I’m afraid…..actually, no, I’m not going to be apologetic, the woman’s a complete dill. I wholeheartedly agree with the first commenter to Albrechtsen’s Op-Ed in today’s OZ.
“Poor Janet. She has to seize on an overseas by-election to score a point against Kevin Rudd. Perhaps there is some by-election in Upper Mongolia which could be pertinent? The polictical schemozzles in Iraq and Afghanistan could be used as examples of political chaos caused by Tony Abbot and his mates – much more relevant.”
The issues at play in American politics have no parallel with Australian politics, purely and simply because the vitriol, opposition-for-opposition-sake and underlying racial hatreds of the man in power don’t exist here. Sure, people like Albrechtsen will always oppose Labor because that’s imprinted on their DNA. Yes, it’s important for politicians of any stripe to realise that voters will only cop just so much sweetly before they rise up against an incumbent. Proof positive a-la 24 November 2007. It’s equally evident that Mr Rudd et al have the potential to go the same way, if the populist line on climate change isn’t tempered with some political wisdom.
The telling point with people like Albrechtsen, especially in proposing arguments such as she has in this article, is the complete and utter lack of alternatives. She and her ilk oppose a CPRS or ETS or whatever method of taxing pollution one wants to assume an acronym for. Why? No, not because it’s a ‘great, big new tax’ because that’s a ham-fisted scare tactic from the conservative bench. That a CPRS would heavily impact upon middle Australia is unknown and unknowable, save for some guesstimate modelling, for which Treasury has already told government about the need for community recompense. Something which the conservatives never make mention of. It’s all to easy to just throw a scare into the pack and watch the stampede. Conservative modus operandi du jour, to mix metaphors. In short, no imagination, no invention, only memory. That, and bald-faced proselytising of a flawed ideology.