"Here's a great opportunity for Julia to bring on another tax;
"A Citic Pacific Mining executive has told Julia Gillard yesterday that soaring demand for Australian food, particularly beef, among China's 100 million wealthy people could buffer Australia's economy from the effects of an end to the mining boom."
With that in mind, and being consistent, now would be the perfect time to extend the carbon tax to agriculture."
Well just like the MRRT is in the spirit of the Menzies designed wool tax of the 50's eg dealing with the two speed economic situation and spreading the wealth through the broader economy whilst the opportunity was available to do so in another booming sector where people are making super profits would be smart economic management to help prevent the sort of economic distortion that has occurred in the last decade.
Quote from Menzies
"Now, no country like Australia can suddenly add hundreds of millions to its export income without experiencing the results in terms of high and rising domestic prices and grave inflation of the currency. So far from our controlling inflation, inflation was getting out of hand. It was clear that we must take stringent action. We therefore produced our famous (or, as some people thought, infamous) Budget of 1952. Its two main features were, first, that we budgeted for a large surplus, which involved steely increasing taxation, and second, that we took twenty-five per cent of the wool cheque and put it into a reserve to be made available to the wool-growers at a subsequent time. This was the most unpopular Budget in modern political history, though I have never doubted that it was dead right. The wool-growers showed their resentment at the next election by voting out several of the wool-growing members among our supporters, while the Gallup polls in 1953 showed the Government stocks at the lowest point in recorded history. But the Government stood firm and so did the Government members of Parliament."
