You've got to be f******g Sh*tting me.

I just received a letter from someone claiming to be "my neighbour", spruiking the benefits of the carbon dioxide tax. This on a day when the global economy looks like it is finally going to take the belly flop off the cliff that I predicted a while back. What was most offensive, was that it was a letter template from SayYesAustralia, the organisation that Cate Blanchett did that ridiculous television ad for. I got cranky, and thought it only fair that I reply. Please consider the letter that follows to be a template that any of you out there who recieved a similar "my neighbour" letter can use in response.

Dear XXX, my “Neighbour”,

I just received your mail out today, and I have to say I was quite offended by the content therein. Firstly, the basic premise of you feeling that you need to tell me what to think about the Labour-Green Government’s carbon dioxide tax is offensive in the main, as I was raised with the firm etiquette that inquiring about how one votes, ones political affiliations and how much money one earns is the worst sort of crass.

Secondly, I find that the subject matter that was espoused in your missive represents the worst sort of dishonesty. For starters, the letter that you sent was not penned by you, which I would have accepted as an expression of your own viewpoint, however unwelcome. It was compiled by a consortium of politically motivated organisations, and amounts to propaganda of the worst kind. Not only that, but the issue which it sought to address was fundamentally misrepresented. Not once in that execrable piece of junk that you gleefully put your name to was the term “carbon dioxide” mentioned. It referred several times to “carbon” and a price on same, which is somewhat of a misnomer. Carbon, as most of us know it, is the stuff left over in a fireplace or on a burnt piece of toast, so one could be forgiven for thinking that “carbon pollution” refers to the worst kind of industrial effluent. Soot, if you will. Carbon dioxide on the other hand, which the subject tax of your letter refers to, is not a blackened by-product of industry, it is plant food, and essential to life.

To say that I was cranky upon receiving your letter probably undersells the eyes-rolling-back-in-the-head irritability that ensued. I was ropable in the extreme. In a bid to talk myself out of calling you at home and giving you a piece of my mind, I drank half a bottle of chardonnay (and I don’t even like chardonnay) and ate a three week old wheel of camembert I found in the bottom of the fridge that I suspect by all appearances my youngest child attempted to eat with their feet). At first I told myself that you were probably a teenager, feeling strongly about things you’re yet too young to understand, unfortunately, with the marvels of the internet, it took me only a matter of minutes to establish that not only are you an adult with school age children, but also your home ‘phone number, mobile number and street address. Whilst I commend your courage in placing your name so freely in the public domain, (after all, there wouldn’t be a ‘phone book without people like you) I must counsel caution. I myself am a fairly reasonable human being, I recognise your right to a difference of opinion and firmly recognise that it is impossible to legislate against stupidity, and had you not cluttered up my mailbox, I would have been happy to live and let live sans reply of this nature. However, given that a recent Galaxy poll showed the stable figure of 55% of people being against the carbon tax versus 37% in favour, it would appear incumbent upon you to let discretion be the better part of valour on this highly politicised and emotive issue, especially given the fact that the global economy seems to be sliding into an abyss. Just a heads up that not everyone you letter-box dropped may be so reasonable in the upcoming financial and philosophical climate.

Not only am I a single parent living in a rental property that costs $18,000 per year, with gas-ducted heating and several mouths to feed at prices that are some of the highest in the developed world, I also work at the local public hospital. Guess what? Hospitals are not being compensated under the proposed Gillard government carbon dioxide tax. A hospital energy bill runs into the millions per annum, and under this proposed carbon dioxide tax, energy utility bills are set to rise by around 20%. How do you propose the hospital meet the extra costs? Should people such as I lose their jobs in a cost cutting exercise? Are you personally volunteering to wait longer in the Emergency Department for treatment? At present, key performance indicators at this hospital call for a Category 4 triage patient to be seen within about 3 hours of presentation, that’s a long time to be sitting around with a broken limb, and we don’t always meet it anyway. Are you seriously telling me that you will be OK with, for instance, a 6 hour wait to be seen if your little one breaks their arm on the jungle-gym? How about 8 hours? Or even 12? And that’s just to see the junior doctor who will inform you that, yes, indeed, the limb is broken. So this is not withstanding how long it takes the orthopaedic surgeon to get around to seeing you. Perhaps instead, we should have a garage sale and on-sell the new PET-CT machine that cost this community so dear? I’m sure that the next time you or someone else you know is investigated for cancer, you won’t mind a 2 hour drive to access the next available machine.

Finally, I note with interest, that at no stage do you, SayYesAustralia who authored your letter template, or the Gillard Government, actually quantify the exact amount of warming that will be averted by knee-capping our entire economy and beggaring our way of life, based on current (albeit essentially flawed) modelling. In case you haven’t pondered this yet, estimates run around 0.01 of a degree Celsius. That, to me, does not seem worth it, and I withhold my thanks at your misguided and somewhat rude attempt to change my mind.

Sincerely Yours,

Your Neighbour.