2009 will be remembered as the year of the GFC and the ETS. For the first half of the year all Labor Government politicians blamed the GFC – or Global Financial Crisis to those who prefer plain English – on everything but the weather. That came later with the ETS – or Emissions Trading Scheme.
This time last year GFC doomsayers were predicting the worst global financial crisis since the Great Depression. Memories of dark clouds, mass unemployment and starving families were invoked. Kevin Rudd used the ‘crisis’ as an excuse to shelve vital infrastructure projects and send out cheques to anybody and everybody. Thousands of former Australian residents living permanently overseas were showered with millions of taxpayers dollars. New school halls were built – even where schools already had a hall. And it is still raining pink bats. Sorry about our schools and hospitals but they come a distant second to Kevin 07’s unofficial re-election campaign.
A couple of other of Kev’s election promise disappeared without trace in the midst of the ‘crisis’. Remember ‘Grocery-Watch’ and ‘Fuel-Watch’ and the takeover of our hospital system? Kev certainly hopes you don’t.
So we avoided the fallout of the GFC by spending billions on Kev’s unofficial re-election campaign. We were very lucky that John Howard and Peter Costello left billions of dollars in the bank for Kev. Unfortunately they didn’t think that Rudd’s new Labor Government would follow the example of the NSW Labor Government and squander it.
As people became aware that the Australian economy had weathered the storm the next crisis to be fabricated by Kev and his spin doctors was‘global warming’. This term was quietly shelved soon after when scientists revealed global warming is a fallacy. Their language then changed to ‘climate change’ and the only thing that could save the planet from certain disaster was an ETS. The chattering classes cheered as they had yet another misguided cause to ease their guilt.
Unfortunately for Kev and his cheer-squad some computer hackers discovered that information had been fabricated and doctored to create the impression that the end of the world as we know it is nigh. The disrobing of these self-proclaimed scientific emperors revealed the essence of the ETS. A massive tax on Western countries to fund third world countries. A Noble but misguided cause as many of these nations already receive massive amounts of aid but unfortunately most of it is squandered.
The election of Tony Abbott as leader of the Coalition has energised the political debate. Rudd is looking more like an insipid bureaucrat as he mangles the English language against the backdrop of a church each week. The boxer and the nerd are going to make for interesting politics in 2010 – bring it on!
