Rudd won (according to the media) a massive mandate. He and his ministers have spent more time “derailing the opposition” than governing. And so has the media, and in particular Crikey.
I had the misfortune to be in the same NE Tasmanian Hotel as a bunch of contract truckies just recently. They said essentially the same thing (albeit in more colourful language).

Bernard, get over it. Your guys won. Concentrate on the Government and what they’re (not) doing. (although in this article you go some way to redeeming your totally biased pre-occupation with the people who aren’t running the country)

As for the ETS. It stinks.

1. the recession we had to have is going to reduce emissions in the short term and the govt can always leverage that to dither or delay or backslide, or indeed review and alter the model;

2. this latest megafire after the 2003 ACT megafire sort of taints, in a generally unfair and dishonest way, the green agenda for a sustainable lifestyle and society. Sad but true and the cynics in the machines of both major parties (and their ciphers - Miranda Devine!) both know it. So getting criticism from the G/greens or economists or whoever on a limp complex CPRS won’t resonate for a little while perhaps even all the way to Copenhagen, though it should given megafire is a symptom of the disease.

3. Variant of point 1, the recession means alot less spare cash to throw around on bailouts and techno fix fantasies and buying off critics - it actually requires convincing policy integrity: To sound right and be right. Echoes of noodle nation undue complexity perhaps.

4. And of course the Howard dinosaur (re-appears) climate denialism because ecology contradicts libertarian let ‘er rip domination of the eco-sphere and must not be tolerated in a growth fetishest world view. That’s our Johnny alright and the nostalgic ones, including new croppers like Barnaby (who really should know better, like Saul).

“the Government has created a complex ETS that will punish low emitters and reward heavy polluters”

Codswallop; the impact of this policy on the business model of 99% of small emitters is negligible. We know, we do the maths - in many cases we are talking about an impact of less than 2% of turnover usually much. much lower. It does however - significantly influence decisions around energy - which is the intent of the legislation.

ETS Complex; It’s no worse than the original perceived complexity of excluding food from the GST - which actually, wasn’t very complex and we’ve long since gotten over it.

The “complexity” is necessary to achieve the intent of avoiding “carbon leakage” - the utterly pointless effect of exporting production in Australia just to have it’s associated emissions produced elsewhere. A carbon tax rather than an ETS will need to suffer the very same complexity.

Benefitting large emitters? How on earth is an additional cost - “rewarding big emitters” - the only companies being granted EITE status are those whose business model is severely affected by the CPRS - small emitters, are by definition, NOT severely impacted and don’t require compensation.

With reference is to “rewarding” big emitters - if the author referring to the one-off payment to coal fired power stations? Because a) without this payment we would loose 3 gigawatts of generation on July 1 2010 and that would cause a crippling power crisis on the entire eastern seaboard. b) Even with a target of only 5% - the expectation is that once the one off payment to coal emitters has been spent - Hazelwood and Yallorn - will be shut down.

How is forcing huge huge coal plants to be shut down, “benefitting” big emitters and how is that consitent with the claim that there will be”minimal incentives to actually reduce carbon emissions”???????