The PM’s Airy Revision

A Change Is in the Air

We ever heard a litany
of silly claims: “morality”*
insisted fools impose a fee
upon our very air!

No skill in arcane augury
was then required to foresee
how ruinous that it would be
for us to tax our air.

The new PM has, finally,
observed what some could always see:
how screwed is our economy
from Labor’s tax on air.

Reacting to declivity
in polls with sly duplicity,
the PM hastens to agree:
“It hurts to tax the air.”

The tax had worked so thoroughly,
retarding all our industry,
that pollies noticed—even he!—
the harm from taxing air.

The PM ever shouts, “Trust me!”
but will his blether mean that we
will have less tax? Too easily
would Labor tax our air.

Electors, grant no clemency,
and don’t reward chicanery!
Give Rudd this message, and for free:
“You must not tax our air!”

*  Hon. Kevin Rudd opined, before he became PM in 2007 that addressing the supposed problems of “climate change”—meaning anthropogenic global warming—was “the greatest moral, economic and environmental challenge of our generation” but, after the election, when he was PM (for the first time), he claimed that “climate change” was a “fundamental challenge”; now, reinstalled as PM, he has claimed that he will scrap the unpopular “carbon” tax which his government increased only a fortnight ago.  However, he will replace the tax with an Emissions Trading Scheme which is predicated on the same, silly, pseudo-scientific conjecture that carbon dioxide, though essential for life on Earth, is somehow a pollutant.

See “A Land of Severer Severities”.

UPDATE I:  see “Prime Minister Kevin Rudd continues push to dump carbon tax at cost of $6 billion”, by Simon Benson:

Kevin Rudd has punched a $6 billion hole in the budget by confirming he will fast track the introduction of an emissions trading scheme to replace the carbon tax and save families up to $400 next year.

Oddly enough, when the new PM and the new treasurer stated that terminating the “carbon” tax will lower electricity prices, our lordotic media lickspittles nodded their heads sagely and murmured their agreement; yet, not so long ago, the same media were openly deriding the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, when he suggested that abolishing the “carbon” tax would lower electricity prices.  Like an amusing anecdote, it’s how they say it, evidently.

UPDATE II (15 July):  “apparently,” OMGTheMess suggests, “winning the next election is the greatest moral, economic and environmental challenge of our generation”.

UPDATE III (15 July):  

The Media’s Darling
 
The PM, with his golden touch,
announces to an awestruck press:
the “carbon” tax raised costs too much
so he’ll impose an ETS.
Lordotic journos arch their backs
or genuflect on calloused knees;
abolishing that stupid tax
has shewn his love for families! 
Our proctoleichous press must praise
the umblest leader of our days. 

The umblest PM going.

An Historical Leader 

Each word or act of Kevin’s meet
to be recorded in a Tweet;
posterity, no doubt, will prize
the deeds and sayings of the wise,
and history will surely call
our leader umblest of them all.

UPDATE IV (15 July):  our benevolent Government has released the details of its largesse:  though the PM finally realised that the “carbon” tax increased costs for families and businesses, the tax will be reconstituted as an allegedly less costly ETS in July, 2014:

“No-one,” says Rudd, cares more than I!
We’ll fix the problem—next July!”


 Yet Another Future Promise

The NDIS and other schemes,
we know, are merely based on dreams,
yet voters seem prepared to trust
assurances of pixie dust;
our Government makes many vows—
as many as the press allows—
but always over future times
in hope that we’ll forget their crimes.


 Labor’s Latest Campaign Slogan

“Elect great Kevin, and we may
see Kevin’s stuff-ups solved—someday.

UPDATE V (16 July):  the Liberals call it misrepresentation; others might call it a lie:

This morning Mr Rudd and his Treasurer, Mr Bowen, contradicted each other at the same press conference.

Mr Rudd said that families would save $380 “per year” and repeated this misrepresentation five times.  Mr Bowen corrected him and said it was just a saving of $380 in the 2014-15 financial year, but Mr Rudd continued to repeat his $380 “per year” claim.

UPDATE VI (16 July):  see “The Stupid ‘Carbon’ Tax” at The Friends of Carbon Dioxide.

UPDATE VII (17 July):

Certainty Up in the Air

An ETS means

business will have certainty

of how things will be!

The Minister for

Childcare has heard sound advice

that the “carbon” price

must soar. Firms know that

using electricity

may spell bankruptcy.

Kate Ellis has learned

that when you’re dumber than mice,

fair looks will suffice.

Ellis pleased that she can read books without pictures.

UPDATE VIII (22 July):  see “Kevin Rudd unmasked in Devil’s Island plan” by Paul Sheehan of The Age:

The mask has dropped.  We now see the real character of the man who leads Australia, a man so overbearing, so dysfunctional, so self-obsessed that his own government sacked him in his first term, unprecedented in Australian politics, and a third of the cabinet departed rather than serve with him when he returned.

There is no new Rudd.  There is only the Dear Leader who, on Monday, expects the federal Labor caucus to approve measures he has proposed that would make it almost impossible to remove him from the leadership if he wins the election.

On Friday, Rudd revealed that he will do anything, say anything, trash any principle, if he thinks it will keep him in power.

His Devil’s Island tactic, putting asylum seekers in tents on a malarial island off the coast of an impoverished, violence-ridden state, is malevolent politics.  He has made a massive bet that he can get away with this ploy before it can be tested by the courts, where it would almost certainly be rejected.

This does not concern Rudd.  Legal challenges take months. He is thinking in weeks.  He just wants to get across the line, win the election, and clean up the mess afterwards.  The mess he made.

UPDATE IX (12 August):  first posted as a comment at Catallaxy, following the PM’s use of forbidden notes during the first election debate between him and the Opposition Leader:

Rules Are for Other People

Rudd’s an even worse
liar than Gillard; he’s an
unprincipled cheat

and, on election
night, we’ll find he’s worse at

accepting defeat.

Anticipating
his concession speech (with notes,
of course) will be sweet

because, I warrant,
it will take just slight needling
to prick his conceit.

UPDATE X (18 August):  let’s see whether the ALP’s grand idea of identifying itself solely as the party of Kevin Rudd survive past 7 September:

UPDATE XI (20 August):

A Pentelope*

He so clearly thinks he is ‘rad’
as he shrieks until he goes red.
In a few weeks we’ll be well rid
of the man who’s been such a rod
to our backs. Goodbye, Kevin Rudd!

* a verse form invented by the classicist and cryptographer (and breaker of Enigma), Dillwyn Knox.

UPDATE XII (20 August):  like Macbeth, it seems our dear PM may be a somnicide, as his knitted kangaroo unravels all over himself:

Kevin:

Methought I heard a voice cry “Sleep no more!

K. Rudd doth murder sleep”, the innocent sleep,

sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleeve of care,

the death of each day’s life, sore Labor’s bath,

born of dud minds, great nature’s woollen course,

chief nourisher in life’s fleece—

Thérèse:

              What the flock?

You murdered sheep?  What did they ever do—

Kevin:

Still it cried “Sleep no more!” to all the House:

“Thou too hast knitted kangaroos, and thou

shalt forthwith leap them over sharks somehow!”

Thérèse:

Do give it a rest, egocentric fool,

you do unbend your feeble strength, to think

so brainsickly of things.  I trow it’s clear

that you need professional help.  Go find,

some aid to wash such nonsense from your mind.