Posts by Angus Robertson
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Steve Withers,
Nice comment and pretty spot on. Agree mostly except the visceral and deep part.
The Nats proposing a public referendum seems a small threat to democracy. Especially compared to the restrictions on free speech Labour has already foisted upon NZ without any real consultation.
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Don,
Ok, I'll bite. One can argue about quality of spending but to suggest that Clark is being dishonest for pointing out the absolute flaming obvious is what...idiotic, dishonest,. I dunno, words fail me.
The Herald journo who drew up that table revealing a $2.5 billion gap in spending promises between National and Labour - which supports what the PM says - probably agrees.
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Policies = spending = taxation
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Kyle,
Prices have doubled over the past five years, whilst supply has increased less so over the same period. The market is demand driven.
Plus there is the marginal advantage in carbon efficiency Tiwai has over other smelters, which I still do think is important enough to make Tiwai one of the last (5% of) smelters that should be eliminated. I see no value in shutting down one of the more carbon efficient producers of aluminium.
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No the best way to minimise the effects of aluminium production is to demand less aluminium in the market which will lead to less smelters producing it.
Yes, exactly. And the way to do this is to tax consumption. Which we can do, because we have complete control of taxation in the New Zealand consumer market. This is the only thing the NZ government controls, but we avoid using this control to help save the planet.
What we shouldn't do is what we are attempting to do and tax production. It will not work, because we can never control the world market. Our attempt so far through the Kyoto protocols resulted in a decade long 21% increase in AGW gas emissions.
The reason we will probably continue to accelerate our killing the planet in this manner is that a tax production allows our government to blame some minority of producers and pander to our wasteful consumers.
God yes. I cannot fathom the disdain the FF leadership seem to have for the beliefs of their customers.
The milk powder Fontera produces is used amoung other things to supplement infant formula in the third world. Our government wishes to impose a tax on this selling to mothers in the third world.
To them their client base are a bunch of hapless townies who live from one state handout to the next.
Us townies are, we do. The reason the world is experiencing AGW is the wastefulness of 1st world consumer society. To this our government responds by "handing out" a tax holiday on petrol consumption for 3 years, because taxing planet killing consumption might upset our consumers.
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I'm thinking globally, acting locally. If a bunch of Chinese got together and did the same thing, there'd be one less aluminium smelter, and one less Huntly power station.
Or maybe you are making no sacrifices and blaming AGW on Chinese indifference, it so hard to tell.
Your argument is that Aramoana smelter should have been built because it will stop the beach going underwater? That's an interesting line to take.
Actually my argument is more like - efficient smelters built in places where they can utilise close by green power sources are the best possible way to minimise AGW from aluminium production. So if building a smelter at Aramoana is what it takes to prevent the flooding of Mission Bay, it is a sacrafice I am willing to make.
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We should clearly be imposing a border carbon tax on imports from polluter nations.
We could be placing a consumption tax on carbon released by a product. It could be run in the same way as GST and apply to all products foreign or domestic consumed in NZ.
Not so keen on doing it on a by nation basis, if that might penalise green production from the polluting USA to the advantage of polluting production from green Slovenia.
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And I fail to see why we should adopt a policy of "New Zealand will take on pollution for the rest of the world because we're slightly better at it." Not in my backyard thanks very much.
Because your backyard is on the planet we should be trying to save.
On that basis, when I took my dogs out to run on Aramoana Beach, we'd be walking past a bloody great big smelter instead of a reserve
That reserve will make a nice reef, i guess.
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Kyle,
That's great if the world all holds hands and sings "we are the world". Or if China wants to make me the boss of "things China can and can't do". New Zealand is responsible for New Zealand, we can't control what other countries do.
No shit.
And your argument is wrong btw.
No its not:
The difference in the world, if Tiwai was to leave NZ, would be the closing down of Huntly, and the opening up of another coal fired station in China. Same amount of coal-fired power stations the world over, just less in New Zealand, one more in China.
The other smelters of the world are less carbon efficient than Tiwai Point - opening one in China will mean more AGW.
Close Tiwai = more AGW. More AGW is not what we want to achieve.
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How can the following possibly make sense?
To combat AGW New Zealand will place taxation on aluminium produced with low carbon emmissions at Tiwai Point, whilst exempting from taxation aluminium produced by high carbon emitting smelters anywhereelse in the world.