Chip off the old block appals unlikely allies

Alan Ramsey SMH

Tasmania’s Eric Abetz, a Howard junior minister, merely abused Milne for her “bizarre and confused ramble”, and no other senator spoke. The Senate then voted 34 to 32 to block any inquiry into the legislation by a Senate committee, with Labor, the Democrats and Greens opposing the Coalition’s majority, and there the issue lapsed. Whatever its reasons, the Howard government did not go ahead with the legislation that day last September, even though it had the numbers to do so, and when next the Parliament met, almost four months later, on February 12, the earth had moved and Labor was in power. You might have thought the Coalition’s “appalling” tax measure died with the Howard administration. Well, no, it didn’t. But first, some more background.

The Howard bill proposed two measures. One, it offered grants for tobacco growers who left the industry. And two, more significantly, it offered lucrative tax concessions for the establishment of so-called forest carbon sinks. That is, corporate investors could put money into plantations of new trees as a tradeable tax break to offset the carbon emissions being belched into the atmosphere by Australian industry. Read more here