Too important?
Looks like the government thinks climate change is too important for democracy, as it continues to make arrangements for the ETS despite it being defeated in the Senate, and despite it almost certainly being defeated again in February:
The federal government is pushing ahead with its planned emissions trading scheme by moving to engage experts to run complex auctions of millions of carbon emissions permits each year, despite legislation for the ETS being defeated in the Senate last week for the second time.
The Department of Climate Change called on Friday for tenders from companies wanting to design, operate and manage the auctions, Fairfax newspapers say.
The department also said it will issue a separate tender request early next year for settlement services for the hundreds of financial transactions expected to be generated by the auctions under the scheme.
The auctions cannot start unless the legislation for the scheme passes the Senate, which seems unlikely after the Coalition dumped its support for emissions trading policy under its new leader, Tony Abbott.
Not quite sure the legality of spending taxpayer money without the authority of parliament, and not sure how the successful tenderers will react when in February, the ETS is defeated again, and they’re told that their contracts have just been torn up.
Read it here.
Australian Climate Madness 
Considering the burgeoning highly-paid empire that k.d. wong is building up over at the Dept of Climate Change, I guess she has to put them to work doing something other than digging holes and filling them back in again:
http://greenjobswatch.blogspot.com/2009/08/found-at-last-14-green-jobs.html
http://greenjobswatch.blogspot.com/2009/08/green-jobs-mushrooming-over-at-dcc.html
I notice that they are so ashamed about all this largesse that they have removed their org chart from their website:
http://www.climatechange.gov.au/about/pubs/dcc-org.pdf (Gone!!)
So are KRudd and Co going to apply an ‘obscure latin-romanesque little ditty’ to the Constitution to bypass the Senate vote to get their own way??
Don’t laugh- Something similar has been done before!
Aust Constitution recognises only 2 forms of govt- Federal and State, NOT Local govt.
Two referendums held re-Local Govt, both resoundly defeated.
The little ditty was Ultra Vires!!
And presto, we now have a Local Govt Act.
Who did this??
Bob Hawke, of course.