Memo to Tony: it is now 2 July and the sky hasn’t fallen. Time to come out of the bunker. And, while on the carbon tax, surely it is easy to see that the whole purpose of the levy is to make carbon pollution more expensive, thus giving us consumers an incentive to reduce or to look for alternative products.
Sure, electricity will be dearer. But why not switch to lower-wattage new-technology lights, shorten the time in the shower, switch to ‘Time Of Use’ electricity metering and run the expensive appliances like washing machine and dryer in the off-peak hours?
Tax on fuel for grocery deliveries will make this more expensive. Why not buy more locally grown fruit and vegetables instead of the stuff supplied by the big grocers, who move all their goods through capital city warehouses? Your food may even taste fresher and better.
And by shying away from buying from the big polluters we give the innovators a chance to develop less-polluting products, which then will lower the prices.
Harald Ehrlich
Suffolk Park
I am disgusted at the amount of misinformation & panic the coalition has fed the Australian people on the carbon tax ,all for the sake of winning the next election . You`ll notice every time Abott or one of his ministers is asked a too hard question about the carbon tax they revert to the old argument that Gilliard lied about not introducing a carbon tax , they seem to forget Howard`s lie to the Australian people about the GST ! What a lot of people don`t realise is the carbon tax will have one forth the effect the GST had .
They tax us for water, and call it water rates. They tax us for land, and call it land rates and stamp duties and even mortgages. They tax us for fire by transforming the energy into electricity and sell us devices to warm our homes, and call it electricity charges or power bills, or even gas bills. Now they are taxing us for the very air we breathe, and call it a carbon tax. All the four elements, not to mention the right to travel, we pay huge fuel taxes, registration and license fees; the right to buy and sell, the goods and services tax; the right to earn an income, income tax; they make schooling compulsory and charge you school fees; you get charged a medicare levy for access to doctors, yet still pay a fee every visit… is it just me, am I alone in thinking we pay with our lives for the right to even exist?