You might be of an older generation. The finance guys I know are firmly in the cowboy camp and they absorbed that culture from the funds they're in.
In any case, you're dancing but staying on the same spot. Preservation of capital (profit), stability (stable profit), long term benefit (long term profit) and certainty (certainty of profit making). I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad thing, I just don't see how you can argue that a price signal isn't a valid way to change behaviour. You could make a case to say that the money should have been recycled back in to industry to help with the adjustment as in Scandinavia. I could buy that. Unfortunately the Opposition of the time made it an issue of a tax on consumers making it politically difficult.
I'm sorry but you're going to have to extrapolate out a bit what you mean by positive change in a business sense. To me it sounds like 'positive' moves to invest/profit, as I said before. If it's some kind of feels thing you've lost me.
Don't dump that conspiracy rubbish on my doorstep you know it won't fly. It's hardly earth shattering to point out that companies in extractive energy industries with a huge amount of their assets tied up in that sector would prefer the status quo. That's not to say the large ones haven't got a plan b but there's no doubt that things like decentralised grids pose a threat to their primacy in the world. Most of the them will still make money, granted, but will they always be the titans they are now? Would be fair easier for another more nimble company, not tied up with all of the baggage from the fossil fuel days, to take that position.
The tax to me was not only a negative policy but also a big clumsy one. Like people, not all jurisdictions are the same and thus will have better and worse environmental footprints. So what is the point of punishing a jurisdiction because its most logical outcome is not optimal for australia as a whole? Surely we should look to improve all jurisdictions but the real measure of our succes is australia as a whole.
So with a few basic principles in mind being:
1) horses for courses. some places may have different energy mix solutions to others.
2) have a measured target goal for australia measured against time. thus a quota may start small or large but can grow over time.
3) consider the economic impact. $23/t was loonie, we need to consider how we compare globally.
4) set a platform of certainty. Shifting to a market price was dangerous as it open the whole economy to a strangle arbitrage from global arb funds.
So by dividing up Australia into jurisdictions and setting up a quota desk for each place that guarantees to by a certain quota of electricity from the market place with floor and ceiling prices for a certain quality of power. ie a quota of power delivered within specifications of sulphur, co2 etc. ie 100mw with a footprint of less tha x tonnes of carbon, x sulphur and companies can tender into the quota. This quota is sold on a priority basis into the market.
This has many benefits being optimal outcomes by jurisdiction, a guaranteed and measurable pollution reduction, price effective, can be staged or modular, avoids financial arbitrage, cuts out merchant banks and most of all sets a competitive but stable platform for investment into the sector knowing their is a market.
These desks also become assets and can be sold in the future. It is also future proof.
oh and yes you're right re your comments on profit. For me business isn't just a measure of profit rather it is about making a positive difference. I find spivs, sharks, arbs and market manipulators disgusting. A common tactic of these types of investors are day traders and short sellers. I they start to appear on my register, I simply put the stock into a trading halt and let their margin calls get called. Suddenly your register returns to long term investors aligned with the goal of a long term business.
Imagine if we went to a market based price and arb funds shorted high CO2 producing stock and at the same time bought the CO2 permits and strangled the businesses. Then bought the stock back twice over and then sell the permits back into the market? our whole Fn economy could played by the George Soros types.