Cartoon © 2011 Jean Burman
It’s been a big week politically here in Australia.
And I’ve resisted the urge to comment here on the blog about the ridiculous goings on… until now.
Yesterday it got the better of me and I made a video clip with two of the political cartoons I did last week in response to our Government’s inept performance [and more particularly in response to the poor performance of our Prime Minister who... incidentally... no longer represents the views of the majority of Australians as her popularity slumps to less than 40%]
What you may or may not know is that our Prime Minister was not democratically elected. She was instead “appointed” to the top job after she and her party backstabbed Kevin Rudd who was democratically elected to represent the Australian people back in 2007.
In any case… [thanks to the Greens and a couple of hastily assembled independents] we are now stuck with her. And that might be okay… I mean… we Aussie’s are generally speaking a laid back long suffering lot. But not when she’s trying to push her barrow on a number of politically controversial and potentially catastrophic economic initiatives such as the introduction of a highly contentious carbon tax.
People may be forgiven for assuming that the introduction of a carbon tax has [at least] something to do with reducing carbon [dioxide] emissions and thereby impacting climate change in a positive way.
But no… this would be incorrect.
And just so you know… I am all for caring for the environment and adopting clean green technologies and environmentally progressive strategies to protect our increasingly fragile earth.
But make no mistake.
The introduction of a carbon tax to Australia [in the midst of the global financial crisis] has absolutely nothing to do with saving the environment… and absolutely everything to do with a greedy self serving and grossly incompetent Government raising tax revenue and swelling its coffers to fund spending into the future.
Cartoon © Jean Burman 2011
Julia Gillard said as much herself last week.
At a press conference in Brisbane on Thursday Ms Gillard announced how the future was bright for the coal industry in Australia citing US mining giant Peabody’s takeover bid for Macarthur Coal as evidence of the faith overseas investors placed in Australia’s ongoing economic future… [and therefore her carbon tax]
I was gobsmacked.
In the Sydney Morning Herald:
Despite black eyes from environmentalists, the global market for coal has never been better, with prices for the unique PCI coal mined by Macarthur trading at a narrowing discount to hard coking coal. Read more:
Ms Gillard then went on to ram home our clean energy future… reiterating that phrase enough times for me to be completely certain of her intention to indoctrinate the electorate with those three magic words…
CLEAN ENERGY FUTURE.
She assumes the people will believe anything *sigh*
But my question for Ms Gillard simply must be:
“How can we have it both ways?
How can we sell our coal to the world [not to mention one of our largest coal mining companies]… and still have a CLEAN ENERGY FUTURE?
That’s what I want to know.
It sounds like an oxymoron to me.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
Can we sell coal to the world
[and still remain squeaky clean and green?]
Is this about climate change?
Or is it a case of unethical economics?
HAVE YOUR SAY!
[oh and.. let me know what you think of the video clip]
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Cartoon Pen & Watercolour 8″x12″
“Full Tilt”
