Emissions Tirading

Malcolm Turnbull’s Column

Here’s something in the SMH from deposed Leader of the Opposition Malcolm Turnbull.

At their core, these bills are as much the work of John Howard as of Kevin Rudd. We, as Liberals, believed in the superior efficiency of the free market to set a price on carbon. The Rudd government’s approach has broadly embodied the same principles, although there were problems with its initial design. But extensive modifications made in May and November made it a scheme that appropriately balances environmental effectiveness and economic responsibility.

Alternatives such as direct regulation or subsidies will be far more costly. Under a market-based mechanism, like an ETS, there is a clear, transparent and immediate incentive encouraging investment in lower emission technology.

Industries and businesses, attended by an army of lobbyists, are particularly persuasive and all too effective at getting their sticky fingers into the taxpayer’s pocket. Having the government pick projects for subsidy is a recipe for fiscal recklessness on a grand scale. Having the government pay for emissions abatement, as opposed to the polluting industries themselves, is a slippery slope to higher taxes and more costly and less effective abatement of emissions.

Most large emitters have committed to substantial reductions over the next decade. Many have already acted. The EU has had an ETS since 2005. China has committed to a 45 per cent reduction in emissions per unit of output by 2020. Japan has pursued lower emissions and higher energy efficiency for three decades. Our commitment is equivalent to a 21 per cent reduction.

The notion that this ETS would put Australia in front of the world is, sadly, completely wrong. We start way behind because our per capita emissions are so large, because our sources of energy are so overwhelmingly dependent on burning coal. This legislation is the only policy on offer which can credibly enable us to meet our commitment and the flexibility to move to higher cuts when warranted.

The ETS is far more in the great traditions of modern liberalism than any other available policy response.

I’m not a big fan of the ETS as proposed by the Howard Government or taken up by the Rudd Government.It doesn’t aim high enough, it doesn’t do enough, it hands out too many freebies to polluters and so on.

Thus, it is high time the government did set up a framework for setting the dollar value for carbon emissions. Even if flawed, the ETS that got negotiated between Labor and the Liberals under Malcolm urnbull represents the best compromise possible given the divergence of views.

It is stunning to note that the Greens would not negotiate to pass the ETS on the grounds it would be ineffective; which is the same kind of logic as killing the mongoloid baby because it’s not perfect. I understand the ETS is flawed, but not having anything is even worse, and this is exactly where the Greens have delivered the discourse.

In the mean time, the ignorant heartland of the Nationals and the highly misguided yet motivated idiots of the Liberal Right have scuttled the deal from the far right side, you would think the Greens would at least re-consider the position rather than continue to grandstand by not negotiating, and thus let nothing happen. It begs the point of what exactly they are in the Senate to do. One would have thought the point of the Greens would have been to be in the thick of designing a good policy for the environment.

We know the point of the Tony Abbott leadership is to scuttle the ETS once again and go to the polls with the Climate Change denial as platform. Therefore it is ethically incumbent upon the Greens to show a bit of gumption and maturity and negotiate the passage of the ETS through the Senate. It’s time to live up to their name instead of their ideals. Politics after all, is about the possible. This may be the issue that kills the Greens, much as passing the GST killed the Democrats.

News That’s Fit To Punt – 08/02/10

SMH’s Most Commented

Here’s the top-most-commented page wherein it is argued, the MacBank employee got off too lightly.

No one with a heart can help feeling sorry for David Kiely, the hapless Macquarie stockbroker caught viewing near-naked images of Miranda Kerr on his work computer. Needless to say, it would be grossly unfair for Kiely to be disciplined more severely than normal by his employer simply because he was unlucky enough to be caught doing so live on Seven News, in a clip that has now amused millions of viewers around the globe.

What’s more, these kinds of sexually provocative images of women are so ubiquitous that it’s completely understandable that many are left thinking, “What’s the big deal?” With rather more sexually explicit images regularly confronting us all on billboards and the magazine stands in convenience stores and petrol stations, it might be hard to work up too much outrage over a picture of Kerr directing a gentle come-hither look over her modestly shielded naked breasts.

But that doesn’t mean that Kiely’s behaviour should be dismissed as the harmless manifestation of red-blooded maleness, or that objections to it should be decried as ”wowserism” or over-the-top political correctness. At a time when business leaders are wringing their hands over the dearth of women in finance and executive management roles, it’s worth considering how sexually explicit images of women affect us, and what kind of message they send in the workplace.

Got that? The semi-nude picture on Kiely’s personal monitor at work  – which just happened to go out to the public by his own stupidity – is a symbol for the unreconstructed sexism everywhere. What does this Cordelia Fine woman want? She’s not a wowser but she presumably wants more public humiliation for David Kiely. Like, yeah, that’ll be politically correct.

Personally, I find the Feminist wowserism to be just another kind of wowserism, probably because it always seems to emanate from White women with status and money.

If the Obama election told us anything, it’s that when both gender and race are talking points, gender issues get overstated in order to push race issues to the back and the people who argue this most vehemently are white women. Make of that what you will, but the SMH sort of misses it by lining it up with this one:

The second top-most-commented page is this one:

There are two pragmatic tests to ascertain the real level of racism in a country. Namely, the level of ethnic-motivated crime and the amount of inter-marriage between ethnic groups. Australia has a low level of ethnic crime and a high level of inter-marriages between all races, including indigenous people.

There is racism in every country. But Australia is not a racist nation. Certainly not when compared with societies where racism is, or has been, rife. The myth of Australia as racist has been promulgated by alienated leftist academics in Australia, who just happen to be employed in universities that are examples of tolerant multiculturalism at work.

From time to time a litany of journalists, actors, directors and the like join in the Australia-is-racist chorus. There is invariably a spike in such collective apologia around Australia Day. Among the voices heard this year was Warwick Thornton, the director of the widely acclaimed film Samson & Delilah.

Thornton told ABC TV News on January 24 that the Eureka flag will be like the swastika in 20 years’ time. In other words, according to Thornton, Australia is so racist it is just two decades away from Nazism, or at least fascism. Yet Thornton, who has an indigenous background, is a successful Australian whose work has been supported by the taxpayer through Screen Australia. His brilliant career, so far, suggests that Australia is anything but in pre-fascist mode.

So Gerard Henderson, a well-to-do middle-aged white guy with money and status is telling us that Warwick Thornton is wrong when he says Australian society is racist.

Again, I think Warwick Thornton not being the white suburban guy with all the social perks  that go with it, gets to make the call; not you, Mr. Henderson. The rest of the article is just you saying stuff that you find ideal. The real world is far from your ideal.

The utter lack of humility by both Cordelia Fine and Gerard Henderson makes me gag. Maybe it’s just the way columns have to be – stupidly single-minded and oblivious to the nuances of what is being argued.

I just thought I’d point that out before people sort of got the impression from the SMH that Australian society isn’t racist at all but were decidedly sexist to the point of no redemption.

Malcolm Turnbull Fighting On

This is tragic.

Giving his first parliamentary speech since losing the Liberal leadership in December, Mr Turnbull indicated he would cross the floor to vote with Labor when a vote was taken on the carbon pollution reduction scheme.

Mr Turnbull was scathing of the Coalition’s new direct-action policy, which aims to provide financial incentives to industry for reducing carbon emissions.

“We all know … that industry and businesses attended by an army of lobbyists are particularly persuasive and all too effective at getting their sticky fingers into the taxpayer’s pocket,” he told Parliament today.

“Having the government pick projects for subsidy is a recipe for fiscal recklessness on a grand scale.

“And there will always be a temptation for projects to be selected for their political appeal.”

A handful of Liberal MPs, including treasury spokesman Joe Hockey, were present in the chamber during Mr Turnbull’s speech.

The government allowed Mr Turnbull an additional 10 minutes to complete his speech as other MPs, including climate change sceptic Wilson Tuckey, wandered into the lower house ahead of a maiden speech by first-time MP Kelly O’Dwyer.

Mr Turnbull said his strong and long-standing personal commitment to an emissions trading scheme prevented him from voting against the government legislation.

(edit)

“Prudence demands that we act to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and do so in a way that is consistent with, and promotes global action to do the same,” he said.

“All of us here are accountable, not just to our constituents, but to the generations that will come after them and after us,” he said, adding it was Parliament’s job to legislate for the nation’s long-term future.

It was positive that both sides of Parliament had agreed to at least a 5 per cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, he said.

“But it is not enough to say that you support these cuts, you must also deliver a strong, credible policy framework that will deliver them.”

Without a strong climate change policy, Australia could not expect other countries, such as China and India, to heed the call to tackle global warming, he said.

Mr Turnbull said his arguments in favour of the ETS now were “no different to those I have made and stood for, for the last three years”.

Schemes, like that proposed by Mr Abbott, which would give millions of taxpayers’ dollars to selected new technologies, were “neither economically efficient nor environmentally effective” compared with a market-based approach.

It’s really weird it’s come to this, but weirder still, Tony Abbott is getting a lot of loony support for his Claytons Climate policy. There are a lot of wishful people out there, trying to wish away the cumulative consequences of humanity’s actions.

How Bad Guys Win

Swish Group’s Reverse Takeover

Pleiades gave me a heads up about this interesting story:

Phoenixes and vampires both have the habit of rising from the dead – and the Swish Group is now back on the ASX having previously collapsed owing crew in Australia and the US a great deal of money. Some, but not all, of the directors have changed. Carey Peter Stynes continues, and Marcus Georgiades now sports the title of Chief Executive Officer.

In a series of complicated deals executed over November and December, the creditors (who were owed millions ) will received a minimum of $550,000 to be split between them.

Another company, Planet Wwhich acquired the assets of Swish for $450,000 while it was in voluntary administration, will be bought by Swish for $1.2 million in newly-issued shares in a manouevre known as a reverse takeover. An additional $300,000 will be raised in issued shares.

I know some people that got ripped off by Swish Group. There’s a crew out in Philadelphia that shot a Bollywood film that never got paid. There are companies and crews in Sydney that never got paid for work they did in January 2008. Even the City of Sydney was put out by the way they pushed their agenda through without paying for anything.

That $550,000 is such a tiny fraction of what they owe it’s not funny. I don’t see how a bunch of directors can run up an enormous tab, appoint their own liquidators, run some dodgy deals, pay 2c in the dollar or so and end up being able to keep their shirts – houses even! – and get their company back without being encumbered by debt. How can ASIC allow this?

If this is the way business is done in Australia, I tend to think there’s no such thing as a just law that serves us all – there’s only the law to protect the privileged and to punish the weak and disenfranchised. The kind of corporate laws that allow this kind of shenanigans are not worth the paper they’re written on.

I’m really appalled by this outcome.

Toyota In The Crosshairs

This Year’s Economic War

Toyota’s no friend of mine, but it is the brightest star on the Japanese industrial sector, and it didn’t get there for nothing. You kind of have to respect that. The way the American media’s been reporting it, you’d think they were fly-by-night operators selling cheap sell-through generic product. You’d think that as a corporation they’ve committed genocide.

Let’s go from the obvious bits. No conspiracies, no drawing of long bows. Toyota’s being hit hard by the American government because it’s the biggest competitor to the American Government which now owns Parts of GM and Chrysler. So they’ve gone and seized upon the recent recall and turned it into a media-hype event where even the Transport Secretary says “don’t drive them” and then restates it as “If you have problems take it to your dealer.”

If that isn’t setting up for panic amongst owners, I’d think the owners were insensitive or brain dead. But you know, you have to look at it is what it is. GM and Chrysler are in such a bad state that the only way to get the American buyer back to buying American is to scare them out of their Toyotas.

For the record, here’s this entry here about the sudden unwanted accelerator claims that started all of this.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is often called upon to referee disputes between car owners and an automaker. In the cases listed below, consumers complained that their cars accelerated unexpectedly. Toyota blamed misplaced or improper floor mats, but the consumers disagreed. After interviewing the drivers and company representatives, the NHTSA sided with Toyota.

Here’s something from the Financial Post up in Canada.

There can be little doubt that Toyota, the world’s greatest auto maker in recent years, has become the victim of much more than another typical out-of-control All-American media frenzy. When top-line political gamesman such as U.S. Transport Secretary Ray LaHood, Congressional pit bull Henry Waxman, and conniving United Auto Workers executives start piling on, this is clearly much bigger sport that the usual ritual public lynching of auto executives, a routine occurrence in Washington. The attack on Toyota, at this time of U.S. economic weakness and populist excess, is fast turning into a great American nationalist assault on a foreign corporation, an economic war.

The White House has denied any such motivation on the part of the United States. But that denial lacks credibility. While it may be technically true that President Obama’s team didn’t explicitly reach a decision to target Toyota, nobody in this crowd needs a presidential order to turn the Japanese auto giant’s Sudden Unintended Acceleration (SUA) problem into a national industrial advantage for the United States. The owners of union-dominated Government Motors can spot a strategic economic opportunity without waiting for the memo from head office.

California Congressman Henry Waxman swung into action, using recent anecdotal reports of sudden acceleration as a pretext for extended assaults on Toyota and its management. The UAW has joined the project as part of its campaign against Toyota’s closure of a unionized California plant.

Wednesday you could practically see the calculating wheels spinning under the hood of Mr. LaHood’s cranium when the transportation secretary told a committee that Toyota owners should simply “stop driving” their Toyotas. He later claimed to have misspoken, but then said much the same thing. If Toyota drivers are worried, they can take their vehicles to a dealer where, as Mr. LaHood knows, there was nothing the dealer could do since it is expected to take weeks if not months for Toyota to “fix” the alleged cause of Toyota’s alleged sudden acceleration problem.

Toyota shares continued their SUA plunge Wednesday, ending just below $74, down from recent highs of $92. The company has lost $23-billion in market capitalization since the crisis began.

At this stage, there is little hard data on whether Toyota actually has a sudden acceleration problem.

So I’m not alone in this observation. I keep saying that this in no way affects my sense of the Toyota brand. If it were a choice between a Toyota, a GM, a Chrysler, I’d happily stick with the Toyota. I’m not abandoning my long-held beliefs about the brand on the say-so of a media circus in America. I get it that there are a lot of people that want Toyota to fail. Like GM, Chrysler, the US Government, and probably Hyundai as well; but in all likeliness the media beat up is exactly that – a beat up.

I’ve been saying for some weeks that maybe this is Toyota’ prelude to closing factories in America. On the basis of the White House-led media-circus, I’d be inclined to suggest they move those factories to Canada and Mexico on the double. Move those jobs right out of America and then see what Mr Obama makes of that Sudden Accelerator move.

Dr. George Miller Says…

He Says We’re LAZY

Went to the doc today to get loaded up on cough mixture and antibiotics. I’m a little cranky about it all. So I come home and find that I’ve received my weekly ScreenHub newsletter.

Well what do you know? Dr. George Miller thinks we’re lazy. This was in the ScreenHub newsletter:

George Miller popped up to promote the sequel to Happy Feet and share his unique interpretation of the history of Australian cinema.As the ABC noted, he said, “In NSW, in Australia, I do believe we’ve been too lazy. We’ve let others steal the march and now it’s changing… “

Hollywood Reporter added an international edge: “Now we have the most advanced motion capture studio in the world down at CarriageWorks — it is huge. There will be a huge amount of production going through there, if we can keep it in this country.”

Dr Miller admits he was inspired by WETA and Peter Jackson in New Zealand.

“I don’t think we would have even attempted this had I not seen what they did in Wellington..

“They’ve got the best talent pool in the world. Look at what they’ve done. Avatar, District 9 are two of three films nominated for visual effects.

“Wellington is a tenth of the size of Sydney and that economy has shifted dramatically. We go down there to get work done. That can be done here.”

“This is an absolutely wonderful moment to be in the industry. Everyone thought cinema was dead and then we get the kind of movies you’re seeing now. And we’ve got the ability to make them…”

<edit>

But we are left to wonder at that word “lazy”. If Miller fronted up to the average Australian screen creator and said “Geez, you’re lazy. If you weren’t we would have an industry like New Zealand..” he would get a smack on the schnoz.

After which he would be told that the reason why we don’t have our own Peter Jackson is not because of the government.

The picture of the New Zealand industry that John Barnett painted for us on Wednesday is rather more acccurate, and a lot less positive.

“In a time of worldwide recession the Box Office has defied the statistics and has grown everywhere, including New Zealand – but the Box Office for NZ films has declined to pitiful levels….”

Maybe NZ filmmakers are just lazy too.

Umm, yeah. Lazy is one good description. Try incompetent. The Government tried its hand at development for a couple of decades that brought about the debacle that was the FFC. They were pretty diligent in picking all those box office losers.

But maybe it is laziness. All that box-ticking application press that is entrenched in the development sector of the industry is just intellectual laziness in the extreme. Had they done their homework, the FFC and the AFI would have uncovered more viable talent. That it didn’t, and instead nurtured a generation of box-office-losers speaks volumes. Yes, that would be laziness for sure.

Film Industry Swings And Misses

iiNet Court Case

The other news of the day of course it how iiNet beat the rap and won their case against them alleging that they were responsible for their clients’ piratical downloading behaviour.

The Australian film and television industry has lost a case against a major internet service provider whose customers downloaded pirated movies and television programs.

The case against iiNet was filed in the Federal Court by a number of applicants including Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, 20th Century Fox, Disney and the Seven Network.

The legal action followed a five-month investigation by the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft.

The companies claimed iiNet infringed copyright by failing to stop users engaging in illegal file sharing.

But today the Federal Court in Sydney ruled in the internet service provider’s favour.

Justice Dennis Cowdroy said it was “impossible” to find against iiNet for what its users did.

“It is impossible to conclude that iiNet has authorised copyright infringement … (it) did not have relevant power to prevent infringements occurring,” he said.

The judge ordered the studios to pay the court costs.

Bummer. To be perfectly honest, I can’t really make a case that illegal downloaders are hurting Australian film makers per se because the films that have been made are such also-rans that it’s hard to justify they charge the same sort of moneys as say Hollywood fodder. That being the case, this was a suit brought by distributors of one media against the apparent alternative distributor that is breaking their monopoly of distribution for allowing these pirated films to flow freely.

You can see that the distributors had a case on the basis of the copyrights infringed, but once again they’ve failed to couch the issue in a way that would stop the piracy.

It’s been this blog’s contention for awhile that the Cinema ticket itself has become overpriced and that this has changed the priority the public places on the cinema experience, as opposed to say, the gaming arcade experience or the music experience or even the console game experience.

Put another way, the disposable income of the market can only be split in a limited number of ways. By insisting on a high price, the Movie industry is insisting on a greater share of the disposable income pie. If the audience agrees with it, then you have ‘Avatar’ Box Office receipts. If they don’t it’s bit-torrent downloads of such dog movies as ‘All About Steve’.

To be brutally honest, not everything made for the screens deserves a marquee price at the exhibitor’s end. The audience is saying “no, we don’t think ‘All About Steve’ or ‘Funny People’ or anything with Ricky Gervais in it, is an equivalent experience of joy/pleasure/fun when compared to ‘Avatar’.”

The quick answer is it’s not iiNet’s problem that the market thinks your product is worth only a pirate download. You should make much more of ‘Avatar’ and much, much, much fewer of ‘All About Steve’ et al. The bottom line is that Hollywood, like the Music business before it has been disrespecting the audience/consumer for a long time and is now paying the price for it, by getting disrespected right back.

Putting A Price On Carbon

10 Bucks Per Ton?

The Department of Climate Change isn’t buying Tony Abbott’s plan.

The analysis, prepared by the deputy secretary of the Department of Climate Change, Blair Comley, says that rather than reduce emissions by 5 per cent by 2020 as the policy claims, it would lead to an increase of 13 per cent.

Mr Comley, an economist who was instrumental in designing the Government’s emissions trading scheme, says the Coalition policy underestimates the cost of each tonne of carbon for which taxpayers would pay businesses that reduce emissions.

On Tuesday, Mr Abbott unveiled a policy he said would cost $3.2 billion over four years and more than $10 billion by 2020.

At its core is an emissions reduction fund worth $2.6 billion over four years.

Polluting businesses which chose to reduce emissions could apply for grants from the fund and they would be paid between $10 and $15 for each tonne of carbon they saved.

Here’s the follow up to the Coalition’s Climate Change policy.

The Coalition’s scheme is not all good news for our farmers.

First, farmers will be paid $10 for each tonne of carbon dioxide stored in soil. But $10 is a very low price. Under the government’s carbon emissions trading scheme, farmers would be paid two to four times more than the Coalition’s offer.

Second, while the focus on storing carbon in soils is welcomed, farmers will not be paid to restore native vegetation on degraded land.

Under the government’s scheme, farmers would be paid to plant trees on degraded land and in areas of high conservation value.

Farmers would get an extra income and would help improve the health of degraded river systems in the Murray-Darling Basin, fix land degradation across the south-west of Western Australia, improve water quality in the catchments of the Great Barrier Reef, and address overstocking in our vast rangelands of northern Australia.

The advantage of the government’s scheme is that farmers would be paid to optimise terrestrial carbon across the country and it puts a cap on carbon pollution.

But neither side of politics has adopted a cap deep enough to drive the industrial transformation.

The NSW Government pays $25. I don’t think $10 cuts it, do you?

The bottom line perhaps is that the Coalition don’t believe in Climate Change for reasons that satisfy their own prejudices and not much more, but have cobbled together a policy because they know the electorate have been convinced about it and therefore must come up with *something*/*anything* to mollify a demand.

Here’s another critique.

The central element of Abbott’s policy is a new Emissions Reduction Fund. A Coalition government would allocate $11 billion to this fund over the 10 years from 2011 to 2020: it would start at $300 million in 2011 and grow to something like $2 billion by 2020.

The fund would give grants to businesses for projects to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases.

Participation by polluters would be entirely voluntary. If businesses chose to do nothing and continued increasing their emissions in line with current trends, they would not face any penalty or cost.

The Coalition reckons its fund will “buy” 140 million tonnes a year worth of reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by 2020.

A reduction of that size would indeed meet the Federal Government’s target of reducing Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by five per cent by 2020.

But the Coalition has used back of the envelope calculations to arrive at its 140 million tonne by 2020 estimate of greenhouse gas abatement under its policy. The calculations are based on estimates from industry lobby groups eager to get their hands on the grants.

Real-world experience with similar schemes suggests these estimates are highly ambitious.

It goes on to say:

The Federal Government’s Department of Climate Change has calculated that the current cost of each tonne of carbon abated under this scheme is around $40. Inflation would lift that to $50 a tonne by 2020.

At that price, the $2 billion in Abbott’s fund in 2020 would buy only 40 million tonnes of abatement, a long way short of the 140 million tonnes the Coalition has estimated.

I did some calculations of my own based on commercially available project components and couldn’t come up with better than $75 per ton unless I had a dedicated, bulk/ mass capture solution. The hidden cost of carbon capture whether it is in trees or slabs of limestone or what have you, is that you then have to transport it somewhere for storage. So $45-$55 per ton for capture makes sense, but it doesn’t include shipping & storage and GST. Even the Federal Government’s $40 figure is probably based on a hypothetical efficiency gained from scale.

But that’s just the numbers. The best understanding of it is here:

The two most reputable market-based policies for cutting emissions are carbon taxes or “cap and trade” schemes like the Rudd Government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

Both impose a carbon price on emitters.

Cap and trade schemes fix the quantity of emissions and let the market determine the carbon price. Carbon taxes set the carbon price and let the market determine the quantity of emissions.

Abbott’s scheme is effectively a “negative carbon tax.” This means it is the worst of both worlds: it does not fix the quantity of emissions nor does it impose a carbon price on polluters.

This means central planners and business lobbyists rather than market forces will determine where emissions reductions are to be pursued. That is hardly likely to deliver the lowest-cost abatement.

And it is a remarkable approach for an avowed pro-market politician.

Magic Pudding indeed. To think that we were so close to an ETS only 2 months ago. The mind boggles.

Lord Monckton Is A 10 Point Idiot

“Stupid Is As Stupid Does, Forrest”

Here’s The list, once again, thanks to Paul Sheehan. Sheehan thinks these 10 points are so far-reaching in their ramifications that the Greens are not willing to debate them.

I’m not a Green, but let me try it on.

1. The pin-up species of global warming, the polar bear, is increasing in number, not decreasing.
Polar bear numbers have surged since hunting was largely banned in the 1970s. When Tim Flannery predicted that polar bears would be extinct within 25 years, he was challenged by Dr. Mitchell Taylor, the polar bear expert for the Canadian federal territory of Nunavut, which covers most of the polar bear’s Canadian habitat.
Mitchell wrote in 2006: “Of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present… it is just silly to predict the demise of polar bears in 25 years based on media-assisted hysteria.”
A counter perspective: Last year, at the latest meeting of the world’s peak polar bear study group, the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group, scientists reported that eight of the 19 sub-populations of polar bears were declining, compared with five declining populations in 2005. Of the other 11 sub-populations, three were stable, one was increasing, and there was insufficient data to describe a trend in the remaining seven.
Polar bear populations rebounded dramatically after over-hunting was restricted in the 1970s, but the threat posed to polar bears now is completely different – a loss of the sea ice habitat that is essential to their survival.
Lord Monckton’s Sydney bomb-toss: “There are five times as many polar bears now than there were 40 years ago.”

Okay. The destruction of the habitat isn’t the only thing going on with the Polar Bears. They are also being protected more vigorously across the Arctic Circle. As with Timber Wolves in National Parks, their numbers may be on the rise due to reduced Human hunting. They may even be rising because the increased warmth may be a better environment for the Polar Bear. The Polar Bear numbers alone do not disprove Global Warming. Nice Cherry-pick, but it’s a cherry-pick all the same.

2. President Obama supports building nuclear power plants.
Last week, in his 2010 State of the Union address last week, when the President said, “That means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country”, his speech was greeted with applause.
A counter perspective: After the applause, President Obama continued: “It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development. It means continued investment in advanced bio-fuels and clean coal technologies. And yes, it means passing a comprehensive energy and climate bill with incentives that will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America.”
Lord Monckton’s Sydney bomb-toss: “China is going to be the emissions king, not America.”

I guess this is aimed at the Green Party tradition of opposing Nuclear Power. China might become a greater emitter than the USA shortly, but neither of these things in o themselves mean we shouldn’t have some kind of emissions trading scheme. Judging from Peter Garrett’s about-face from a lifetime of artistic railing against the Nuclear Industry, it seems to be a ground that the Greens may have to give up to make one claim stick. In any case, this point isn’t really something that says Climate Change/Global Warming is not true.

3. The Copenhagen climate conference descended into farce.
The low point of the gridlock and posturing at Copenhagen came with the appearance by the socialist dictator of Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez, whose anti-capitalist diatribe drew a cheering ovation from thousands of left-wing ideologues attending the conference.
A counter perspective: According to the website of the Department of Climate Change in Canberra: “The Copenhagen Accord is a welcome step forward on climate change action. The Accord… is the first time there has been agreement to keep global temperature increase to less than 2 degrees Celsius, and to take responsibility for action to realise this target. A transparent system to track progress was also agreed, which is key to getting the environmental outcome we all need.”
Lord Monckton’s Sydney bomb-toss:  “Copenhagen was the left’s attempt to collectivize. It involved a massive transfer of wealth from the West… But you have to carry the people with you, which is why in the draft treaties put forward you never see references to ‘election’, ‘ballot’, ‘democracy’. It is non-existent in the process.”

I don’t see how Copenhagen was the “Left’s attempt to Collectivise”. Note the pernicious language of the right wing fascist who thinks anything they disagree with must be an attempt to “collectivise”. Is Mr. Stalin alive? Where does this stuff come from? It’s this kind of language that gives away the unreasonable-ness of Monckton’s position. He’s not being a Climate Change ’sceptic’, he’s being a nasty little fascist pretending to be a Climate Change ’sceptic’.

Copenhagen was a mess and not much positive came out of the process for the First World. But it can be argued that nothing much good came out of it for the BRIC economies either. To try and couch the failure of Copenhagen as a Left Wing pusch that failed says more about Monckton’s political leanings than science.

4. The reputation of the chief United Nations scientist on global warming is in disrepair.
Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is being investigated for financial irregularities, conflicts of interest and scientific distortion. Last month, the IPCC was forced to admit that the claim in its 2007 report that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035 had no scientific basis. The scientist who originated the claim, Dr Syed Hasnain, works at The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), the Delhi-based institute where Dr Pachauri is director-general.
TERI, which won substantial grants in part on this baseless claim, used to stand for Tata Energy Research Institute, because it was funded by the Tata industrial conglomerate, which stood to claim about a billion dollars in tax credits under the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism.
A counter perspective: Dr Pachauri has denied all allegations made against him. No charges have been laid. Since becoming head of the IPCC in 2002 he has been an outspoken advocate for international action and co-operation to mitigate the affects of global warming. In 2007, he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the IPCC.
Lord Monckton’s Sydney bomb-toss: “Pachauri is being investigated by the [UK] Charity Commission. He faces the possibility of going to prison.”

Hmmm. So Monckton says guilty as charged when most of the allegations are inference. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be tried in that court. I think the proper thing to do in a democracy is stick with “innocent until proven guilty”. Besides which, even if he were guilty of some crime somewhere along the way, it doesn’t detract from what he is saying about Climate Change. It’s only ideologues who believe that the guilty cannot speak the truth. Again, this line of reasoning says more about the pettiness of Monckton who is resorting to a smear and an ad hominem attack on a scientist in order to make the claims of the other scientist look disreputable. It’s a cheap shot.

One could easily ask, “what kind of stupid system makes this child-molesting Monckton a Lord?, and just why should we believe anybody who is accused of molesting children?” It could be asked, just to smear him, but it wouldn’t be a fair question.

5. The supposed scientific consensus of the IPCC has been challenged by numerous distinguished scientists.
The IPCC assumes that CO2 concentration will reach 836 ppmv by 2100, but dissenting scientists contend that for the past nine years CO2 concentration has been on track to increase to 570 ppmv by 2100, which would almost halve the IPCC’s temperature projections.
A counter perspective: The website of the Department of Climate Change in Canberra offers this measured assessment of the scientific consensus behind the IPCC report: “The IPCC [report] provides a rigorous assessment of the published and peer-reviewed research on climate change and was compiled by 1,250 expert authors from over 130 countries… All IPCC reports are subject to extensive expert and government review.”
Lord Monckton’s Sydney bomb-toss: “Lord Stern [author of the Stern Review] is mad. That’s the technical term for him… There are leading climate scientists, like Professor Richard Linzen of MIT, who do not believe a word of the [IPCC] global warming argument.”

He says numerous distinguished scientists but he doesn’t name who they are except Richard Lindzen. He of the conservative George C. Marshall Institute?

Lindzen has contributed to think tanks including the Cato Institute and the George C. Marshall Institute.[32] In a 1995 article in Harper’s Magazine, Ross Gelbspan made allegations that Lindzen described as a “slander” and “libelous.”[33][34] Gelbspan claimed Lindzen “… charges oil and coal interests $2,500 a day for his consulting services; his 1991 trip to testify before a Senate committee was paid for by Western Fuels and a speech he wrote, entitled Global Warming: the Origin and Nature of Alleged Scientific Consensus,[35] was underwritten by OPEC.”[36][32] According to Juliet Eilperin the fact that Lindzen was paid expenses, “doesn’t mean he’s on anybody’s payroll. He charges for his speeches, but so do prominent scientists who disagree with him about climate change.”[26] According to Alex Beam of the The Boston Globe, Lindzen said that he charged expenses and expert witness fees in the 1990s but had not done so since.[37]

The distinguished scientists that are in the payroll of oil companies are challenging the IPCC findings? You don’t say! Then he launches into an ad hominem attack on Lord Stern. So again, I ask (rhetorically), “what kind of stupid system makes this child-molesting Monckton a Lord?, and just why should we believe anybody who is accused of molesting children?” Once again, it could be asked, just to smear him, but it wouldn’t be a fair question.

6. The politicisation of science leads to a heavy price in poor countries.
After western environmentalists succeed in banning or suppressing the use of the pesticide DDT, the rate of death by malaria rose into the millions, with some scholars estimating the death toll at 20 million, or more, most of them children.
A counter perspective: The claim that millions have lost their lives as a result of the withdrawal of DDT is hotly contested among scientists. Speculation over the number of deaths caused by the withdrawal of DDT ranges from thousands to tens of millions. The dangers of DDT are well established. The majority of major environmental organisations continue to oppose its use. In many countries, DDT is no longer effective as mosquitos have built up an immunity.
Lord Monckton’s Sydney bomb-toss: “After DDT was virtually banned, deaths from Malaria went from 50,000 a year to one million a year. Over 40 years, until the ban was basically lifted, 40 million people died, and most of them were poor children.”

DDT? My goodness, how has this example got anything to do with Climate Change? The claim itself is hotly contested, and trying to build an argument out of such a claim is just not right. As in not correct. As in mistaken. As in not the right thing to do. But he does it anyway.

But even allowing for the argument to be, Politicisation of science being a problem, how is this the Green’s problem when scientists on the payroll of energy companies and oil companies go and make counterclaims to science on the basis of politics? isnt this more of a problem with the so-called Climate Change ‘Sceptics’ and their version of science that oddly fits in with the necessities of those who pay them?

I don’t think the Green owe Lord Monckton an explanation until Lord Monckton explains where Richard Lindzen gets his money from and if he can be trusted at all.

7. The bio-fuels industry has exacerbated world hunger.
Diverting huge amounts of grain crops to bio-fuels has contributed to a rise in world food prices, felt acutely in the poorest nations. The decision by the Bush Administration in the US to produce ethanol from corn was a disaster for countries like Mexico where corn is a staple food. The United Nations has warned that diverting sugar and maize for bio-fuels could lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths from hunger worldwide.
A counter perspective: Bio-fuels provided 1.8% of the world’s transport fuel in 2008. The development of bio-fuels will lead to new forms of fuels using materials, such as algae, which will not impact on the world food supply.
Lord Monckton’s Sydney bomb-toss: “Millions have died already because of the bio-fuels scam. It has cut the supply of food to fuel cars that don’t need it and taken it from people who do.”

It is true that biofuels compete with food grains and therefore is not a good idea over all. I don’t know if you can therefore say millions have died because trendy Lefty city-dwellers in the first world chose bio-diesel over petrol cars, because I doubt there have been that many bio-diesel cars put into the market around the world. So this one is a piece of incendiary exaggeration – the kind of exaggeration that might sit well with an extremist agenda.

8. The Kyoto Protocols have proved meaningless.
Global carbon emissions today are significantly higher today than they were when the Kyoto Protocol was introduced. Even the climate scientist who has done more than other to mobilise global concerns on global warming, James E. Hansen, has criticized the Kyoto Protocol for promoting a cap and trade system which he regards as no more than an inefficient variant of the status quo.
A counter perspective: The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or Kyoto Protocol, was adopted on 11 December 1997 and entered into international law in 2005. So far 187 states have signed and ratified the protocol, creating an international structure for global co-operation on global warming policies.
Lord Monckton’s Sydney bomb-toss: “Since Kyoto, global carbon emissions have gone up 40 per cent.”

I don’t think the failures of Kyoto protocol ergo means it isn’t worth trying to curb emissions. To pretend that the failures of Kyoto and Copenhagen mean that we ought not are willfully misreading those failures in their favor. If this pathetic level of argument is what Lord Monckton is bringing to town, he should have saved himself the carbon emission and stayed in England. Seriously.

9. The United Nations’ global carbon emissions reduction target is a massively costly mirage.
A counter perspective: From the Department of Climate Change: “The science indicates that stabilising greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at 450 parts per million (ppm), or lower, will reduce the risks of severe climate change and support our aim of limiting the average global temperature increase to no more than 2 degrees Celsius. At a 2 degree temperature rise we will certainly need to adapt.
“Without effective global action on climate change, temperatures in Australia could rise by around 5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.  The results would be catastrophic… As set out in a number of authoritative resources, such as the Stern Review and the Garnaut Review, the costs of inaction far outweigh the costs of action now.”
Lord Monckton’s Sydney bomb-toss: “The cost of mitigation of rising temperature is orders of magnitude less cost-effective than adapting to the changes in  temperature. It is a colossal waste of money.”

Says who? Says Lord Monckton. He just asserts it without actually giving evidence that the “cost is a colossal waste of money”. He has no alternative plan, he just throws it out there. If I were the Greens’ I’d laugh at the immaturity of Monckton saying “the reduction target is a costly mirage”.

At best, this is a guess and a half-baked opinion based on how he wants it to be. But of course if somebody with an imposing title of Lord says it, we should take it on board. I think not. Which bring me to the next and final bit…

10. Kevin Rudd’s political bluff on emissions trading has been exposed.
The Prime Minister intimated he would go to the people in an early election if his carbon emissions trading legislation was rejected. He won’t. The electorate has shifted.
A counter perspective: Rudd believes that inaction on global warming will have disastrous consequences, and international co-operation is essential. The world needs to set price signals on energy that reflect the real cost of fossil-fuels and an international structure send those price signals. Australia will thus move ahead with a carbon emissions trading scheme and the legislation will be re-introduced as one of the government’s first acts of the new parliamentary year.
Lord Monckton’s Sydney bomb-toss: “Kevin Rudd is happy to criticise me from afar… I written to him pointing out that even if all the nations of the world cut their carbon emissions by 30 per cent, at a cost of trillions of dollars, mostly to the West, it would stop global temperatures from rising by 0.02 Celsius. You couldn’t even measure it with a thermometer.
“And to achieve this you will fatally damage your economy, and your workforce, you will make bankers rich, and you will frighten children in their classrooms.”

I just want to point out that this is a Lord from England, expressing his pathetic, ill-conceived opinion in order to try and influence the electorate of Australia. This is not a scientific point, this is Lord Monckton trying to influence the outcome of the next election through denigrating the emissions trading scheme. As an Australian, I find this offensive. We don’t send our ex-pollies over to England to tell them which way to vote.

But let’s put that aside for a moment and address what he’s saying. He is asserting without any evidence that an ETS would “fatally damage your economy, and your workforce, you will make bankers rich, and you will frighten children in their classrooms.”

If you don’t put a dollar-value on carbon emission, you will never come up with a proper mechanism of dealing with emissions. So the first fear is idiotic. It is doubtful an ETS will harm the workforce because putting a dollar value on carbon emissions will open up the economy to new businesses built around addressing the issue of emissions. Bankers getting rich is not a problem that is new. They seem to get rich regardless of an ETS or not, banking regulations or not. They’re *bankers*, Lord Monckton, they exist to get rich, regardless of carbon emissions.

As for frightening the children, I have no issue with that. They might be jolted awake into being responsible human beings on the basis of that fear. It wouldn’t be an irrational fear, like the fear of monsters or ghosts; it would be an entirely rational fear to have. it’s the kind of fear Lord Monckton himself might do well to possess.

Having gone through the 10 points, I’m sort of surprised the editor didn’t pull this article from the SMH. It’s idiotic in the extreme.

Clayton’s Climate Plan

A Plan You Have When You’re Not Having A Plan

That catch copy for Claytons’ non-alcoholic wine from the early 1980s is the gift that keeps on giving. It’s been used ironically in many instances, but never has it been more appropriate than now with the Coalition unveiling their climate fund plan.

If elected to government, the opposition would spend $3.2 billion of taxpayers’ money over four years on incentive payments to industry to reduce emissions.

“Our policy will be simpler, cheaper and more effective than the government’s,” Mr Abbott said.

“This is because it relies on incentives not penalties.”

Mr Abbott said the incentive payments would be given to big polluters if they reduce emissions from existing rates. Industry that rises above the current rate of emissions would be fined an undisclosed amount.

“Business as usual will not be penalised,” Mr Abbott said.

The scheme is geared to reaching a 5 per cent emissions reduction cut by 2020 on 2000 levels, the same as currently proposed by the government.

But Mr Abbott told reporters in Canberra the opposition was still committed to reaching the Government’s tougher targets of 15 and 25 per cent if certain conditions are met in a global agreement, which Mr Abbott believes is unlikely.

The Coalition policy is not costed for a 15 or 25 per cent emissions cut.

So let’s get this straight. Mr. Abbott is saying they will dangle a 3.2billion dollar carrot to polluters to stop polluting. That money will come from the money from tax payers – us. Doesn’t that mean big business is being paid by all of us not to pollute? Isn’t this a method of privatising profits and socialising the debts and losses and expenses? This is like a golden-parachute-deal for the polluters to just do what they like.

It’s bullshit to even call it a incentive and penalty system when they won’t even tell us what the penalties for not cleaning up their acts might be. Are they talking firing squads at dawn or are they talking the electric chair for the CEOs and their families or what? Genital mutilation by a blind Indian surgeon? It’s most probably a slap on the wrist and nothing more.

The next question that begs to be answered is how the hell they intend to raise this extra $3.2billion to do this carrot&stick thing? Yesterday Mr. Rudd claimed it would need a mega-tax to fund it, which looked like a big scare-mongering claim, but when you look at what’s being proposed, you have to conclude that it can’t be any other way.

What’s really galling is that there’s no sense in this plan whereby the Coalition is actually serious about solving the problem, especially if it’s not costed for a 15 or 25 per cent emission cut.

I guess the good news is that if they have some kind of policy then Mr. Abbott can’t be accused of being a climate change denier.

Here’s some more detail.

“Our policy will be simpler, cheaper and more effective than the government’s,” he told reporters in Canberra today, adding it would rely on incentives, not penalties.

He committed the coalition to the same carbon reduction targets as the government, but at a much lower cost.

Mr Abbott said the criteria by which the coalition would judge the bids for spending would fall into four categories.

It must involve a reduction in emissions and it must improve the environment.

“Third, there must be no increase in cost to consumers,” he said.

“[Prime Minister Kevin] Rudd has been out there this morning saying our policy is no good because it doesn’t involve compensation.

“Well you don’t need compensation if you aren’t slugging consumers with high prices.”

Finally, there must be no cost to jobs.

Why does this remind me of the way Screen Australia is run? So they drum up 3.2billion in extra taxation, and then open shop saying they’re ready to spend money if the applicant matches the 4 criteria. Then they go on to not spend the money on the grounds that none of the applicants met the 4 criteria because basically, it would be impossible not to pas on some costs to the consumer. But the 3.2billion fund itself would represent money the consumer’s already spent to see something done – but all the same it won’t get done because the Coalition government would slap down applicants. Sound familiar?

But wait, there’s more:

Mr Abbott stressed his proposal was a market-based system based on rewards, not penalties.

“We will go to the market and say give us your lowest cost environmental improvements and reductions in emissions,” he said.

“This is a market-based system all right, it’s just not the giant money-go-round market-based system that the government wants to put in place.”

Mr Abbott said the Coalition’s climate scheme was “quintessentially Australian.

“It’s about solar and it’s about soil,” he said, adding it would be “careful, costed and capped”.

“There can be no cost blow-out in this policy.”

Famous last words, I say.

Deniers And “Sceptics”

One of the uglier bits of public discourse lately has resulted from the climate scientists who haven’t exactly been saints. The big claim is that if these scientists lied about their work, then there must be enormous lies in the body of work that supports Global Warming.

I think the term “Sceptic” is quite an unnecessary compliment to climate sceptics. These people are not sceptics in the proper sense. A proper sceptic would reserve judgment on the basis of what they can’t know. The most strident Climate Sceptics seem to claim the unknowable are incomplete nature of science is ergo proof that there is no Climate Change/Global Warming.

Lord Monckton who visited Australia this month is a typical case in point.

Lord Monckton claims climate change isn’t a problem for the planet and carbon dioxide emissions don’t contribute significantly to global warming.

He claims world temperatures will rise by just half a degree Celsius by the end of the decade, compared with UN scientists’ prediction of a 3.5-degree rise.

He said millions of dollars were being made by “climate change profiteers”.

“The ETS which I understand your Government is proposing to introduce is unnecessary,” he said.

“It will simply be the largest tax increase in the history of Australia.

“All that will happen is that bankers and politicians will become even richer than they are.”

That first claim won’t be right because he’s fudging numbers to make sure it’s much lower.

To address the second claim, millions of dollars might be made by climate change profiteers, but that fact in of itself doesn’t prove (or disprove) Climate Change/Global Warming. If we take the market-is-right approach, then it has to be said that the fact that they can make millions suggests there’s a market for their services – which means something is going on. That something just might be Climate Change/Global Warming.

The third claim ETS the Federal Government is introducing being unnecessary is incorrect. If the global temperature rises even by the amount Monckton is conceding, then there is Global Warming. Which means there should be an apparatus to put a price on Carbon emissions. but these are the kinds of stupid, non-sequiteurs that get argued by the so-called Sceptic.

This week, Paul Sheehan obviously went to one of Monckton’s lectures, sponsored by a pair of mining engineers. He’s quoting Monckton’s alleged ‘bombs’.

A lot of the 10 points are cherry-picked facts to suit the argument of those who oppose doing anything. The degree to which they’re cherry-picked says more about Monckton’s acumen as a spokesperson for the Climate Change Deniers.

The basic truth about Climate Change “sceptics” is that they’re simply contrarian right wingers trying to fight a rear-guard action against re-addressing how we go about doing industry and business.Any time you meet a climate change ’sceptic’, you find out they have outrageous right wing views. They’re not ’sceptics’. They’re backsliders against science, that’s what they are.

They might think it’s a noble fight – but then so did the flat-earthers, Geo-Centrists and Creationists. As intellectual pastimes go, it’s pretty intellectually bankrupt, but I guess we’re going to have to spend hours and hours talking them through the wrongness of their thinking, only to hit a point of faith with these idiots, where they refuse to countenance the bleeding obvious.

God help us all.

Un-Know1ng Benefits

What Precedent?

During the week, Pleiades sent in this link about Alex Proyas’ company getting the Producer off-set for producing ‘Know1ng’. :

IF you were giving somebody a gift of $20 million, the recipient may want to know about it. But in a farcical situation last week, the Australian director and producers of the film Knowing, Alex Proyas and Topher Dow, were unaware that their film had finally qualified for the federal government’s 40 per cent producer offset, a subsidy that could pay for up to $20m of the $55m film.

The Australian contacted their Sydney production office on Friday to ask why federal agency Screen Australia had included Knowing in its annual analysis of Australian films at the box office. The film had previously been denied the offset, presumably because it wasn’t considered Australian enough.

Last year, Proyas had not been quiet about the rejection, saying both publicly and privately he was flummoxed by Screen Australia’s decision, given his thriller – starring Nicolas Cage, Rose Byrne and Ben Mendelsohn – was shot in Melbourne and post-produced here by Australians. Proyas and Dow’s office could “neither confirm or deny” whether the film received the offset on Friday. The truth is, they didn’t know until The Australian called to inform them that Screen Australia had pronounced Knowing the third highest-grossing Australian film of 2009, with takings of $7.6m. It came behind Mao’s Last Dancer ($15m) and Baz Luhrmann’s Australia ($10m in 2009, after its 2008 release).

Knowing had previously not been considered an Australian film. It did not receive Screen Australia investment and was not submitted for any local film awards.

Matters were further confused by Screen Australia in its explanation. It said statistical definitions were “applied independently of the producer offset unit”, and that Knowing qualified as an “unofficial co-production”, meaning that it “satisfies the co-production requirements despite not being made under a treaty or memorandum of understanding with one of the 10 countries [with] which we currently have official agreements.”

Screen Australia analysis of box-office data from the Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia shows we spent $54.8m on tickets to Australian films last year. The figure represents 5 per cent of the total box office of $1.09 billion.

It was the best domestic share since 2001, a year that produced Moulin Rouge!, Lantana, The Man Who Sued God and Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles.

After Mao’s Last Dancer, Australia and Knowing, the next highest-grossing local releases of 2009 were the comedy Charlie & Boots ($3.9m) and Warwick Thornton’s acclaimed debut Samson & Delilah ($3.2m).

Without Australia and Knowing, however, the Australian box office would have slumped to $36.6m, or 3.3 per cent of total cinema revenue, down appreciably from the 10-year average of 4.4 per cent. (Happily, new release Bran Nue Dae has already topped $3.6m in receipts in its first two weeks of release.) Proyas was unavailable for comment but said in a statement on Monday: “As producer, co-writer and director of the film, I am extremely pleased at this decision, as the film was made by Australians and shot and post-produced in Australia. The production brought a great deal of work to the local industry and I hope that with this film now qualifying, more projects of its type can be made locally. I feel the Australian film industry will benefit enormously from this decision.”

The case raises or highlights many questions about the new federal incentive for film and television production, ahead of an expected discussion paper and departmental review this year.

First, the privacy provisions surrounding the offset – it is administered under tax law – are of no use to anyone other than perhaps Screen Australia. Government subsidies for other industries are transparent; the financial secrecy regarding the administration of the offset only obscures the means of film financing and hurts the industry’s desire to be treated seriously. Changes to tax legislation heading to parliament will be of minor consequence.

Second, while Proyas did not know his film had received the offset money, no doubt his US studio, Summit Entertainment, did. In many instances, the offset subsidy provided by Australian taxpayers is being swallowed by international studios and financiers. As Luhrmann told The Australian when asked about the rebate available to his film Australia, “Don’t ask me, that’s all handled by Fox!” (Twentieth Century Fox is owned by News Corporation, the parent company of News Limited, publisher of The Australian.)

Malcontents have suggested several other theories. Was Knowing granted the offset in order to boost Australian box-office figures at a testy time in screen politics, ahead of the departmental review and as industry distress with Screen Australia’s management grows?

Or was approval of Knowing kept quiet so as to distance it from a decision to deny the 40 per cent offset to George Miller’s Justice League: Mortal? That film, like Knowing, would have been shot in Australia with a largely Australian cast and crew but had a script written by foreigners.

This leads again to the issue of transparency. Knowing was arguably successful in obtaining the offset because it was developed by Proyas, an Australian director, and – unlike Justice League: Mortal – ownership of intellectual property in the film would be retained in Australia. If the decision becomes a precedent, it will affect international studios and whether they choose to invest in production here. Yet no one knows which criteria Knowing satisfied and what the precedent may be.

At a policy level, transparency is key. Producers are willing to divulge what financing process they use, if not the amount of money raised. If Screen Australia is unwilling to provide clarity on sources and dollar volumes, the public or industry scrutiny of the new incentive scheme is aimless.

Consequently, when Screen Australia announced late last year that the offset had helped screen productions to the tune of $123m since July 2007, there was no way of knowing how much that figure was boosted by the eight-figure sum heading the way of Luhrmann’s Australia. One insider suggested the offset is working “as the government expected”. Unfortunately, as Proyas discovered, that is as precise as film policy gets.

So let’s see now… It’s ‘Australian’ after the fact if it helps boost the bottom line for Screen Australia then? That’s just swell. Not only is it policy by Post-hoc, it’s Ad-hoc.