Can you explain this double standard on carbon tax and additional coal mining....?

Australia prospers through her mining work bringing quality, home-grown jobs and prosperity to her people... HOW DARE SHE?

Australia MUST be heavily taxed and heavily legislated with crippling red tape that can decimate her industry and her people so that the fairy tale of AGW may continue to be promoted.

Come on Australia, get with the program and start cutting those jobs, increase the tax burden and wreck your Country. Need help and advice? Ask the UK...

It does seem like politics. I would not expect a fantastic long-term future, unless they have figured out (or think hey can figure out) a way to make the coal produce less CO2 so their demand will be higher than their competitors. I would think the demand is pretty inelastic in the short term so demand won't change much. The tax is passed to those countries who burn a lot of coal (i.e. China). I would think the long term demand would decrease as companies started moving away from coal technology to cleaner forms of energy. Since this coal could go to nearby developing economies, this could take quite a while.

It does seem they have a plan to profit while clean energy is developed that seems pretty hypocritical and opportunistic, but it also eases the transition away from coal for Australia. It is hard to judge the effect. Depends on the response of those who use the coal and pay the tax.

The left has a standard blueprint when it wants to tax something.

First pretend that their spending is absolutely vital while they play to people's guilt and make wild exaggerated claims such as orphaned children will starve without the funds.

Next they demonize whatever it is to soften up any opposition. That is why tobacco, alcohol, and oil companies are often portrayed as evil by the same entities that rely on their revenues.

When they destroy an industry and an economy and jobs, they blame greedy rich people and insufficient funds.

The greed of government bureaucracies is limitless.

Far more money is made by the US government from Tobacco than Phillip Morris. They can't grow, process or sell tobacco without Uncle Sam watching their every move and making money as Uncle Sam demonizes the very industry that it is milking for money. The duplicity is sickening. And so many alarmists just gobble it all up hook line and sinker.

Bite the hand that feeds you. Rob Peter to pay Paul. Steal from the rich and give to the poor, but skim a little off the top. Business as usual. Legalized crime. There's no duplicity, at least not in their minds. They allow something that they consider repugnant to continue as long as they get their cut. It's not extortion, it's government at its best.

The only apparent correlation is a post Kyoto (2012). No modern develop country other then EU and Australia is willing to make concessions. It's an obscure tangent based on GNP.

Modern liberalism at its finest. "We Aussies are doing OUR part to save the world. OUR CO2 production has dropped back to 1995 levels, blah, blah, blah." Meanwhile, all their heavy industry and coal have been shipped to China.

Much like California whose stifling regulations make it impossible to build a power plant in the state, but they buy increasingly large amounts from plants out of state (which could never be built in-state). "We Californians are doing our part!"

It's even worse than that because apparently the aerosols from Coal are the only thing saving us from AGW's dreaded thermal Apocalypse.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/04/us-clima...

But for once I agree with Hey Dook. It is EXACTLY like taxing cigarettes.

Politicians SAY cigarette tax is to offset increased health care costs of smokers,

While statistics say smokers SAVE health care dollars by dying early.

How DARE those addicted bastards avoid taxes by dying early!!!!

Thank God the Spirit of Marx still lives in the Political champions of Fairness!

Obama in 2012!!!!

It's quite a nice trick really. What they're doing is imposing a direct tax on coal ... which is principally exported.

They are shifting the tax emphasis from coal company profits to their revenues. They are essentially imposing a tax on China.

I love it, he showed you with his simple Econ 101 answer.

There is some kind of detatchment in the liberal mind, something that cannot be reconnected I think.

No, sorry, I can't explain that. I am not corrupted politician. You should ask them. Don't you think your government knows better?....