Rudderless euphoria

Rudderless euphoria | The Daily Telegraph

The first Rudd-Swan Labor Budget was a net contributor to inflationary pressures and hardship for the average working family, but the real whack will come should the Government's draconian, ill-founded emissions trading system come to fruition.

ALthough Swan has indicated he expected unemployment to rise because of his first Budget, the numbers thrown out of work by Labor's ideological approach to the climate-change phenomenon will ensure that whole industries are laid waste and tens of thousands of jobs are shipped offshore to nations that couldn't give a fig for the Labor leadership's moral posturing.

China and India aren't going to take a skerrick of notice should Rudd, Swan and Climate Change Minister Penny Wong take the axe to the Australian economy to prove their green credentials to covens of doctors' wives and members of inner-urban Labor Party branches.

The populations of India and China aren't going to be persuaded that they should use less power or even green power.

They need more energy, they're determined to harness more energy, and their efforts to build their economies will swamp whatever piddling energy-reduction measures Rudd and his coterie force on the Australian public.

With the price of fuel oil still astronomical by historical standards, more coal-fired plants are being built in China and even across the oil-rich nations of the Middle East, despite Rudd's bleating to assorted world forums.

A caring government would be attempting to make things easier for the nation, not tougher.