believe that the carbon price had a large impact on power prices and just 9% thought the repeal had pushed prices down

The ACCC released a report this week which found the carbon-tax repeal had reduced power bills between $153 a year and $269 a year. Photograph: Dan Peled/AAP

Lenore Taylor Political editor

@lenoretaylor

More than 60% of voters think the former Labor government’s carbon price had no effect, or only a small effect, on electricity bills – as the Abbott government tries to rerun its cost of living argument against Labor’s pledge to re-introduce an emissions trading scheme.
Only 21% of voters (30% of Liberal/National voters and 15% of Labor and Green voters) believe the carbon price had a big impact on electricity prices, according to the latest poll by Essential Media.
The poll comes as prime minister Tony Abbott ramps up his attack on Bill Shorten’s pledge to re-introduce an emissions trading scheme, calling it an “electricity tax scam” that would massively increase household costs.
The poll found that 51% of voters thought their electricity bill had gone up over the past 12 months and only 9% thought it had gone down, despite evidence the carbon price repeal had pushed electricity and gas prices down.
The final report from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission on its monitoring of the carbon price repeal, released Tuesday, confirmed the carbon tax repeal had flowed on to reductions in household electricity and gas bills.
The ACCC said the carbon-related reductions ranged between $153 a year and $269 a year, or $2.90 and $5.10 a week. It “confirmed” the government’s claim, based on treasury modelling, that overall household savings would have been around $550 a year, because of flow-on cost reductions in rates and council charges, transport and food.
ACCC chairman Rod Sims told Guardian Australia consumers may not have felt the price reductions because “in some states prices did still go up, but by less than they otherwise would have, because extra network costs were still flowing through.”
Sims said it had been his decision to include confirmation of an overall $550 benefit to households.
“Everything we saw told us the original Treasury modelling was about right,” he said.
Consistent with other recent polls, the Essential poll put Labor ahead on two party preferred terms by 53% to 47%.
Small business minister Bruce Billson said the ACCC report “confirms that a tax on carbon is harmful for businesses and households. Combined with a proposed increase in the Renewable Energy Target, Bill Shorten’s plan to bring back the carbon tax would massively increase power bills for households and business, destroy jobs and damage industries.”
Coalition frontbencher Malcolm Turnbull pointed out this week that every policy to push low-emissions generation came at a cost – which might in generic terms be called a tax – even the renewable energy target which the government itself supports.
“There has been a distinction drawn in the debate ... between a fixed-price cost on carbon which people particularly called a carbon tax and one that is floating because it is related to the purchase of permits and that, of course, the price of the permits depends on supply and demand and that’s an ETS. And so in a lot of the literature and discussion you’ve talked about the virtues of a tax versus the virtues of an ETS,” he said.
“But either way they are both a cost. So, yes, you can call them both generically a tax but equally the renewable energy target is a cost. So all of these measures, there is no such thing as a cost-free way of reducing carbon emissions. That is to say, as long as emissions-intensive forms of generating energy are cheaper than the low-emission forms and, of course, that is starting to change, the technological developments with solar in particular.

Tuesday, 28 July 2015

Some public hospitals win, others lose with Obamacare

Extract from Reuters

SAN FRANCISCO | By Robin Respaut

Reuters/CCHS/Handout via Reuters

A year and a half after the Affordable Care Act brought widespread reforms to the U.S. healthcare system, Chicago's Cook County Health & Hospitals System has made its first profit in 180 years.
Seven hundred miles south, the fortunes of Atlanta's primary public hospital, Grady Health System, haven't improved, and it remains as dependent as ever on philanthropy and county funding to stay afloat.
The disparity between the two "safety net" hospitals, both of which serve a disproportionate share of their communities' poorest patients, illustrates a growing divide nationwide.
In states like Illinois that have opted to accept federal money to expand Medicaid, some large, public hospitals are finding themselves on solid financial footing for the first time in decades, and formerly uninsured patients are now getting regular care.
But in states that did not expand the government medical programme for the poor, primarily ones with conservative electorates opposed to Obamacare, including Georgia, the impact of the Affordable Care Act on public hospitals has been negligible.
While the public exchanges established by the federal government and 14 states have brought coverage to many previously uninsured people in all parts of the country, the effect on the poorest Americans varies drastically from state to state.
Nearly four million low-income, uninsured Americans living in states that didn't expand Medicaid would have qualified for coverage had their states chosen to expand it, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. And public hospitals in those states, many of which rely on bond markets for funding, are likely to feel the pinch even more acutely over time, experts said.
"Providers in these states are going to be at a disadvantage," said Jim LeBuhn, senior director at Fitch Ratings. "It’s going to make it that much more challenging for these providers to maintain their financial profiles."
Since the Affordable Care Act's first open enrolment in 2013, the number of Americans covered under Medicaid has risen by 21 percent, to 71.1 million.
Nonprofit hospitals in the 30 states that expanded Medicaid reported on average 13 percent less bad debt from unpaid bills last year, according to Moody’s Investors Service. In contrast, according to Moody's, such "hospitals in non-expansion states saw bad debt increase through much of the year."
Hospitals in Medicaid expansion states, according to Kaiser, reported an average 32 percent decrease in uninsured patients and a 40 percent cut in unreimbursed costs of care for patients without the ability to pay, known in the industry as charity care costs. In non-expansion states, the number of uninsured patients declined by 4.4 percent and charity care costs dropped by 6.2 percent.
New recipients of Medicaid benefited, too. After one year, adults who gained the coverage were 55 percent more likely to have their own doctor than those who did not, Kaiser found. Medicaid also increased the likelihood of receiving preventive care, such as mammograms and cholesterol checks.

A TALE OF TWO HOSPITALS
Both Cook County and Grady are safety-net hospitals based in urban counties where the poverty level is slightly higher than the national average, and both have handled high numbers of uninsured clients in recent years: about half of the patients at Cook and nearly a third at Grady.
Since Obamacare took effect, the numbers at the Georgia hospital have remained about the same. But things have changed dramatically at the Illinois hospital, in large part due to the area's enrolment of about 170,000 of an estimated 330,000 eligible for the expanded Medicaid.
"This has been a sea change for us,” said Dr. John Jay Shannon, Cook County Health's chief executive.
Within two years, the percent of uninsured patients at the hospital had dropped from more than a half to about a third, almost entirely driven by increased Medicaid coverage, hospital data show. And for the first time in the hospital’s history, a majority of the patients it treated had coverage.
A third of the new Medicaid enrolees treated at Cook County were patients new to the system. And, hospital administrators say, those with chronic diseases such as diabetes, who used to be frequent emergency room visitors, now have personal physicians to help them manage their conditions.
In the fiscal year ending in November 2014, uncompensated charity care dropped to $342 million (220 million pounds) from $500 million the year before. Funding from Medicaid nearly doubled the health system's operating revenues, a major reason that, after ending 2013 with a net loss of $67.6 million, Cook County Health finished its most recent fiscal year in the black.
Now, the provider, like other safety-net hospitals, has a new challenge: holding onto old clients.
“For the first time in our history, we need to compete for our patients,” said Shannon. "A world of improved access is also a world of choice."
At Grady Health System in Atlanta, meanwhile, the number of patients covered by insurance increased by less than 2 percent last year. Bad debt from unpaid bills has continued to climb, to $396 million from $269 million in 2013. And the percentage of patients covered by Medicaid didn’t change.
“We’ve seen no difference from the Affordable Care Act,” said John Haupert, Grady's chief executive. Many patients "are still coming to us as a safety-net provider and falling under our charity care.”
Georgia is one of 20 states, disproportionately clustered in the South, that didn’t expand Medicaid. About 89 percent of those left out of the new Medicaid coverage, because their states chose not to expand the programme, live in the South, Kaiser Family Foundation found.
Grady has a better financial outlook than many hospitals in states that didn't expand Medicaid, thanks to a philanthropic campaign that has raised $350 million since 2008 to fund new infrastructure and expand clinical services. But, unlike Cook County, which has reduced some dependence on local government support with the help of Medicaid expansion dollars, Grady remains reliant on $57 million in tax support from two local counties. Without the local funding, Grady would be running a deficit.
“From a global perspective, it seems like the ACA is working,” said Kevin Holloran, senior director at Standard & Poor’s. But in non-expansion states, like Georgia, “it’s really a neutral. It’s just the status quo.”

(Reporting By Robin Respaut; Editing by Peter Henderson and Sue Horton)

ETS would be more cost-effective than higher renewables target, analyst says

Extract from The Guardian

An emissions trading scheme would be cheaper and more effective than Labor’s 50% renewables goal or the government’s Direct Action policy, Paul Hyslop says

Wonthaggi windfarm in Victoria. Tony Abbott claims Labor’s 50% renewables goal would ‘cause a massive overbuild of wind farms’. Photograph: Quinn Rooney/Getty Images

Lenore Taylor, political editor

@lenoretaylor

The author of the $60bn price tag for Bill Shorten’s new renewable energy goal – cited by Tony Abbott as proof the scheme is unaffordable – says an emissions trading scheme like the one the Coalition abolished would be more cost-effective than either the coalition’s “Direct Action” plan or Labor’s new goal.
ACIL Allen Consulting chief executive, Paul Hyslop, told Guardian Australia his $60bn cost estimate of Labor’s goal to have 50% of Australia’s electricity generated by renewables by 2030 was based on a quick calculation of how much extra renewable capacity would be required, and the cost to deliver it though wind power.
He said a carbon price would be much more cost effective than either a specific electricity sector goal, or the government’s own “Direct Action” plan.
“It would be much more sensible to have an economy-wide carbon price to meet a new emissions reduction target rather than just focus on the electricity sector,” he said.
“The reason an ETS is so powerful is that everyone faces a cost … the problem with Direct Action is that it doesn’t curb the behaviour of the people who aren’t involved in it.”
Labor has promised some kind of emissions reduction scheme as one of the policies to meet its new emission reduction targets. It says the renewables goal is an “aspiration”, which would not be met only by the current mandated subsidies, nor primarily by wind power.
ACIL Allen Consulting’s Owen Kelp told Sky News it was impossible to say whether Direct Action would cost more or less to achieve the same emissions reductions than Labor’s plan and Hyslop said Direct Action could be “pretty expensive” depending on its final design.
Climate policy is shaping as a central battleground in the federal election due next year and Labor’s new goals come as US Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton committed to the US generating enough renewable energy to power every home in the country within 10 years of taking office.
Shorten is vowing to stare down a Coalition “scare campaign” and Abbott is again ramping up his attack on Labor’s renewables promise and its pledge to re-introduce an emissions trading scheme.
The Labor leader concedes some of his policies to meet the long term renewable goal – including an increase in the mandatory, legislated renewable energy target – could require a Coalition change of heart.
“What we recognise is that when it comes to the large-scale program in terms of renewable energy, we can only increase that by bipartisanship. We’ve given ourselves 15 years and one thing I know is that sooner or later, the once great Liberal party of Menzies and Malcolm Fraser … who believe in action on climate, will restore and become far less extreme rightwing and come back to the mainstream when Abbott is no longer their leader,” Shorten said, emerging from a meeting with former US vice-president Al Gore in Melbourne.
Tony Abbott claimed on Monday Labor’s ETS would be an “electricity tax scam” and has insisted it is a tax, even though Labor insists it is not because it does not begin with a fixed price.
But Liberal frontbencher Malcolm Turnbull – who lost the party leadership over his support for an ETS – pointed out that all policies to push low-emission electricity generation come at a cost to households, including the ones the government supports, and that the cost of renewables is falling.
Turnbull said there was usually a distinction drawn between an ETS and a tax.
But he said every policy to push low-emissions generation came at a cost – which might in generic terms be called a tax – even the renewable energy target which the government itself supports.
“There has been a distinction drawn in the debate … between a fixed-price cost on carbon which people particularly called a carbon tax and one that is floating because it is related to the purchase of permits and that, of course, the price of the permits depends on supply and demand and that’s an ETS. And so in a lot of the literature and discussion you’ve talked about the virtues of a tax versus the virtues of an ETS,” he said.
“But either way they are both a cost. So, yes, you can call them both generically a tax but equally the renewable energy target is a cost. So all of these measures, there is no such thing as a cost-free way of reducing carbon emissions. That is to say, as long as emissions-intensive forms of generating energy are cheaper than the low-emission forms and, of course, that is starting to change, the technological developments with solar in particular.
“But as long as that is the case, whether it’s a regulation, whether it’s a renewable energy target, whether it’s an ETS, whether it is a carbon tax, a fixed price, all of those can be seen on as a cost on the business of generating energy, therefore a cost on house holders purchasing energy and therefore in that sense a tax.”
The government recently persuaded Labor to agree to a reduced renewable energy target of around 23% of electricity generation by 2020. Abbott said Labor’s goal to achieve 50% renewables by 2030 was “bizarre”.
“Frankly at 23% that is more than enough, one of the truly bizarre decisions coming out of the Labor conference at the weekend was this move to increase the proportion of renewables in our system to some 50%. This constitutes a massive, absolutely massive, hit on consumers and jobs, because to move to 50% … by 2030 will mean a massive bill, perhaps $60bn or more … this massive and unnecessary commitment to renewables which will cause a massive overbuild of wind farms, all of which has to be paid for by consumers,” Abbott said.
In 2009, Turnbull also wrote that any suggestions emissions could be cut without imposing a cost was “bullshit”.
“You cannot cut emissions without a cost … any suggestion that you can dramatically cut emissions without any cost is, to use a favourite term of Mr Abbott, “bullshit.” Moreover he knows it. The whole argument for an emissions trading scheme as opposed to cutting emissions via a carbon tax or simply by regulation is that it is cheaper – in other words, electricity prices will rise by less to achieve the same level of emission reductions,” he said at the time.

Long-term unemployed make up more than three-quarters of those on the dole

Extract from The Guardian

Lack of jobs and welfare policies of successive governments blamed by Acoss head for ‘alarming’ numbers of people out of work for more than 12 months

Unemployment advertisement — Many people with disabilities or with significant caring duties have been moved off the disability support pension on to Newstart, inflating the number of the long-term jobless, Acoss head Cassandra Goldie says. Photograph: Scott Barbour/Getty Images

Bridie Jabour

@bkjabour

The welfare policies of the current and previous federal governments are to blame for high levels of long-term unemployment, the Australian Council of Social Service has said, as new data shows almost three-quarters of those on the dole have been on it for more than a year.
The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics data reveals long-term unemployment has risen by 10% in the past year and 69% of people on Newstart have been on the payment for more than 12 months.
Acoss CEO Cassandra Goldie said Australians should be alarmed by the figures.
“People who are unemployed long term often face additional barriers to getting a job, including lack of recent work experience, a mismatch of skills with jobs available and real challenges in sustaining hope in the face of repeated rejections of about 10 job applications a fortnight,” she said.
“On top of this, people on welfare face the nasty stigma generated by government and media rhetoric, which labels people as ‘leaners’, ‘dole cheats’ or ‘milking the taxpayer’ which does nothing to help support people nor to build confidence in employers to give people a chance.”
A lack of job opportunities was a major driver of the problem, she said, but changes to social security over the years had also had a “big negative impact”.
She cited changes to eligibility for the disability support pension (DSP) and the single parenting payment.
“Many people with disabilities or significant caring responsibilities are now struggling to get by on NewStart and still unable to find paid work,” she said. “They have joined the queue of people who are long-term unemployed, the only change for them being that they are poorer, by up to $170 a week.”
The Newstart rate is $501 a fortnight for single people. Of the 883,937 people on Newstart or youth allowance, 612,953 are long-term recipients.
The release of the data follows the publication of a report by Jesuit Social Services and Catholic Social Services Australia showing high unemployment is a significant problem in 23 out of the 37 most disadvantaged communities around the country.
Goldie said the rise in long-term unemployment is structural and there needs to be targeted investment in skills development and support in getting a job.
“We continue to call for the federal government to take this rise in long-term unemployment seriously,” she said. “The lack of job opportunities is the major barrier to getting into work, as is a persistent failure of workplaces to provide flexible work.”
It has also been revealed 25% of people on Newstart have some type of disability as many people are being pushed off the DSP.
Social services minister Scott Morrison took credit for a drop in DSP recipients earlier this month saying the government was implementing “integrity measures”.
“The disability support pension is there to help people who need it, not for those who want it because they don’t want to be on Newstart because that is a lesser payment,” he told 6PR radio.
“We’re trying to get people into work … when I meet disabled people all around the country they want to participate, they want to be involved. They want to be involved socially, they want to be involved economically and they are incredibly motivated workers. So I say to business people listening, give them a go.”

Malcolm Turnbull compares RET to carbon tax; Abbott puts $60b price tag on Labor's renewables target

Extract from ABC News

By political reporter Anna Henderson

Updated about an hour ago

Photo: Malcolm Turnbull suggests the RET still carries a cost for households and could be considered a tax. (AAP: Alan Porritt)

Labor has accused the Federal Government of being deeply divided on climate change after senior minister Malcolm Turnbull likened the Government's renewable energy target (RET) to a carbon tax.

The Coalition has run a long campaign against Labor over its previous policy for a fixed price on carbon, calling it a carbon tax.
And the Labor plan to reinstate an emissions trading scheme (ETS) has led Prime Minister Tony Abbott to warn that the policy would install a floating "carbon tax".
Mr Abbott repeated the ETS criticism on Monday, calling the policy an "electricity tax scam".
But Mr Turnbull suggested the RET still carried a cost for households and could be considered a tax.
"Whether it's a regulation, whether it's a RET, ETS or carbon tax fixed price, all of those can be seen as a cost on the business of generating energy and therefore a cost on households purchasing energy, and therefore in that sense a tax," Mr Turnbull said.
Labor's environment spokesman, Mark Butler, issued a statement saying Mr Turnbull had called "bullshit on Tony Abbott's scare campaign".
"Prime ministerial aspirant Malcolm Turnbull has today slapped down Tony Abbott's climate change scare campaign in an extraordinary way," he said.
"Malcolm Turnbull today defied his leader to say that an emissions trading scheme is not a tax.
"Mr Turnbull lost the Liberal Party leadership for supporting an emissions trading scheme.
"Labor will increase Australia's renewable energy mix to 50 per cent with an emissions trading scheme to take action on climate change.
"Only Labor — and Malcolm Turnbull — take the need for strong action on climate change seriously."
On Monday, Mr Abbott attacked Labor's plans for a 50 per cent RET by 2030, warning it would allow a "massive overbuild of wind farms" and cost tens of billions of dollars.
Labor announced the proposal for the increased RET ahead of the party's national conference, doubling the existing 2020 target of 23.5 per cent.
"One of the truly bizarre decisions coming out of the Labor conference on the weekend was this move to increase the proportion of renewables in our system, to some 50 per cent," Mr Abbott said.
"This constitutes a massive hit on consumers and on jobs."
He said the cost of such a significant shift would be "massive ... perhaps $60 billion or more" and would lead to an oversupply of wind energy.
"You've got this massive and unnecessary commitment to renewables, which will cause a massive overbuild of wind farms, all of which has to be paid for by the consumers," Mr Abbott said.
But Opposition Leader Bill Shorten dismissed the criticism, saying the Prime Minister "just makes up numbers to scare people".
"He has no evidence or science, in fact he is the most unscientific prime minister Australia has had in a long time," Mr Shorten said.

Labor leaders talk to Gore about climate policy

External Link: Bill Shorten with Al Gore

The Labor leader has been in talks with former United States vice president Al Gore, who has flown to Australia ahead of the international climate talks in Paris later this year.
"Vice President Gore congratulated Labor on taking a stand which will see the future for Australian brighter than it otherwise would be," Mr Shorten said.
Mr Gore also consulted with state Labor leaders on climate policy.
"This is the tipping point year for action on climate," the international environmental campaigner said.
"The meeting in Paris is shaping up as a success."
The Coalition still has not revealed the post-2020 target it will take to the Paris meeting, and Mr Abbott said he would consult with his party room when Parliament returned next month before a final number was chosen.
Mr Gore said there are many people around the world who think of Australia as a leader on climate policy.

"Some have been, frankly, scratching their heads of late wondering what has been going on," he said

Monday, 27 July 2015

AUSTRALIANS HAVE HAD 'MORE THAN ENOUGH' OF ABBOTT'S WAR ON RENEWABLES

Media Release

Mark Butler MP.

Shadow Minister for Environment
Climate Change and Water

Date: 27 July 2015

Tony Abbott has again shown how out of touch he is with Australians, claiming his reduced Renewable Energy Target (RET) is ‘more than enough’ when it comes to renewable energy.

Lonergan research conducted for Future Super Fund last week showed 84 per cent of Australians think there should be more than 40 per cent of renewable energy in Australia.

Tony Abbott’s attack on renewable energy is driven in equal parts by his ideological opposition to taking action on climate change and his personal problems with the aesthetics of wind farms.

“This is simply not good enough from the Prime Minister of Australia,” Shadow Climate Change Minister Mark Butler said.

“He is stuck in the past when Australians want a vision for the future.

“It’s inexplicable for the nation’s leader to so blindly oppose the economic benefits and job creation opportunities presented by investing in renewable energy.

“It is nothing short of economic vandalism to put Australian jobs and investment at serious risk by saying such stupid things.

“He’s effectively staring the 24,000 renewable energy workers in the face and saying, ‘I don’t like what you do for a living, so I’m going to make sure you’re unemployed.’”

Bill Shorten’s commitment to have 50 per cent of Australia’s electricity generated from renewable sources by 2030 has been resoundingly supported by Australians.

“Throughout the ongoing RET negotiations of the last 18 months, people were saying to us that firstly we need to settle the RET debacle created by the Government, but also that we need to look beyond 2020 and have a plan to make renewable energy a big part of Australia’s future,” Mr Butler said.

“Labor is doing that. We’ve recognised this and will have the right policies to ensure renewable energy is a critical industry in Australia’s economy.

“Tony Abbott is doing everything in his power to make sure that doesn’t happen.

“Frankly, Australians have had more than enough of his ideological crusades.”

LIBERAL MPs FEAR ABBOTT'S WAR ON WINDFARMS

Media Release

Mark Butler MP.

Shadow Minister for Environment
Climate Change and Water

Date: 27 July 2015

Liberal MPs are now openly begging Tony Abbott to stop his attacks on the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), knowing that the Prime Minister’s irresponsible attacks on renewable energy are risking jobs and investment in their electorates.

Sarah Henderson, Liberal MP for Corangamite, has been forced to write to Finance Minister Mathias Cormann, requesting the Minister remove the investment mandate issued to the CEFC a few weeks ago banning the them from investing in small-scale solar and wind energy projects.

Ms Henderson says her electorate is “extremely supportive” of renewable energy - unlike the Prime Minister.

“Sarah Henderson knows how popular renewable energy is, not just in Corangamite, but all around Australia,” Shadow Minister for Climate Change Mark Butler said.

“But every Liberal MP is part of the problem - they represent a Government that has done thing but attack renewable energy and risk jobs and investment.

“Tony Abbott is just so blinded by his own hatred for renewable energy that he’s unable to see the damage his attack is doing to the margins of his backbenchers.”

Labor has called on the Government to release the full details of the investment mandate issued to the CEFC. The CEFC was established by the former Labor Government to facilitate stable lending markets for renewable energy projects.

Tony Abbott has twice tried, and failed, to abolish the CEFC in the Senate. His new approach is to strangle the CEFC so that it is unable to conduct its business.

Under a Shorten Labor Government, 50 per cent of Australia’s electricity will be generated from renewable sources by 2030. Labor has also recommitted to the CEFC and Australian Renewable Energy Agency.

Malcolm Turnbull undermines Abbott's 'electricity tax scam' claim over ETS

Extract from The Guardian

As the PM ramps up attack on Labor’s promised emissions trading scheme, the communications minister admits all emission reduction policies come at a cost

Malcolm Turnbull: ‘There is no such thing as a cost-free way of reducing carbon emissions.’ Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

Lenore Taylor Political editor

@lenoretaylor

Malcolm Turnbull has cut through the slogans and semantics dominating the climate policy debate – pointing out that all policies to push low-emission electricity generation come at a cost to households, including the ones the government supports, and that the cost of renewables is falling.
Tony Abbott on Monday unveiled a new three-word slogan to attack Labor’s promised emissions trading scheme – saying it was an “electricity tax scam”. The prime minister also labelled Labor’s promise to source 50% of electricity from renewables by 2030 “bizarre” and “unnecessary”, said it would cause “a massive overbuild in windfarms” and claimed it could cost “$60bn or more”.
At his party’s national conference over the weekend, Labor leader Bill Shorten said Labor’s promised ETS was not a tax because it would have a floating price and would not begin with the fixed price like the former government’s scheme.
“Let me say this to our opponents, in words of one syllable: an ETS is not a tax,” he said.
The government has insisted that an ETS – whether it has a fixed or floating price – is a tax.
The environment minister, Greg Hunt, has said “an emissions trading scheme is just a carbon tax with a different name” and “only the Coalition will combat climate change without hurting Australia’s standard of living”.
Asked about this debate on Monday, Turnbull – who lost the Liberal leadership over his support for an emissions trading scheme – said there was usually a distinction drawn between an ETS and a tax.
But he said every policy to push low-emissions generation came at a cost – which might in generic terms be called a tax – even the renewable energy target which the government itself supports.
“There has been a distinction drawn in the debate ... between a fixed-price cost on carbon which people particularly called a carbon tax and one that is floating because it is related to the purchase of permits and that, of course, the price of the permits depends on supply and demand and that’s an ETS. And so in a lot of the literature and discussion you’ve talked about the virtues of a tax versus the virtues of an ETS,” he said.
“But either way they are both a cost. So, yes, you can call them both generically a tax but equally the renewable energy target is a cost. So all of these measures, there is no such thing as a cost-free way of reducing carbon emissions. That is to say, as long as emissions-intensive forms of generating energy are cheaper than the low-emission forms and, of course, that is starting to change, the technological developments with solar in particular.

Shorten calls for an ETS and half of Labor MPs to be women by 2025 – link to video

“But as long as that is the case, whether it’s a regulation, whether it’s a renewable energy target, whether it’s an ETS, whether it is a carbon tax, a fixed price, all of those can be seen on as a cost on the business of generating energy, therefore a cost on householders purchasing energy and therefore in that sense a tax.”
The government recently persuaded Labor to agree to a reduced renewable energy target of around 23% of electricity generation by 2020. Abbott said Labor’s goal to achieve 50% renewables by 2030 was “bizarre”.
“Frankly at 23% that is more than enough, one of the truly bizarre decisions coming out of the Labor conference at the weekend was this move to increase the proportion of renewables in our system to some 50%. This constitutes a massive, absolutely massive, hit on consumers and jobs, because to move to 50% ... by 2030 will mean a massive bill, perhaps $60bn or more ... this massive and unnecessary commitment to renewables which will cause a massive overbuild of windfarms, all of which has to be paid for by consumers,” Abbott said.
Labor has not costed its renewables goal, but says it will be achieved through a suite of policies. The $60bn estimate appears to be based on the assumption that it would be reached through the current mandatory renewables market, but Labor says this is not the case. It is also highly unlikely to be delivered primarily through windfarms.

Bill Shorten has used the ALP conference to claw back some authority

Extract from The Guardian

Lenore Taylor

Tony Abbott’s confidence may have been premature. From climate change to boat turnbacks, for the first time in a long time, Shorten looks like a leader who believes in something

Bill Shorten, like Tony Abbott, remains deeply unpopular. But this year’s ALP conference has shown the Labor leader may yet be able to shift voters’ perceptions. Photograph: David Crosling/AAP

Contact author

@lenoretaylor

A few months ago Tony Abbott was sure he had Bill Shorten’s measure.
The Labor leader’s confidence was ebbing by the day and huge challenges loomed – his appearance “in the dock” at the royal commission into trade union corruption, the ugly reminders in the ABC’s Killing Season and his party’s national conference which was already shaping as a treacherous Labor family outing.
The shock victory of the British conservatives had cemented the Australian Coalition’s certainly that a similar strategy would see off Shorten’s Labor despite Abbott’s disastrous first year – an attack focussed on a weak leader and Labor’s alleged incompetence and predilection for taxing the rich and helping the very poor and ignoring the hard-working middle.
Pollster Mark Textor spelled it out in an interview on the ABC soon after he jetted home from the UK campaign: “The first few years for the [UK conservative government] were very, very difficult, but eventually they fine-tuned their message to focus on hardworking families and rewarding them and particularly rewarding through tax incentives businesses that want to expand and to innovate and eventually what that did is expose the paucity of [UK Labor leader Ed] Miliband’s approach, which was just to appeal to his core vote and say no all the time.
“Miliband didn’t show that he’d changed ... he moved away from the middle. He and the media in the UK were obsessed with the very poor and the very rich, instead of that which makes a society strong, which is the middle,” he said.
The Coalition’s certainty grew as Shorten’s personal popularity plummeted and Labor’s consistent lead in the party polling began to narrow. Their second budget was all about “hard-working families” and small businesses that wanted to expand. Sound familiar? The Liberals made attack ads targeting Shorten’s “weakness” and Labor’s “baggage”. The Labor inner circle began to spring leaks, and even though new rules make it near-impossible to depose a Labor leader, the speculation started.
But Shorten has used Labor’s conference to claw back some authority. He insisted that political pragmatism trump his party’s genuine concerns about the legality and humanity of boat towbacks, giving him some chance of neutralising the Coalition’s attack.
Despite not yet having any policy detail to announce, Shorten looked like a leader who believed in something when pronouncing Labor’s commitment to credible climate policy and vowing to stare down the scare campaign, a leader who was prepared to take a political risk to act on his belief.
And on same-sex marriage, the biggest split inside Labor was about the best way to achieve legalisation – not, as is the case in the Coalition, about whether it should happen or not. In an 11th hour deal, Shorten persuaded the party’s left to wait until the term of government after next before Labor parliamentarians would be bound to vote for same-sex marriage, if it has not been legislated by then. The left had the numbers for the proposition that Labor MPs and senators be bound to vote pro same-sex marriage in the next term of parliament, but compromised in deference to the wishes of the leader.
Sure, the conference put Labor’s divisions on display. Many Labor supporters were dismayed at the asylum policy compromise. But the disagreements were civilised and I suspect that, to the extent they paid attention at all, the voting public may agree with Labor president Mark Butler, that it was evidence of a party with “a pulse”.
Tony Abbott has begun the carbon tax scare campaign once more with great feeling, but he is also about to have to explain how he will pay for his own long-term climate change promises. And his backing for Speaker Bronwyn Bishop over her outrageous travel claims may have reminded the electorate they’re also not entirely sure the Coalition has the ordinary person’s interests at heart.
Labor’s convincing poll lead continues. But Shorten, like Abbott, remains deeply unpopular. Neither is seen as exciting or authentic. Abbott says the line of the day three times to make sure we’ve heard it. Shorten often seems to forget what it is.
But this year’s Labor conference has shown Shorten may yet be able to shift voters’ perceptions, may really take on Abbott’s sledgehammer approach on carbon pricing, may not be as weak or as easily categorised an easybeat as the Coalition had imagined. Abbott’s confidence may have been premature.