Saying 'Yes' to what?

First, the Productivity Commission asserts that pricing carbon directly "generally will deliver any given amount of abatement at least cost". That makes common sense – send clear cost signals to businesses and they will respond. Easy.

It then launches into hundreds of pages of comparison and analysis of the measures implemented in Germany, Britain, China, India and the US but declares its inability to come up with carbon price equivalents in each country. Fair enough, I'm no economist but I assume there would be numerous variables in the way each country runs.

There has, however, been considerable backlash. As The Australian diplomatically put it "not all green policies are good policies".

Quite right too.

Not quite so fair though to use the Productivity Report as evidence for Labor's economic ineptitude… not to mention the Greens' strange love affair with renewables and the Opposition's bad habit of just being plain old wrong when it comes to climate change.

The Productivity Commission Report does not advocate for the abandonment of renewables (as The Australian implies, heavily). It says that the UK did well switching from coal to gas. It also doesn't comment on how well they'll be doing when the gas runs out… but most definitely does not say that Australia should switch to gas instead of renewables (or eat oranges instead of apples for that matter).

Equally, when The Australian said "the Commission.. is unable to make the obvious point – Australia would want to avoid the German model at all costs", what it was actually trying to say is that the Productivity Report has concluded it cannot come up with scheme equivalents in each country. Rather, it can present a survey of what several countries are doing and what elements work, and what elements don't in each of their respective contexts.

Thus, one can assume that the point is - Australia needs to come up with an "Australian made pollution price". That is, a price that meets the needs of a historically resource-dependent economy whilst capitalising on being one of the sunniest and windiest countries in the world. That's what we'll say YES to.