Australia's carbon tax is a brave start by a government still gripped by fear | Richard Flanagan | Comment is free | The Guardian

Selling such a convoluted raft of measures is difficult: former Labor prime minister Bob Hawke has compared it to making "ice cream out of a bucket of shit''.

And selling it is a prime minister with the speech and appearance of a dying metronome – sometimes seeming so inept it has been said she couldn't sell the wheel – dragging along behind her a Labor party that must now present the measure Labor didn't want as Labor's achievement.

It may be that the carbon tax is the final chapter in the strange death of Labor Australia.

Camels are not, I repeat not, our climate-change enemies

Surely, I'm not the only one more than a little perplexed with the notion that we should start killing things so climate change doesn't start, um, killing things.