DAIRY farmers face an average hike in energy costs of $7000 and the loss of up to 7.8 per cent of annual income because of the carbon tax. In a sombre outlook for Australia’s third largest rural industry, the dairy sector has warned the Gillard Government a carbon tax “will impose significant costs” – and [...]

LABOR has leapt on a letter from British Prime Minister David Cameron to Julia Gillard backing the carbon tax to attack Tony Abbott as being “out of step with just about everyone around the world” on climate change. But the Opposition Leader hit back yesterday, dismissing the government’s use of Mr Cameron’s letter as a [...]

TOURING British climate change sceptic Lord Christopher Monckton today told Tony Abbott to drop his Direct Action plan to cut carbon emissions. “The Coalition should in my opinion ditch it because there is no need to take any action about carbon dioxide at all,” Lord Monckton told the National Press Club during a good-natured debate. [...]

ANGER against scientists involved in the climate debate is reaching dangerous levels and it’s only a matter of time before one is murdered, says leading German physicist Hans Schellnhuber. Professor Schellnhuber, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change member, said he was amazed by the [...]

AUSTRALIA will keep spewing out more and more greenhouse gas emissions until the late 2020s even though Julia Gillard has promised to cut them before that. We’ll dig up twice as much coal in 2050 as we do now, even though Tony Abbott reckons coal will be a “goner” by then. Although our emissions are [...]

  The Australian government’s plan for a Clean Energy Future contains a number of measures aimed at supporting farmers and land managers to provide emissions offsets. The plan consists of a mix of market-based and directly funded actions, covering some of the territory put forward by the Coalition, but on a much larger scale. Farming and [...]

JULIA GILLARD has urged a hostile electorate to reserve its judgment on the carbon tax until the 2013 election, by when people would have had a ”lived experience” of the new regime. Acknowledging she was being punished in the opinion polls for breaking her promise to not introduce a carbon tax, Ms Gillard said that [...]

SOUTH Australian farm groups are concerned about the indirect costs that will flow through to farmers as a result of the Federal Government’s $23 a tonne carbon tax, despite agriculture being excluded from the scheme. And the South Australian dairy industry is set to be one of the biggest losers in the proposed tax because [...]

Prime Minister Julia Gillard is adamant her plan to close coal-fired power stations will not threaten Australia’s energy supply. The Government says it wants to close some power stations, with Hazelwood in Victoria thought to be at the top of the list. Ms Gillard says the Government will work with local communities to try to [...]

The recent and spurious debates over carbon tax have filled the airwaves with opposing and venomous soliloquy. In what is the biggest reform to the Australian economy in many years, arguments from the Liberals appear to be focused, not on a cleaner, greener and therefore safer future, but rather a business as usual scenario. Labor [...]