The Skipper's Blog: Carbon tax

THERE'S a first time for everything, dear reader, and this is one of them. Let’s face it, I didn’t gain my reputation as a pompous, opinionated, arrogant, bumptiously overweening spewer of tirades and right-wing cant for nothing. Whilst there is no doubt that I (intentionally) provoke ire, disagreement and maybe, in some cases, downright hostility, I’m sure you might begrudgingly admit that I have always had at least some idea about the subjects on which I vent my feelings. Until now, that is. I know as much about what follows as an Arab would about how to prevent exposure after being left stranded by a crashed snowmobile. That being said, though, it’s not going to stop me…
 
This is about something I casually brushed over in a previous blog - a locked-on, homed-in and purposefully aimed torpedo, now merely (and almost serenely and elegantly) cruising with only the slightest ripple beneath an otherwise unruffled surface, but which is going to do to this economy what the lurking U-boat did to the Lusitania. It is, of course, the carbon tax. To use a simple nautical analogy (and I have to, otherwise I’d be all at sea myself): introducing a carbon tax anytime in the next year is the equivalent of trimming the nose down in a huge following sea in that it’s only a matter of time before the vessel (i.e. the industry) nosedives calamitously and the crew (i.e. businesses) start to get washed overboard and founder.

I know, I know; the above is going completely overboard metaphor-wise, and I know that the carbon tax won’t in theory have the direct effect on our industry that it will on the coal, zinc/lead, steel, manufacturing and other heavy industry spheres, but the marine industry, whilst traditionally resilient, has always been a disproportionately affected and damaged victim of legislation, events or tariffs that “filter down” from higher up the food chain. I can’t and won’t attempt (indeed am not able) to synopsise the effects and ramifications of what the carbon tax will actually mean, mainly because, like many of you, I have but a layman’s mere grasp of it, but  rest assured that this industry needs it the way Poland needed Hitler.

I freely admit that I have a low tolerance threshold for alternative, left-leaning, supposedly “socially responsible”, inner-city, sandal-wearing Greenies, as they are incapable of rational, balanced, reasoned and logical discourse on how to improve our environs, our nation and our planet. However, if anyone of that ilk happens to be reading this article (about as likely as the Mayor of loony-left Marrickville dropping the starter’s flag at the Homebush V8 supercar race), can you please enlighten me as to how foisting a carbon tax upon a country with an entire population less than that of metropolitan Shanghai will reduce or even stabilise carbon emissions?  Yes, that’s right. Shanghai has a population of over 23 million and is one of the largest industrial centres in China – a country (along with the US, Japan and Russia) which embraces no carbon policy whatsoever. Australians like to think that we “punch above our weight”, but us instigating a carbon tax whilst four of the most populous and polluting nations on earth callously and disdainfully disregard it is the equivalent of putting a club junior flyweight in against Muhammad Ali at his peak. It all makes as much sense as trying to push (instead of tow) a boat with a length of rope.

But what effect will it actually have – other than psychological – on our industry? As touched upon before, I am the possessor of a mere high school education and thus do not intend to embarrass or dig a hole for myself by positing complex theories, formulas or reasoning that I can neither understand nor explain, but I can think of one product which will almost certainly be affected and on which over 80% of dealers depend for their livelihoods: aluminium boats. It stands to sense. If companies like OneSteel and Capral are hit with a carbon tax (and in their supposedly “dirty” lines of business, they certainly will be), this will filter through to the boat manufacturer who will naturally pass it on to the retailer – who then has to sell a dearer product to a consumer with confidence levels akin to the era of Keating’s “recession Australia had to have”.

All this is, of course, the worst of worst-case scenarios, but when one bears in mind that over 80% of the new trailer boats sold in Australia are made of aluminium, then the ramifications for the boatbuilding industry (and the follow-on effect on trailer, outboard motor and electronics suppliers, not to mention stainless steel fabricators, upholsterers, canopy makers etc. etc.) may well be calamitous, not to mention terminal. Whilst I write from a marine industry perspective, anybody selling caravans, camping trailers, recreational vehicles (or even fencing or patio railings) would be well advised to tune into the same wavelength.

Believe me when I say that I really do care about the environment, greatly. I care about it so much that I have gone from the 25:1 two-stroke mixture racing boats of my young years to a modern-day 4-stroke outboard – so I have actually done something palpable, quantifiable and responsible rather than merely paying it token lip service. But the fact remains that my (and everybody else’s) anti-pollution gestures aside, the issues afflicting the environment - carbon-wise and every-other-wise - on a global scale will be remedied by the imposition of a carbon tax in Australia in the same way an Elastoplast will fix a severed limb. As an example, try to imagine Australia as the World and that the Mayor of, say, Jacobs Well (Qld) decided to enforce a carbon tax in that locale. How noticeable do you reckon the effect would be? But to get back to the bigger picture: whilst a carbon tax will penalise key polluters financially, can anybody explain to this simple soul how it will, in fact, reduce carbon pollution? I mean, is the pollution actually going to go away just because polluters are paying for causing it?

I’ve tried not mentioning politics, as politics really has no place in a missive like this, but who among us – trying to wade through the daily tribulations of life such as mortgages, car payments, kids’ school fees, food bills etc. – would ever have the time to even think of wanting to become a politician? We’re all too busy, too focused, too preoccupied with doing our best and, above all, too proud, too principled and too honest. I have never, ever met a politician that has a skerrick of an idea of what real life is about. It’s all very well for them to propose noble, sweeping, costly gestures that make smug inner-city, do-gooder, lefty trendies feel warm and fuzzy as they traipse from one taxpayer-funded literary or alternative cinema event to another, but the rank and file are never, ever considered. I could be completely and unprofessionally subjective and strongly advocate immediately deposing this current benighted, woefully pathetic, ignorant Socialist government, only to be starkly reminded that the carbon tax policy was advocated – every bit as vociferously – by a multi-millionaire conservative living in a waterfront property in Point Piper. So here we have a contentious policy advocated by two polar opposites, representing both the haves and the have nots. Therefore, how can any aspect of it be consistent, feasible, workable or any good?

With the recent savage shredding of staff numbers at Aussie icons like Qantas and BlueScope (probably only a portent of what is to come), only a government possessed of criminal levels of ineptitude, intransigence and insensitivity could contemplate going any further with a carbon tax. Whilst petitions and lobbying from the marine sector will be as effective as trying to outdo a thunder storm with a fart, just take on board that word “disproportionate” again. Our tiny industry, the last to be given any consideration by any government body, will paradoxically be one of the first to feel the ramifications. It’ll hurt us badly – so badly that many may not ever again make it through to brighter days.