The Carbon tax you were promised ...

Gosh we are a lucky country, we are going to fix global warming, apparently through the imposition of a tax. It was such a good idea, the Labor party decided to keep it a secret in the lead-up to the last election. I guess they were afraid someone else might steal their policies.

So what do we know about the tax?
Not much, just like all other Labor policies, they are released without details. This allows them to do lots of hand-waving about the benefits, but not allow any scrutiny.
It is a great approach that works well with the super-intelligent left-leaning journos that prefer their investigations to be handed to them in a govt. press release.

Apparently it works by putting a price on carbon, which will necessarily increase all prices. But not to worry, because our wonderful government is going to give us all that tax back in compensation (well maybe not quite all of it).
Now this is supposed to add "certainty" and make all those power generators switch to renewables. And according to PM Gillard, it will stop us from "being left behind".

I don't quite understand how a new totally undefined tax is supposed to provide certainty. I don't understand how you are supposed to make any investment decisions when the new tax is already being mooted to increase. I don't understand why companies would want to switch to renewables when their consumers are going to be compensated for price rises.

The most bizarre thing is that most power generators in Australia are state government owned. They are run by Labor governments and presumably they all believe in AGW, and yet they haven't bitten the bullet on renewables. Could it be that renewables are expensive and unreliable?

And to complete the trifecta of lies from Labor, why is not choosing a high cost energy path "being left behind"? Our major trading partners are not bringing in these types of taxes, and they will continue to burn the coal and gas that we sell them, but which we are choosing to deny or own industry.

If anyone can explain this madness, I'm listening.