PENSIONER households will be on average $210 a year better off after receiving upfront assistance under the carbon tax deal that is now certain to pass Parliament, with another lower house independent pledging support.

The government plans to deliver a pension increase and an earlier-than-normal cost-of-living rise to ensure pensioners can cope when the $23-a-tonne tax adds less than 1 per cent to household costs from July 1 next year.

The Herald has learnt that the government will spend $1 billion of pollution tax revenue over four years buying carbon abatement from farmers, on top of the money that industry will pay for agricultural offsets once the tax switches to a trading scheme. Farmers will not pay the tax but stand to reap big gains from the measures, which were pushed by the independents Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor.

The Australian government has unveiled plans to impose a tax on carbon emissions for the worst polluters.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard said carbon dioxide emissions would be taxed at A$23 ($25; £15) per tonne from 2012.

The country's biggest economic reform in a generation will cover some 500 companies. In 2015, a market-based trading scheme will be introduced.

Households are expected to see consumer prices rise by nearly 1%, and the move has been criticised by the opposition.

Critics argue the levy would damage economic competitiveness.

Australia is one of the world's worst emitters of greenhouse gases per head of population.

The country relies on coal for 80% of its electricity generation, and is a major coal exporter.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-14096750

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/we-answer-the-carbon-tax-questions/story-fn7x8me2-1226091830525

From Alan Kohler at Unleashed

Australia's latest, and probably its last, climate change scheme is the child of a marriage between unstoppable bureaucratic momentum and political desperation.

Sometimes politicians act ahead of the curve with economic reforms - Bob Hawke did it in 1983 when he floated the dollar - but most of the time the momentum for reform becomes unstoppable and the politicians simply run out of excuses to avoid it.

That's what happened with emissions trading, although it's pretty ironic that four years after a bureaucratic task force first recommended emissions trading, and 11 years after Kyoto, it gets up during a flimsy hung parliament.

The key shift that occurred in the so-called Multi Party Committee on Climate Change (basically the real Federal Cabinet) is that the dial has been turned towards "tougher on business", through a high starting price and a higher long-term abatement target.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/07/11/3266125.htm

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Australia's latest, and probably its last, climate change scheme?.... You've got to be kidding Alan!!!... By 2032, you'll be cursing yourself that Australia didn't do far more sooner... Your right wing tendencies are reasonably moderated on the ABC. But why are you still playing the fence-sitting game and tearing your trousers on this issue? Any economist who sits on the fence is actually doing a good job for Tony Abbott's ludicruous — and I suppose yours — understanding of climate change. Alan, answer truthfully: do you believe in climate change? Do you know what climate change is? Is there anything we can do about it? Should we do nothing about it? These are the real questions. The rest is only political fiddle that confuses the issue in which, of course, you are playing, dare I say, your science-ignorant part. Please blame Tony Abbott for having forced this quite complex but necessary scheme upon us, by default...

from Annabel Crabb at Unleashed

...

After all that pain, though, Julia Gillard now has some firm ground. She has an agreement that is virtually guaranteed to pass Parliament. She has answers to the questions people have been asking for months. She has a bag full of Treasury modelling, and the airspace to use it.

What does Tony Abbott have? He has the reflexive sympathy of anyone who thinks the Labor Government has been incompetent and unreliable. For months, he's had the perfectly reasonable argument that the Prime Minister should release the details of her plans to enact this considerable reform to our economy. And now that she has, he reserves the right to disbelieve anything she says. Yesterday, as Mr Abbott mounted his case against the newly-disclosed carbon tax scheme, he resorted regularly to an implied disbelief of the assumptions and calculations behind the scheme, over and above its policy aspirations. Certainly, Mr Abbott is entitled to question the Government's bona fides. But its calculations? Mr Abbott distrusts climate scientists and economists, and has a long-standing suspicion of Treasury modellers as well, given their historic differences over the sensitive issue of whether Mr Abbott is economically illiterate.

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Hey Annabel!... it's not a sensitive issue... most economists (not that some of them are good reference points) know that Abbott is economically illiterate and we all should know also that his "social-moire understanding" is zip too.. Abbott's strength is in telling porkies with a certain amount of conviction... and having a good media support (mostly the Murdoch pigpen) behind him...

The effect of misinformation on memory and reasoning cannot be completely eliminated, even after it has been corrected numerous times, say Australian psychologists.

Assistant Professor Ullrich Ecker and colleagues from The University of Western Australia outline their findings in a recent article published in Psychonomic Bulletin and Review .

Ecker says this effect, known as 'continued influence effect of misinformation', occurs even if the retraction itself is understood, believed, and remembered.

In their latest set of experiments, which builds on previous research, the researchers manipulated the strength of both the provided misinformation and the later retraction.

Repetition was used to more strongly encode the misinformation. Cognitive loading, when attention is divided between two tasks, was used to weaken or dilute the messages.

More than 160 undergraduate students were recruited and randomly placed in test groups of approximately 20. They were given a news report based on a warehouse fire.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2011/07/11/3265013.htm

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We all know how little shit Abbott repeats his crappy messages ad nauseum in order to get the upper hand... Hopefully, we will be able to counteract his virulent porkies, but it's hard work as most of the media is on his side...