Australian Election Pops the Green Bubble
Photo: The Guardian
As the media tries its best to deny the signals which have come through the channel of the Australian election, it will increasingly emphasize the degree to which the liberals were torn apart by personality differences. But ultimately the intra-party fights on the left ended up removing the poorly liked Gillard from the top of the ticket and replacing her with the better liked Rudd. Further, the personal grudges themselves were grounded in the incoherence of the left’s economic policies. Rudd was unpopular because of his draconian policies towards the extremely important mining industry. This gave Gillard her opening, but then once in power, she continued to pursue anti-mining tax and regulatory policy.
The results were predictable: electricity prices saw their largest ever spike, the economy slowed and unemployment rose. Mining tax revenues, which were supposed to raise revenues, saw unexpected shortfalls, unexpected at least to the demand siders who implemented them.
In other words, the basic problem with the Australian liberals is that the ‘green’ policies of the party are simply unpopular in a country in which mining is the most successful industry. They are unpopular because they do not work and no game of musical chairmen can ultimately conceal that fact.
Australia was an early adopter of the anti-carbon fad and therefore it is no surprise that the most devastating rebuttal to that fad, Heaven and Earth, was penned by Ian Pilmer, an Australian scientist. America, which is still in the fevered pitch of anti-carbon hysteria, should listen to the rest of the world and see how those who anxiously adopted anti-carbon policies are even more anxiously fleeing from them. And it’s not just the Anglosphere: Spain’s power shift last year partly reflects public rejection of the disastrous consequences of demonizing carbon. In a little while we’ll see Angela Merkel retain power in Germany after having cut green subsidies in the nation which invented the Green Party.
Tony Abbott was right when he said “This election is a referendum on the carbon tax.” and the ruling class contributed to that fact, with even the Wall Street Journal (whose news writers are as liberal as the Times, while its op/ed page is conservative) running scandalized stories with supposedly outrageous quotes from Abbott like, “Global warming is absolute crap.” Little did they know that the people of Australia, especially the working class agreed with Abbott.
Jerry Bowyer is a Forbes contributor, contributing editor of AffluentInvestor.com, and Senior Fellow in Business Economics at The Center for Cultural Leadership.
Jerry has compiled an impressive record as a leading thinker in finance and economics. He worked as an auditor and a tax consultant with Arthur Anderson, as Vice President of the Beechwood Company which is the family office associated with Federated Investors, and has consulted in various privatization efforts for Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. He founded the influential economic think tank, the Allegheny Institute, and has lectured extensively at universities, businesses and civic groups.
Jerry has been a member of three investment committees, among which is Benchmark Financial, Pittsburgh’s largest financial services firm. Jerry had been a regular commentator on Fox Business News and Fox News. He was formerly a CNBC Contributor, has guest-hosted “The Kudlow Report”, and has written for CNBC.com, National Review Online, and The Wall Street Journal, as well as many other publications. He is the author of The Bush Boom and more recently The Free Market Capitalist’s Survival Guide, published by HarperCollins. Jerry is the President of Bowyer Research.
Jerry consulted extensively with the Bush White House on matters pertaining to the recent economic crisis. He has been quoted in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes Magazine, The International Herald Tribune and various local newspapers. He has been a contributing editor of National Review Online, The New York Sun and Townhall Magazine. Jerry has hosted daily radio and TV programs and was one of the founding members of WQED’s On-Q Friday Roundtable. He has guest-hosted the Bill Bennett radio program as well as radio programs in Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles.
Jerry is the former host of WorldView, a nationally syndicated Sunday-morning political talk show created on the model of Meet The Press. On WorldView, Jerry interviewed distinguished guests including the Vice President, Treasury Secretary, HUD Secretary, former Secretary of Sate Condoleezza Rice, former Presidential Advisor Carl Rove, former Attorney General Edwin Meese and publisher Steve Forbes.
Jerry has taught social ethics at Ottawa Theological Hall, public policy at Saint Vincent’s College, and guest lectured at Carnegie Mellon’s graduate Heinz School of Public Policy. In 1997 Jerry gave the commencement address at his alma mater, Robert Morris University. He was the youngest speaker in the history of the school, and the school received more requests for transcripts of Jerry’s speech than at any other time in its 120-year history.
Jerry lives in Pennsylvania with his wife, Susan, and the youngest three of their seven children.
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