Please tell me this is a joke.
It certainly doesn't *look* like a joke.I read the Sydney Morning Herald on a semi-regular basis and from what I can tell this tax is *very* unpopular.Perhaps "naturalman1975",an Aussie member who I've pinged,might want to weigh in on this.He's right up to date on Australian politics and current events.
100% serious. Leftists gone wild, in this case a Greens-Labor government.
There is no general constitutional protection of freedom of speech (or anything much else) in Australia, so anything that can get through parliament is the law of the land (unless it demeans illegal immigrants arriving by boat, in which case the High Court will strike it down).
This piece of garbage (the law) barely scraped through parliament, and is the responsibility of both an incompetent and malicious Prime Minister desperate to cling to power and of “independents” thinking they can engage with rabid leftists.
The Labor party didn’t win enough seats in the last election to retain government. Thankfully, the Greens had managed to get one (1) member of parliament elected, so their leader Julia Gillard, whose electorate is very blue-collar industrial with an oil refinery, a Toyota factory, small manufacturing, and logistics depots, naturally took all of two nanoseconds to throw her own constituents under the bus, climb into bed in with the Greens, and renege on an explicit campaign promise not to introduce a carbon tax.
Because that was what she had to do for her and The Party to cling to power, that’s what she did, her constituents be damned.
There are also a number of “independent” parliamentarians whose votes were needed for Labor to maintain power, and who could have stopped this insane, reckless government at any time in the last few years, but chose not to. They are equally culpable.