Left Crusade vs. People’s Revolt

Nothing better encapsulates the arrogance and ideological blindness of the Gillard Government than the announcement of a carbon tax.

That the Government is beholden to a Green elite was painfully obvious from the line-up at the media conference called to announce the introduction of a “ carbon price”  (read tax). The exultant demeanours of Senators Bob Brown and Christine Milne send an unambiguous message to the electorate that they have staged a policy coup.
 

If Julia Gillard emerges as a liar, that’s something the Green elite is prepared to condone in order to ram through a policy which they, in true messianic style, have decided is good for us. Any appeal to public opinion by the likes of Tony Abbott is dismissed as immoral opportunism.

It is remarkable that Julia Gillard should take to the airwaves and not expect to be called out on her Government’s pre-election promise of no carbon tax. Her blustering performance during her interview by Alan Jones brings to mind the blustering of Communist party cadres, mouthing the latest Moscow line, even if it contradicted the previous directive.

Much of the mainstream print media in Australia seems determined to share the decline of American papers such as The New York Times. It is instructive that Lenore Taylor, national affairs correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald, could only write that Tony Abbott ‘has also added the charge that Gillard is breaking an election promise.’ Her deft manoeuvre to avoid stating the bleeding obvious is a wonder to behold:

Of course while the Prime Minister had ruled out a carbon tax during the election campaign she never ruled out an emissions trading scheme or a carbon price, but her election policy was so crazy and confused it’s a bit hard for her to defend.

So let us be clear what this implies. To be caught out on a lie is at best a minor misdemeanour on the road back to good policy. I have little doubt that this will be the line adopted by most in the Canberra Press Gallery.

Meanwhile, The Sydney Morning Herald knows what is good for us. As its editorial magisterially pronounces, “Anyway, some power price rises cannot be all bad: the scheme’s whole point is to encourage lower emissions long-term.”  And as for the politics, “She (Gillard) has had to break a somewhat foolish pre-election promise not to introduce a carbon tax because of the reality in which she later found herself, leading a minority government depending on Greens and Independents for survival.”  The weasel words are a thin disguise for the argument that the end justifies the means. For the editorialist, Gillard’s lies are no problem, but Tony Abbott’s talk of a “people’s revolt”  is “sheer political opportunism” .

It is clear that the Gillard Greens alliance and its numerous acolytes in the mainstream media will depict opposition to a carbon tax as a confected concoction of Tony Abbott and vested business interests. This will be a typically ideologically driven response to popular opposition. The collapse of old style socialism did not extinguish the Left’s secular messianic impulse. One might say that “climate change”  has become code for the new socialist crusade, pursued by a parasitic affluent intelligentsia.

We have the beginning a new great divide. We may be on the cusp of a major political realignment.