Greatest moral challenge of our time...

Richard McEncroe July 2013 Scrapping of Carbon Tax

 

Kevin Rudd, the one time champion of the greatest moral challenge of our time, surely now wins the prize for the most morally challenged politician of our time.  By announcing the “termination” of the carbon tax, Kevin13 has conceded the moral high ground to the flat-earthers and demonstrated that when faced with a choice between good policy and good politics, a power hungry Rudd will play the politics every time.

 

When Bill Shorten announced to the Parliament House press gaggle a couple of weeks ago that he had decided to support Kevin Rudd in the ALP leadership ballot, I let out a scream.  It meant Julia was history, which was very unfair, but that’s not what made me scream.  The really sad bit for me was that Billy’s very public betrayal also signalled a return to political pragmatism at all costs.

 

The administration that had held fast to its policy beliefs and overseen the introduction and embedding of the carbon tax – as well as introducing a national disability insurance scheme, sorting out the future of the Murray Darling Basin, ensuring education funding gets closer to adequate and other real policy initiatives – was no more.  Julia Gillard and her team of negotiators, who had tiptoed so carefully through the independent tulips of the minority government (and managed to deliver real, meaningful and life changing reforms for the Australian community along the way) were now to be replaced by Kevin Kardashian and his loyal troop of populist happy clappers.

 

By allowing himself to be run over by the bitter Ruddmentum from within, Bill and his mates knew they were really ceding good policy for opinion poll points.  What promised to be an election battle between deep seated policy conviction on the one hand and political sloganeering on the other, now shapes as a public dance off between two totally malleable and vacuous contestants.

 

In the meantime, carbon dioxide, that annoying invisible stuff, keeps spewing into the atmosphere at a rate that will guarantee catastrophic climate change will be the greatest challenge of our children’s time.  At least we can take comfort in the fact that next year we pay a couple of hundred dollars less in power bills.  Great!