The NSW government has recently issued new ‘Principles for Funding of Legal Assistance Services‘ (‘Principles’) in which they have included a new paragraph designed to limit the capacity of community legal centres (‘CLCs’) and Legal Aid centres to carry out political advocacy or activism:

3. In addition NSW Legal assistance services funded by Legal Aid and Public Purpose funding will not include activities which may reasonably be described as political advocacy or political activism. This may include but is not limited to:

(i) Lobbying governments and elected officials on law reform and policy issues (that goes beyond the activities described at principle 2(vii));

(ii) Public campaigning and advocacy, including use of traditional and social media and participating in rallies or demonstrations for causes seeking changes to government policies or laws;

(iii) Conducting workshops directed to political activism (that goes beyond the activities described at principle 2(v));

(iv) Providing representation or advice (other than initial legal advice as described at principle 1(iii)) to activist groups, lobbying groups and action groups.

The question is whether these Principles breach the implied freedom of political communication under the Australian Constitution. The established test for determining the answer to this question is set out by the High Court in Lange v. Australian Broadcasting Corporation (1997) 189 CLR 520, 567–8:

First, does the law effectively burden freedom of communication about government or political matters either in its terms, operation or effect? Second, if the law effectively burdens that freedom, is the law reasonably appropriate and adapted to serve a legitimate end the fulfilment of which is compatible with the maintenance of the constitutionally prescribed system of representative and responsible government and the procedure prescribed by s 128 for submitting a proposed amendment of the Constitution to the informed decision of the people… If the first question is answered ‘yes’ and the second is answered ‘no’, the law is invalid.

The first issue that must be considered in this case is whether the Principles could be considered to be ‘law.’

The Principles do not appear to be grounded or reflected in legislation or regulations, but they are executive actions of the NSW government and may be subject to the Constitution on this basis. (I’ll return to this issue further below.)

If so, does the ‘law’ effectively burden freedom of communication about government or political matters either in its terms, operation or effect?

By prohibiting CLCs from carrying out political advocacy and activism, the Principles do burden political communication. Of course, the High Court has been clear that ‘the freedom of communication which the Constitution protects is not absolute. It is limited to what is necessary for the effective operation of that system of representative and responsible government provided for by the Constitution.’ [Lange: 561]. As Dan Meagher has argued here, the implied freedom is, thus, directed at protecting political communication that ‘may reasonably be relevant to the federal voting choices of its likely audience.’ (For an extended discussion on how broadly this could – even ought to – be interpreted, see Adrienne Stone here, but for the purposes of this post I’ll confine my arguments to a very limited definition.)
The NSW State government, not the Commonwealth, has imposed the Principles. However, the relevant issue is the effect of the ‘law’ in question, not whether they originate at the Commonwealth level (see, for example, Anne Twomey on this issue here] and these guidelines have been very broadly drafted so as to limit political advocacy and activism on both State and Federal issues. It could certainly be argued that paragraph 3 of the Principles (quoted above) expressly limits the capacity of citizens to receive political communication on issues relevant to the free and informed election of the Commonwealth Senate and Legislative Assembly. Sub-paragraph (iv) also limits the capacity of other groups to freely communicate on these issues. Therefore, (subject to the question of whether they constitute a ‘law’) the answer to the first leg of the Lange test is ‘yes.’

What about the second limb of the test?

Are the Principles ‘reasonably appropriate and adapted to serve a legitimate end the fulfilment of which is compatible with the maintenance of the constitutionally prescribed system of representative and responsible government…?’ Well, the NSW government claims that the purpose (or ‘end’) of the Principles is to ensure ‘that taxpayers’ dollars are earmarked for core legal services and advice.’ This leads to two separate possible arguments.

First, it might be argued that this claimed purpose is not, in fact, the true end of the Principles being imposed by the NSW government. Instead it is arguable that the true purpose of these laws is to suppress political advocacy and activism by CLCs, in which case it could be further argued that the fulfilment of such an end is incompatible with ‘the maintenance of the constitutionally prescribed system of representative and responsible government…’ But this argument would require establishing that the NSW government is being dishonest about its purposes and that wouldn’t be easy.

The second possible argument is that the guidelines in question are not reasonably appropriate and adapted to serve a legitimate end. If the NSW government wants to ensure that its funding of legal services is targeted to specific activities then it could simply specify that its grants are so directed. Instead paragraph 3 of the Principles prohibits CLCs from carrying out political advocacy at all. Since a significant proportion of CLC funding comes from the Commonwealth and private donations (see this Report which states that ‘[i]n 2011/12, the Commonwealth Government provided funding of $7.65M, the NSW Government provided $5.39M, and the PPF provided $5.26M. CLCs also receive some funding from philanthropic organisations and through donations.’), paragraph 3 is drafted overly broadly and serves to suppress political activities even where they are not funded by the NSW government and, thus, unconnected to the stated purpose of the ‘law.’ On the basis of this argument, the answer to the second limb of the Lange test would be ‘no,’ thus making the ‘law’ invalid.

Nonetheless, the remaining issue to be determined is whether this executive action of the NSW government is ‘law’ for the purposes of the Lange test, particularly since it could be argued that as a condition of funding it is not coercive. I’m not sure of the answer to this question. However, I would argue that there are good public policy reasons for including this kind of action under the Lange test.

There are a wide range of public and community institutions that receive government funding and which are essential to the free communication of political information in Australia. These include the ABC, SBS, public libraries, the Australian Film Institute, and a wide range of other service and institutions. If the government were to use conditional funding to severely limit the capacity of all of these institutions to host or participate in political communication (in a similar manner to that recently adopted by the NSW govt towards CLCs) then political communication in Australia would be severely restricted – despite the supposed democratisation of public debate via the medium of social media.

The targeting of CLCs (and Legal Aid) is particularly concerning, because these services are specifically established to support and champion the most disadvantaged groups in Australia. While wealthier groups may have access to either the education or paid advice necessary to properly analyse and critique the laws and policies that affect their lives (and, thus, the informed decision of voters at election time), many disadvantaged groups do not. For these groups to properly engage in public debate on issues of law reform and other complex policy issues, legal support from CLCs is sometimes necessary. To prohibit CLCs from providing this support is to target the political freedom of Australia’s most disadvantaged groups.

[I’ve not touched on the possible relevance of section 96 – the Commonwealth’s power to make conditional grants to the States – because I think the analogy is a bit stretched given that the Constitution makes specific provision for the Commonwealth to attach these conditions to its grants. I also wonder if these conditions could still be challenged where they were to directly breach the Constitution – rather than on the grounds of Commonwealth overreach. For example, would a condition that threatened freedom of interstate trade still be valid?]

* Weekly Reminder: Comments Policy | Netiquette FAQ | rinse-and-repeat news-cycle churn/spin should be taken to the Overflow thread

That’s the title of the Salvation Army’s latest National Economic and Social Impact Survey.

Epithets such as “disturbing” and “alarming” are being used. In the light of our unwillingness to pay more tax, you might add “obscene”.

One child in every six lives below the poverty line in Australia.

According to the Greens fully 14% of single parents surveyed have no place to live: 7% are homeless, and another 7% living in the homes of friends or relatives.

Of respondents on Newstart, 5% are homeless and 4% are living with friends and relatives.

35% of respondents were unable to buy medications prescribed by a doctor.

More than 50% had gone without meals at least one day in the last year. 28% cannot afford a substantial meal once a day.

And so it goes. The impact of legislative changes putting single mothers with children over seven onto Newstart is showing up in the survey.

There is a major problem in rural areas where it can be more difficult to provide help.

The ABC has the story. Thanks to John D for sending me the link.

The actual survey is here (pdf).

QUT News (by journalism students) did a story.

Tell your politicians about this scandal, rub their noses in it.

Meanwhile the Red Shield Appeal is on this weekend.

Ford has been the weakest of the local manufacturers for some time. Nick Gruen – who worked with Hawke government industry minister John Button whose car industry plan delayed this day for at least 20 years – observes that despite continued subsidies Ford has been underinvesting in its local manufacturing for a decade. He suggests that the government should have, instead of continuing subsidies under its present owners who were obviously uninterested, the government should have used the money to encourage and subsidize a sale to a Korean or Chinese manufacturer looking for a halo car for sale both here and overseas.

It’s long been my view that the travails of Australia’s car makers get far more attention than they should. Similar industries have departed offshore over the last 30 years, and we’ve done rather well; there’s nothing special about making cars. And the magnitude of the job losses is miniscule in the context of the broader Australian economy, and nothing like Campbell Newman’s decimation of the Queensland public service. Indeed, across Australia there were 390,000 retrenchments in the 12-month period starting February 2011, which makes the 1600-odd job losses from Ford’s manufacturing shutdown look like a piddle in the ocean.

But such nationwide aggregates can cruelly miss the pain caused to families and communities when a large source of employment disappears. So, rather than just spouting aggregates, I think it’s kind of important to look at what actually happens to communities who undergo factory closures. And – blow me down with a feather – academics have looked at these kinds of questions, and the answers are – surprise surprise – more complex than a simple “oh it’s a disaster” or “things sort themselves out pretty quickly”.

For instance, Chapain and Murle examined the impact of the shutdown of the British sports car maker MG. Despite a relatively benign job market in Britain in this pre-GFC period, there was a real spike in unemployment in the area; however, this did fade over time:

Unemployment in surrounding suburbs of MG factory closures.

However, that didn’t mean that life necessarily returned to normal for the former factory workers and their communities. Long term unemployment seemed to go up significantly and persistently, more than the national average:

Long term unemployment surrounding MG factory

While some of these long-term unemployed were factory workers, not all were; the arrival of a large “spike” of workers from the factory closures probably made it more difficult for other job-seekers. Furthermore, while the article doesn’t cite any quantitative data, it notes anecdotal reports that the jobs that former MG factory workers were getting were less well renumerated than their previous factory work.

Did the loss of MG destroy its surrounding communities? No. Do findings like these justify the billions of dollars we’ve thrown at Ford, both explicitly and implicitly through things like the second hand vehicle tariff, over the years? Not in my view. Could we have spent that money on more useful things? Absolutely. But it’s a nonsense to suggest that a future without Ford won’t involve some pain for its workers, and for Geelong.

The Courier Mail had quite a good piece. If you want pics the BBC has a gallery or enter Oklahoma tornado at Google images. There are some videos collected here. The Courier Mail has a large photo gallery.

Climate Progress revisits tornadoes, extreme weather and climate change. The bottom line is that the jury is out.

In the US tornado alley warm moist air flows north from the Gulf of Mexico in the lower atmosphere and becomes unstable. Dry, cold air comes from the west over the Rockies in the upper atmosphere, with a shear effect to create the top of the column. The warm air becomes unstable and lifts. The shear effect of the upper wind spins the rising column. More air is sucked in by the spinning, rising column. That’s simplistic but those are the basic elements as I understand them.

With climate change the lower atmosphere warm air flow and instability are likely to be enhanced, but there could actually be less wind shear. We don’t know what the result of those factors will be over time, but the suggestion is that if anything there have been fewer severe tornadoes over recent decades.

Kevin Trenberth says:

Tornadoes come from thunderstorms in a wind shear environment. This occurs east of the Rockies more than anywhere else in the world. The wind shear is from southerly (SE, S or SW) flow from the Gulf overlaid by westerlies aloft that have come over the Rockies. That wind shear can be converted to rotation. The basic driver of thunderstorms is the instability in the atmosphere: warm moist air at low levels with drier air aloft. With global warming the low level air is warm and moister and there is more energy available to fuel all of these storms and increase the buoyancy of the air so that thunderstorms are strong. There is no clear research on changes in shear related to global warming. On average the low level air is 1 deg F [warmer] and 4 percent moister than in the 1970s.

There are also problems in counting. Graphs like this one look impressive:

On closer inspection the increase is mainly in the weaker events, which could be due to counting, and even if accurate do not represent a huge concern.

Increased tornado numbers tend to be associated with La Niña years.

Jeff Masters summed up in 2012:

The tornado data base going back to 1950 doesn’t show an increasing trend in strong tornadoes in recent decades. While climate change could potentially lead to an increase in tornadoes, by increasing instability, it could also decrease them, by decreasing wind shear. I’d need to see a lot more bad tornado years before blaming climate change for the severe tornado seasons of the past two years. One thing that climate change may be doing, though, is shifting the season earlier in the year. The 5-day total of tornadoes from February 28 – March 3 will probably break the record of 131 set in 1999 for the largest tornado outbreak so early in the year. Warmer winters, and an earlier arrival of spring due to a warming climate, will allow tornado season to start earlier–and end earlier.

This year the tornado season was actually delayed and the previous 12 months had seen a ‘tornado drought’.

The scale now used in the US since 2007 is the Enhanced Fujita Scale (EF). The scale is based on damage rather than wind speed, since damage provides the evidence for the strength of the event and wind speeds are not almeasured. However, that does translate into bands of wind speed. Essentially EF with winds of 320 kph or more will reduce a house to the concrete slab, so this image is relevant:

The Oklahoma tornado has been classified as EF5.

Moore has been hit by severe tornadoes four times in the last 15 years. In 1999 the winds were recorded at 486 kmh, the highest ever recorded near the earth’s surface.

There’s a simple account of the climate change issue, together with a video explaining tornadoes at The Carbon Brief.

Wikipedia has a comprehensive article on tornadoes.

On the Oklahoma tornado there’s also Andrew Freedman at Climate Central, Brad Plumer at Washington Post and Andrew Revkin at NYT’s Dot Earth.

I didn’t look at the denialist blogs.

While the climate change issue needs to be monitored, the more urgent issues relate to building codes, warning systems (this time about 16 minutes), availability of shelters in public venues like schools (tornadoes typically come late in the day, mercifully), rescue, retrieval, insurance, rebuilding and how the poor get on.

Update:

Of the links in the comments thread Dr Jeff Masters’ Tornadoes and Climate Change: Huge Stakes, Huge Unknowns is a ‘must read’.

A point well made is that severe thunderstorms can be just as dangerous and deadly as tornadoes.

Please share any bits and pieces that have surprised, delighted, intrigued or otherwise positively engaged you.

NB: the weekly whimsy thread is a stoush-free zone

Max Gillies Smith thought the Abbott budget reply a series of stumbles. These include the promise that peoples “fortnightly budgets will be under less pressure as electricity prices fall and gas prices fall and the carbon tax no longer cascades through our economy.”

Brave statement.

He also took money out of the super system, watered down the NBN and and released the GST genii.

The best analysis I’ve seen of Abbott’s budget reply speech, though, has been by Ian McAuley who asks at New Matilda What Is Abbott Really Up To?

Here’s a question: Why was Tony Abbott’s Budget reply so full of basic economic errors?

It was laden with statistical abuses (figures comparing Costello’s and Swan’s budgets), emotive language disconnected from reality (“skyrocketing debt”, “a spiral, deeper and deeper into debt”, “budget emergency”), sophistry (the implied need for “cost of living relief”), unsubstantiated generalisations (“bad government”) and simple fallacies, including a confusion of inflation with wealth (use of house and share prices as measures of wealth) and the unsupported notion that “smaller government” is the path to economic prosperity.

Above all, there was a glaring gap in the Opposition’s arithmetic. Abbott’s promise to cut taxes, increase spending and balance the budget just doesn’t make sense, unless, as is likely, there are yet-to-be-disclosed savage cuts (“cuts to the bone” to use the Government’s focus-group-tested cliché) in big program areas, such as health and education.

McAuley thinks the “illogicalities and falsehoods” may be intentional to throw us off the scent, to mask his real intentions.

McAuley sees Abbott as deeply conservative.

When he says that the coming election will be a referendum on the carbon tax, he’s really referring to a choice between economic modernisation and holding on to our existing industry structure.

“Reactionary economic vision” is the last phrase in the piece, and it may be more appropriate than “conservative” to tell us where Abbott is headed. He seems likely to downsize the economy.

I’m reminded here of Campbell Newman and the LNP in Queensland who trumpet the ‘four economic pillars’ of resources, agriculture, tourism and construction. No recognition of services (other than tourism) and definitely no nonsense about the ‘smart state’.

Conservative governments in the 1950s and 1960s had more vision than that.

McAuley draws attention to Abbott’s statement that government should be “only as big as it needs to be to do what people can’t do for themselves”

a view which, taken to its conclusion, leaves government with no more than a few functions such as defence and handouts to the poor, leaving health care, education and infrastructure all to distorted private markets.

McAuley comments:

It’s a view pushed by extreme economic libertarians, who cannot bring themselves to acknowledge that there are many things the private sector conceivably can do, but which governments do much better. Whether it’s a glib insertion by an economically naive speechwriter or a considered belief is hard to know, but it’s worth watching.

I’ve heard Abbott repeat it. A number of LNP politicians have spoken about the greater need for self reliance.

On the budget bottom line none of the usual economic commentators seems to have done the simplest of calculations, which I can’t do because I don’t have all the information. But here, broadly, is the problem.

Abbott’s starting point is Swan’s budget deficit of $18.6 billion. He accepts Swan’s $43 billion of cuts or “saves” which leaves him at that point. Then he made about $5b of his own. $400 million of that is a mistake, because the the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) is not a budget item.

But the carbon and mining taxes are surely worth more than that (the carbon tax doesn’t shrink until 2015). Then he has to pay for the ‘direct action’ climate change program. His projected savings on asylum seekers are probaly fictitious, at least in the early years.

Laura Tingle made reference to this problem during Insiders on Sunday. McAuley also points to the “glaring gap in the Opposition’s arithmetic.” In the weekend AFR there was an article which had one of those highlighting quotes to the effect that Labor has calculated the shortfall as $26 billion. Unfortunately the relevant text had been edited out of the article.

The purpose of Abbott’s speech was to assure us that the adults would soon be in charge and we could all be relaxed and comfortable. Largely it seems to have worked on the commentariat.

Paul Williams in today’s Courier Mail has several interesting points. One is that Abbott addressed the TV audience as “you”. The Speaker would have been within her rights to make him address his remarks to the chair.

Also he pledged to ensure “the states are sovereign in their own sphere”? This takes us back pre-war and William rightly points out that “a 2010 Galaxy poll found 56 per cent support the states’ abolition.”

Labor has been looking for a point of difference and may have found it in Gonski. I think the politics would work best for Labor if one of Queensland and Victoria signed up. Assuming SA and Tasmania come on board and WA doesn’t that would leave Abbott opposing Gonski and Gillard with significant support.

Meanwhile Rudd is busy fighting the Qld State Government on school closures and other matters. This will help the Labor brand in Queensland and is probably the best contribution he can make, as well as shore up his own seat.

By the way, the gallery that clapped Abbott so enthusiastically was an invited audience. I wonder whether there is scope for games to be played on this one.

One of the often glossed over sticky points for the left on Thatcher’s legacy is of course coal. The Conservative Member of the European Parliament Daniel Hannan makes the point for the Telegraph:

What I find bewildering is why the mine closures are cited now as evidence of Tory wickedness. No one, with the exceptions of the SWP and the BNP, wants to recreate a state-owned coal industry today. Indeed, the people who complain most bitterly about the pit closures are generally those who are most against burning coal.

It is on this issue that the Greens and indeed a decent swathe of the Labor Party find themselves in rather closer political proximity to the Iron Lady than they might like: in recent years, the Greens have been vociferous opponents of both coal-fired power and investing in clean coal technology at the expense of cleaner and more renewable energy sources. The Greens would in an ideal world like to see all of Australia’s coal-fired power stations closed down, something that the Baroness indirectly took a step or two towards in the United Kingdom in the early 1980’s through her program of mine closures. Admittedly, climate change was not in the forefront of anyone’s mind in those days, but the fact remains that if Thatcher was alive and in power today in Australia, closing coal mines across the country, it could, in a strange twist of fate, be perceived as something like a progressive policy. Imagine that: Christine Milne and Margaret Thatcher, arm-in-arm.

In truth, Thatcher’s closure of the pit mines and the reaction of both the blinkered right and the blinkered left to them shines a light on the violence that the oversimplification of issues can bring to bear on ordinary working people. Daniel Hannan is apparently “bewildered” by the outrage still felt by people, decades after the Conservative Party’s role in shutting down unprofitable mining operations across the country. I find his bewilderment bewildering – but then I am sure that Hannan and many others like him will never know what it is like for whole families and whole communities to lose their livelihoods in one swift stroke. He is, at heart, a Eurosceptic who is nevertheless more at home in Brussels than Sheffield; make of that what you will.

Similarly, when the Greens talk about the “transition” to a low carbon economy, it seems to me that there is potentially a great deal of trauma concealed within that rather unfairly peaceful word. If Australia were to scale back its export of coal to China and India on principle, for example, and to commence the shutdown of its existing coal-driven energy industry, how many thousands of jobs would be lost? How many communities near coal mines and coal-fired power stations would be rent asunder? Are the people who are dependent on coal industry for their livelihoods just to be collateral damage in the nation’s drive towards a low carbon economy, much in the same way that mining communities reaped the whirlwinds of Margaret Thatcher’s war on unions and unprofitability in the 1980’s?

I appreciate that tens or hundreds of thousands of jobs stand to be created in the green energy industry in the coming decades – but clearly, it is not simply going to be a case of governments picking up people working in coal mining and energy jobs and dropping them neatly into green energy jobs, as if they were so many Lego figurines. Communities and brown energy workers will need support from government and industry, including compensation and retraining to help them adapt to the “new energy world” that is to be shaped by the increasingly interventionist role that the Federal Government may play in the energy market in the future. It is this sort of detail that gets lost in the sorts of black and white “coal is evil” or “coal is Australia’s economic future” messages that have tended to emanate from all of Australia’s political parties in recent times.

Can Australia reduce its emissions effectively without unleashing the unsympathetic economic trauma of the like perpetrated by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government on mining communities across Britain? Only time will tell, but the signs are not that promising, and the playing field in any case looks set to be flipped end over end all over again come September, creating even more uncertainty.

This CC concentrates on climate mitigation, the practical stuff, rather than science, observations and future predictions. What I’m stepping around at the moment is politics, policy, opinion etc.

1. Renewables in surprising places

This image at Clean Technica indicates the potential of renewable energy. Please note that the amounts for coal etc are total reserves, whereas the renewables are annual.

I’m not sure the natural gas is accurate as there is a lot of unconventional gas around.

2. Countries with over 60% renewable energy

Karl-Friedrich Lenz, a German law professor in Tokyo, has compiled a list of countries with over 60% renewable energy. There is a lot of hydro in the 45 countries listed. Iceland with 26.27 geothermal and Portugal with 27% wind are notable.

Wikipedia has a list of all countries, somewhat out of date. It’s hard to get a ranking excluding hydro and lists of wind and solar are a bit hard to come by. Perhaps readers have seen some.

I extracted this list from the US Department of Energy 2011 Wind Technologies Market Report (pdf):

The top 10 countries are European, then India.

This link gives the top solar countries mixed with US states in terms of watts per capita. Again the European countries take the top ten except for Australia in 9th spot.

It’s interesting that Professor Lenz gave up advocacy for nuclear because of the “intolerable opposition to renewable energy of most of the pro-nuclear bloggers.”

3. Cheap solar panels coming our way

China hardly rates on the per capita graph, but nevertheless its solar production and use is large in absolute terms.

Tristan Edis tells of the huge subsidies imposed by the US and Europe on Chinese imports solar panels. This pie chart shows the global PV demand in 2013:

I believe we do have one solar panel manufacturer, but tariffs are not our style.

As expected China is not amused, so who knows what will happen!

4. China invests in our grid

They are here, and in the long run may have much to contribute. China has bought into Australian utilities through the purchase of part of the electricity and gas distribution interests from Singapore Power. The Chinese outfit is State Grid Corporation, the largest utility company in the world.

They will be a passive investor, but State Grid is regarded as a world leader in ultra high-voltage technology and smart grids. So in the long run their technology may help us to modernise. A sign of how the future will unfold.

5. Milan’s vertical forest

Architect Stefano Boeri plans to bring the forest to the city by planting 480 big and medium-size trees, 250 small trees, and roughly 11,000 groundcover plants on two new buildings in Milan. It’s the equivalent of a hectare (10,000 sqm) of forest.

6. European cities adapt

Last year the European Environment Agency (EEA) produced a report Urban adaptation to climate change in Europe downloadable here. Green spaces on roof tops are eye-catching and valuable, but the report is far more extensive in it’s coverage, containing numerous maps of the projected impacts of climate change. Together with the European Climate Adaptation Platform Climate-ADAPT reports from the EEA make a valuable resource for policy makers and practitioners.

7. New technology

New technology appears at a bewildering rate. Here are some that have crossed my path in the past few days.

A new solar cell printer installed at CSIRO’s Melbourne labs is allowing scientists to produce Australia’s largest thin film solar cells, at 10 times their previous size.

Purchased over the last three months, the $200,000 printer has allowed researchers from the Victorian Organic Solar Cell Consortium (VICOSC) – a collaboration between CSIRO, the University of Melbourne, Monash University and industry partners – to print organic photovoltaic cells the size of an A3 sheet of paper.

Australia is [now] definitely up there with the best in the world – and vastly increases the range applications the solar cells can be used for. “We can set them into advertising signage, powering lights and other interactive elements,” says Dr Watkins. “We can even embed them into laptop cases to provide backup power for the machine inside.”

Local company Dyesol has announced a ‘game changing’ technical breakthrough’: the achievement of a solid-state Dye Solar Cell (DSC) efficiency of 11.3 per cent at full sun – up from 5 per cent in 2010.

Dyesol says it is also confident of achieving industrial efficiencies greater than 10 per cent because of the added simplicity of working with solid-state systems. This would make the technology grid competitive, says the company – “the ‘holy grail’ for renewable energy technologies.” The achievement is particularly important in solar markets where light conditions are sub-optimal, such as Europe, North America and North-East Asia, where Dyesol technology has a considerable advantage over 1st and 2nd generation photovoltaic technologies.

The University at Buffalo in New York is working on a new affordable solar paint.

Then scientists at Yale have improved the ability of a promising type of solar cell to absorb light and convert it into electrical power by adding a fluorescent organic dye to the cell.

Meanwhile new electricity in California is to be nearly 100% solar.

Utility scale PV plants are now cost-effective in Oregon.

The Australian Government has released a clean energy map showing activity around the country.

I think there is a fair chance that an Abbott government would find the whole direct action, or most of it, unaffordable in the context of the presumed ‘budget crisis’. If so the world will simply pass them by.

Be that as it may, the facts are pretty straightforward. While the idea that Australia faces a “budget emergency” is bullshit, we do have some decisions to make. Australia’s governments do not raise enough tax revenue to pay for the services we want. Over the medium term, taxation is going to have to go up and/or services and transfer payments are going to have to be reduced. There are undoubtedly specific expenditures that we could all pick out for cuts – Collins-Class Mk II is top of my list, as is the billions we are wasting being cruel to asylum-seekers in a futile attempt to wheedle out of the our legal and moral obligations. But, overall, I think I’m on fairly safe territory in suggesting that the consensus opinion among LP readers is that government should be doing more, not less. In that case, we need to pay somehow. And if conservatives want to raise more tax revenue rather than mindlessly slashing services as is their usual wont, so much the better…

Except that nagging little question – who pays?

As was noted at LP back when we marked the tenth anniversary of the GST, the GST is a regressive tax, because the poorer you are, the more of your income you spend rather than save. The exemption of fresh food, along with the compensatory pension increases and tax cuts, meant the net effect on income distribution was minimal. Cuts to the top marginal rate of income tax, before and since, had far more effect in skewing the distribution of income and wealth.

Economists like the GST because it is a relatively efficient tax; however, its economic benefits over income taxes are exaggerated, as John Quiggin wrote some time ago:

More subtly, the same kind of argument applies to the case for preferring taxes on consumption to taxes on investment. If we tax consumption, we are likely to increase savings and therefore have higher income in the future. But that isn’t necessarily a good thing. To assess the impact on economic welfare we need to take into account both the present costs (less consumption now) and the future benefits (more consumption later). Under standard assumptions, these two will approximately cancel out for low and moderate rates of income (RM: I assume JQ meant to say “income growth”)

Given that an Abbott government seems to prefer the thought of GST increases or base-broadening to the mining tax, one can only assume that this is because the thought of the disproportionately well-off shareholders in mining receiving lower dividends offends his sensibilities. As such, I rather doubt an Abbott government would be as attentive to mitigating the impact on the least well-off as the Democrat-prodded Howard government was back in 2001.

It’s not like there aren’t plenty of alternatives. Getting rid off the tax lurks that the rich take disproportionate advantage of, such as abolishing negative gearing, or getting serious about reducing superannuation tax concessions. Reintroducing fuel excise indexation, and/or including petrol and diesel in the carbon price – yes, these are regressive, but that can be compensated for. The states could stop crying poor and introduce land taxes to replace stamp duty, not only raising revenue but abolishing one of the most economically destructive taxes remaining on the books. Or – shock horror – increasing the income tax rates that apply to the best-off.

So, yes, the rate of the GST, and the scope of exemptions, should indeed go back on the agenda. But let’s be serious for a moment and acknowledge that the primary appeal of this particular revenue-raising option to the Tories over the potential alternatives is that it hits the well-off, very-well off and the extremely well-off most lightly.