It’s election time again, and that means its also incoherent-shouting-about-taxes time. Tony Abbott is quick off the block, claiming that “the carbon tax and the mining tax are anti Western Australian taxes.”
It’s almost too drearily, predictably inane a comment to warrant analysis. But one of Abbott’s skills, I now realise, is his soul-crushing dreariness, the effect of which is perhaps to make his opponents give up out of sheer mind-numbing boredom. He’s even worse when you actually listen to him — I can feel the long seconds of my life slipping away during the exaggerated “ah”s and “um”s that litter his speech, pointlessly punctuating a collection of words that are already drawn out and so devoid of substance that they may as well have been randomly generated. That is, by an “Ab-Bot”, if you will [1]I can’t possibly be the first person to have made this terrible, terrible joke. But I am making it..
Isn’t it a bit patronising to start calling the carbon tax “anti-WA”, when the fight has always been a national one? Presumably, had the AEC lost 1,375 ballot papers in Victoria instead, Abbott would now masterfully be describing the carbon tax as “anti-Victoria”.
Isn’t it a bit condescending to be attacking the carbon and mining taxes without even trying to offer an argument? He has in the past, of course, but since we’re still having this fight, are we fighting over ideas, or are we now just being assaulted by keywords intended to make us go crazy?
And I always think we let off politicians and commentators rather lightly for their liberal use of the “anti-” prefix. For something to be “anti-WA”, it should in principle constitute a direct existential threat to the state — an issue that brings into question the very survival of Western Australia. But while my last power bill included an estimated “carbon component” of $14.28 [2]Higher for some, no doubt, but I would guess still very small compared to things like food and rental/mortgage payments., I can assure all concerned that I am not, in fact, teetering on the edge of oblivion. We’ve all faced down greater threats to our existence than that.
One of the threats we continue to face, it bears repeating ad nauseam, is climate change itself. The debate over the carbon tax, or rather carbon pricing generally, is lost if we forget why it was implemented in the first place. And no, it won’t instantly make climate change go away — it’s part of a very long term struggle to mitigate the damage we’re doing as a global civilisation. Nonetheless, seen in that light, a few dollars on your fossil fuel power bill, to encourage renewable energy, is not a great deal to ask. That’s the argument that needs to be made, because it’s the truth.
But it’s too risky a strategy, Abbott must think, to inject actual information or reasoning into anything he says. He’s not stupid himself, but he seems to think (or perhaps he knows) that treating us like idiots is his best chance.