To Frack or not

Hot from the  success of ruining the live cattle export business in North Australia, 4Corners is continuing to govern the country by targeting Coal Seam Gas. With only six months left for their shrill bleatings to have any chance of success while there is a  dysfunctional government in power,  the pressure is on. Billions to be made by business and the government and some want it stopped based on emotional, ideological and anecdotal campaigns run by SBS, the ABC and the Greens movement. Greenie whistleblower, Simone Marsh,  a left over from the Bligh debacle, calls on Environment Minister Burke to reneg on previously approved projects claiming the approval process was rushed.   Surprisingly, the approvals were given during Blighs reign but I feel they are now being pushed by LNP.  I hope so, anyway. Drew Sutton from Lock the Gate is also quoted.  The aim of these activists  is to close down the coal and gas industries  which seems to me to be a contradiction in ideals.  We need power generation and it can be fueled by coal or natural gas.  Gas is a lot cleaner than coal and will reduce greenhouse gases so you’d expect the Greenies to be all over it. Not so! If you get your opinions from the SBS and the ABC then you need to broaden your knowledge base.  This article from a Colorado College touches on the pros and cons of fracking. A sample quote;

The U.S. is at a 20-year low in greenhouse gas emissions. This reduction did not occur due to cap and trade legislation, which we’ve been unable to pass due both to a lagging economy and stalemate in Congress.  Instead, the two-decade low in emissions is due to the implementation of policies limiting the use of coal in electrical generation, and the abundance of low cost natural gas that has encouraged the phasing out of coal-fired power plants. The immediate 50 percent reduction in carbon output from transitioning coal plants to natural gas is a variable in the fracking equation that must not go overlooked.

American University Radio has transcripts of programs headed ” Debating the Pros and Cons of Fracking” It is a short read but what it does do is point out that a lot of opposition to fracking is anecdotal.

“Most evidence brought for this anecdotal in nature, one person complains there’s an issue,” says Cobbs. “Studies have not born that out, and in fact the opposite’s been shown that it can be done safely. In Arkansas, the United States Geological Survey conducted a survey of 127 private or domestic [water] wells in an area that has been highly developed. Over 4,000 production [natural gas] wells have been put in this area over the last 6 to 8 years, and no damage done to the water in those areas.”

I refer to the US because they have been doing it for years and state economies have flourished, greenhouse gas production has fallen, thousands of people are being employed and businesses, and  governments, via taxation,are making money. To most rational people thats a win-win.  To  Greenies it’s sacrilige. Newman should just ignore them and get on with getting the state up and running again after decades of this type of greentape bullshit. Environment Minister Burke should just stay in his office and contemplate life after 14 September and not step out and destroy another industry as his government has tended to previously, as they govern via Twitter and 4Corners.

Gunns going under

The Greens have won again in Tasmania. Gunns Ltd has entered voluntary liquidation – music to the Greens ears but not so to the 645 odd Gunns staff. If we could just encourage all Greens to move to Tassie we could isolate the disease and keep it out of the mainland. Trouble is, there everywhere.

Closing the stable door

The ALP/Earthian Greens are having a lover’s tiff. Personally I think it’s all spin as the ALP look to justify their behaviour over the last couple of years and struggle to pick up votes from the left….or anywhere for that matter. Gillard knowingly got into bed with these guys and the played the beast with two backs to guarantee her holding onto the treasury keys. It’s no good suddenly discovering that the Green Earthians are a dangerous, radical left wing bunch of tossers because we know, by her behaviour, that Gillard is all that and more. The ‘more’ of course, refers to her incompetency. Apparently the ‘blame Abbott‘ protocol isn’t working so Labor leaders are lining up to take shots at the Greens and confront their influence on the government.
GREG Combet, the man in charge of negotiating the carbon tax with the Greens, says Labor does not share the same values as its partners in minority government.
Mate! How can you say that when you negotiated the carbon tax with them. Paul Howes has lots to say, up to and including, calling them ‘loopy‘;
They have got away with their grab-bag of loopy and out-there policies for years. They’ve got away with it by being passed off as a group of eccentric but basically harmless hippies. People assumed that the Greens might have some weird ideas, but they are never going to run the show, so we don’t need to worry about them. Well, we can no longer afford to be so complacent.
But apparently it was OK to be complacent when you and your mob turned back the covers and got into bed with them Paul also mentions the Green Earthian’s idea of sport, just in case some rugby league guys read the front pages of the newspapers;
There probably wouldn’t even be a State of Origin – we’d just sit around with Queenslanders and play pass the parcel. After all, the Greens in NSW have a policy of promoting “non-competitive sports” such as yoga, dance, trampolining and tai chi over the traditional sports that Australian children enjoy playing. As their policy explains, the Greens “believe too much emphasis is placed on full body contact sports often causing unnecessary physical damage and confining opportunities for participation to the athletic elite.”
Leader Gillard has suddenly discovered the green Earthians don’t share everyday Australian’s values;
“The Greens will never embrace Labor’s delight at sharing the values of everyday Australians, in our cities, suburbs, towns and bush, who day after day do the right thing, leading purposeful and dignified lives, driven by love of family and nation,” she said. “The differences between Labor and the Greens take many forms but at the bottom of it are two vital ones. The Greens wrongly reject the moral imperative to a strong economy.
A picture of the Greens and ALP not sharing values; Lots of Green Earthians said things but nothing they say is worth repeating so I wont.

Resource projects stalling

ONE in five new resources projects are stalling because unions are refusing to strike workplace agreements, putting pressure on companies to accept exorbitant wage claims or risk damaging investor confidence in the $500 billion pipeline of potential projects. The other four resource projects are trying to work out how to pay the MRRT, how much the Carbon Tax will hurt them and whether they just should look at investing more overseas until this government is kicked out. Another 550 days could be just more than most bottom lines can stand. Just another day in a ALP/Green Earthian socialist utopia.

Responsibility outsourced

A TENTH asylum-seeker vessel in a week has arrived in Australian waters, as people-smuggling looms as a major issue in Julia Gillard’s talks today with Indonesia. Just so you get the picture…..that’s TEN vessels in a week and SIX in 3 days knifing through the soft butter of our borders
Amid the ongoing political impasse over border protection, Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare said authorities had intercepted a sixth asylum-seeker boat in 72 hours, this one carrying around 39 people.
Come on, Julia…pick up the phone and talk to Narau. Admit you were wrong to undo Howard’s plan and make a command decision. People may give you a little credit back if you try and fix it. It’s not Abbott’s fault, it is yours. Outsourcing the problem to Houston et al is simply an abrogation of responsibility. You are the leader……Lead! Mr Houston will be joined by refugee policy expert Paris Aristotle and former Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade Secretary Michael L’Estrange.
“They will act independently. They will form their own views based on the evidence and the facts,” Ms Gillard told said in Canberra.
No they wont. If you have selected them then we already know the answer. Even Swan of the two weetbix receipt idiocy knows deep down something has to be done and the government must do it. So do something already. You can not let it simmer over the winter break.

Swan takes us for fools

TREASURER Wayne Swan has responded to criticism of one of Australia’s most controversial and complex taxes by proving the price of Weet-Bix has not risen overnight.
Speaking at Woolworths Nundah – opposite his north Brisbane electorate office – yesterday, Mr Swan said fears the tax would send the cost of groceries soaring had been exposed as “lies”. And he had the shopping bags to prove it.
That’s weird. No one is claiming grocery prices will soar on day one. The idiot has picked an item that wasn’t going to cost more and claim because it doesn’t cost more on day one of the Carbon Tax that proves that all claims that the tax is going to ramp up costs are therefore lies. What twisted logic is that? The pic in the Courier Mail of Swanee holding two receipts with little difference other than the post Carbon Tax one is cents cheaper may appeal to those rusted on non thinking, shoe size IQ followers but really…come on…
On Friday evening, Mr Swan visited the supermarket and bought 11 items at a cost of $35.30. Yesterday morning, he bought the same items for $35.10.
So? Maybe Steve at the Pub (previous post) could do something similar but much more relevant. A picture of him holding last years refrigerant bill of $20k and next years anticipated bill of $170k would place Swanee’s picture of two weetbix receipts where they belong. In the unmitigated bullshit list.

It begins

From The Public House
The product supplied by this man, a non-saleable item for which there is no alternative, currently costs the Wayside Tavern $20,000 per year. Tomorrow that price rises to One Hundred and Seventy Thousand Dollars per year.
The product? Refrigerant gas. Bet that doesn’t get reported in the media.

Newman drops Feed-in-Tariff

The Greens are going to hate this. Newman has changed the generous incentives for installing solar panels and returning power to the electricity grid. New installations will receive a feed-back tariff of 8c down from 44c a kW/h. I’ve been warning all and sundry that this had to happen as it was simply unsustainable both economically and socially. Somebody has to pay the .44c and it falls on those who can’t afford to fill their roofs with solar panels – the poor and the battling Mum and Dad pensioners. Power companies have to balance their books and buying for .44c and selling for .22 ain’t going to cut it. However, all is not lost;
Mr McArdle said households that lodged an Inverter Energy System connection application by midnight on July 9 would still be eligible for the 44 cents per kW/h tariff.
Feed in Tariffs involve a subsidy, incurring costs that need to be recovered from higher electricity prices or the state budget. The NSW government, in their plan to rid the taxpayer of ALP/Earthian Green economic nightmare, tasked IPART with sorting out the problem and making recommendations to the government, They were :
…. asked IPART to recommend a ‘fair and reasonable’ value for a feed-in tariff for customers who export electricity to the grid but are not eligible for the Solar Bonus Scheme, and a mechanism to implement this value in NSW. However, it stipulated that our recommendations:  should not result in an increase in electricity prices in NSW, and  should not require funding from the NSW Government budget. In other words, any future feed-in tariff for these customers must be subsidy-free.
That is obviously where Newman is coming from as his new installation tariff of .8c a kW/h is similar to the IPART recommendation of 5.2 to 10.3 c/kWh. You can download the IPART report here For all the non-thinkers and Green Earthians railing at Newman for “the broken promise” they need to realize a couple of hard truths. 1. You should be yelling at Bligh, not Newman. She has left the state in such a parlous situation that hard decisions have to be made. By the 2015/16 financial year, almost 10 per cent, or $5.3 billion, of state revenue will be spent paying interest on Queensland’s $92 billion debt. The selfish pricks should realize that there are no free dinners. Someone always has to pay and it should be the individual, not the poor folk or the subsidized taxpayer. 2. The Earthian Greens Renewable Energy Program and Carbon Tax are already going to cost us dearly and are a part of the increasing utility bill. As ever is the case, any plan from these guys doesn’t have a “Law of unintended consequences” factored in – It is uncontrolled, millions doled out to Earthian Green church members without any guarantee of results other that ‘I feel good” Newman is obliged to try and balance the books and with the state debt sitting at $80b and rising something has to be done. All the ALP/Green plans never take costs into calculations – it is all just money to Giai – she deserves it more than us humans. But hey, Hippy, the rent always falls due. He is not actually cancelling Feed in Tariffs. If you have a current system, or have lodged your application by July 9 then you get .44c. It’s just new installations that will receive tariffs that don’t cost the poor folk or the state budget money. I have contracted to have solar put on my roof, not because I feel a need to save the planet, but simply because all the ALP/Green Earthian wacky plans are raising the cost of services for no benefit. I don’t want some poor bastard to subsidise my power bills and I don’t want it lumbered on an already financially troubled state.

Gina Rinehart has them jumping

Wayne Swan yesterday sharpened his attack on the mining billionaire by suggesting her designs on Fairfax Media endangered democracy. The biggest threat to democracy is the fact that Swan made that statement. Fairfax are in trouble because the people stopped buying their newspaper and I would suggest the reason is that they were catering to a small inner city market that enjoyed reading about the evils of conservatives as they sipped their latte. To continually support a government as bad as we have now is economic and ideological nonsense. To not call the government to order over even one of their many incompetent, class driven stuff-ups is head-in-the-sand reporting and by definition looses readership. Gina Rinehart’s involvement is driving the ALP/Green Earthians crazy.
Victorian MP Steve Gibbons called for laws to empower a new authority to oversee media behaviour and impose harsh penalties on those who breached standards.
I presume “breaching standards” only refers to media that refuse to sign up to the ALP supporters group.
The motion, which Mr Gibbons wanted to be debated in parliament on Monday, argues that the media industry has lost its “social licence to operate” and must face greater government control. “Concentration of news media ownership in the hands of a few represents, prima facie, a competitive market failure requiring compensatory regulation to ensure socially acceptable outcomes,” his motion states.
This is dangerous. We don’t want the government interfering in media control. We already have a media control mechanism in place – if the readers don’t like what they read, they stop buying the newspaper. Gina Rinehart wants board representation for her money and she is entitled to it. It also appears she isn’t interested in abiding with Fairfax charter of editorial independence. So what. The charter isn’t the driving force of what appears in the press. It is the mindset of the Editor and journalists that drive copy. If the majority ownership on the board don’t like the editorial stand then they can be easily replaced. And I suspect there will be some replacements in coming days. The Green Earthians Ludlam shows just how out of touch with the world he is;
Greens senator Scott Ludlam wrote yesterday to Senator Conroy and opposition communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull, asking them to back legislation that would impose fines or other penalties on Mrs Rinehart if she breached the Fairfax charter.
The Fairfax charter isn’t a law, you dropkick. It’s a feel good statement to try and head off any conservative writings in Fairfax media. You can’t legislate against something that isn’t already legislated. What next, a law to ban Andrew bolt from ever having a position with Fairfax? Here’s something else for the ALP/Green Earthians to panic about. News Corporation has made a bid for Fox News. For News, a successful bid would double its stake in pay TV business Foxtel to 50 per cent Great stuff all round.

You’re not silly Ron

Ron Pike, Coffs Harbour, NSW writes to the Editor of The Australian
I MUST be a bit silly because I can’t fathom all this green stuff. We stop building dams and power stations and make water and electricity more expensive. We shut down the sustainable logging industry and import more timber. We truncate our irrigated agriculture and import more food. Now it seems we must pay our fishers to stop fishing and import most of our fish. This all results in a loss of productive taxpaying jobs that are replaced with unproductive taxpayer-funded jobs. Then we import more people to share in our diminished productive capacity to produce the staples of life. I think I will have to go back to one of these progressive schools and learn about this green stuff.
Going to a progressive school wont help you Ron as you have to suspend all belief in human development and to place humans down the evolutionary tree below all endangered species. You sound to pragmatic to ever graduate from such an establishment.
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