Sue Bradford Take a Bow

I just found this recent speech by Sue Bradford:

It’s quite mindbending in its own way to think that back in 1908 when our courageous Red Fed forebears went on strike for a proper lunch break and for the right to take collective action in their own interests, they would have had no concept that in a hundred years’ time we might be facing the realities of peak oil and irreversible human induced climate change.

Of course back then we didn't have jet travel, the Internet, a law against smacking children, electric heating, Scientology, environmentalists and the Green Party.

On balance, a wonderful age.

At the same time we’ve got peak oil – the point where half the oil in the world has been extracted and global maximum oil production is reached. This is not the end of oil, but it is the end of cheap oil, as we see every time we go to fill our cars up at the petrol station. We’ll be paying $2 a litre within months, and I think the climb to $3 will happen quite quickly after that.

We certainly will if the government has anything to do with it. But let's not forget that half of of the cost of petrol is tax. For the price to climb to $3 a litre the oil price will have to double, to $200 a barrel. Could happen, but it's unlikely.

A much easier way for Sue to ensure that prices hit $3 a barrel is to put up petrol taxes again. As I understand it the current tax is about $0.50 per litre, plus about $0.20 for GST. If Bradford wanted cheap petrol I know where she could start.

And later:

Fighting for the rights and welfare of low paid workers and beneficiaries should not be incompatible with fighting for the electrification of Auckland’s rail system, or indeed the extension of much needed public transport in all parts of urban, provincial and rural New Zealand. A day is going to come when people in places like this will no longer accept the almost total dependence on the private motor car – if we are going to keep our rural communities alive, we need public transport here too.

This is surely meaningless drivel. Most people are thrilled with the private motor car, they just wish they had a nicer one. The Greens imagine that we desperately want higher petrol taxes. No amount of saying 'we don't want higher petrol taxes' is going to convince them that we in fact don't want higher petrol taxes. Unlike jet travel and the Internet, some things never change.