It’s official! Peter Dutton is Australia’s most unwanted politician, closely followed by fellow Hard Right leader Tony Abbott.
Over the past two weeks we asked you to vote for the worst politicians in Parliament to help decide where we should focus our campaigning in the next federal election.
Freeing Parliament from politicians like this will pave the way for multi-party action to address climate change, drive investment in renewable energy and end the deliberate inhumane treatment of refugees.
Why not join us and make it happen! http://www.getup.org.au/
Tony Abbott played us for fools on electricity prices. Will we be played again? | Nicky Ison | Opinion | The Guardian
With election season upon us the political commentary on electricity prices is about to dial up to 11. Why? Firstly, because in the last 15 years Australia has gone from some of the lowest electricity prices in the world to some of the highest and a good number of people are hurting. Secondly, in the 2013 election Tony Abbott played us for a fool on electricity prices and it has been a key part of the Coalition election playbook ever since.Between 2007 and 2013 electricity network companies spent about $50bn upgrading our poles and wires. That $50bn had to be paid for and it was by us, as consumers. According to the Productivity Commission, this resulted in electricity prices rising by 70% over the five years to 2013. The voting public was well aware of the price hike while being almost completely unaware of its causes. This allowed then opposition leader Tony Abbott to talk his way into the top job partly on the back of a scare campaign against carbon pricing and renewable energy.
In 2011 the Gillard government announced its Clean Energy Future Package to address Australia’s contribution to climate change. The package included a carbon price which happened to take effect just as consumers had really started to notice the price hikes caused by network overspending. This isn’t surprising since according to an analysis by the Australian Electricity Market Commission, electricity prices had risen by about 40%.
Abbott was able to blame the high cost of electricity on the carbon price even before it was implemented. Unlike the massive hike in network charges, the much more modest impact of the carbon price came with a compensation package that left most households better off. But this didn’t save the carbon price from taking the fall.
Brexit: Goodbye United Kingdom, hello dis-United Kingdom — RT Op-ed
“A reactionary,” the great postwar Labour figure Nye Bevan once said, “is a man walking backwards with his face to the future.” Surveying a political class presently engaged in ripping itself apart over Brexit, who could argue otherwise?
It might be said "with head phones on listening exclusively to Murdoch Media (ODT)
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