The Parliamentary Liberal Party is an illiberal, shambles at present and the National Party is worse – the performance of Andrew Robb, Nick Minchin, Tony Abbott and the ‘mouth frothers’ Barnaby Joyce and Wilson Tuckey has left this scribe’s perception of these political parties in tatters .
The one positive that comes out of conservative politics in Australia at present is Malcolm Turnbull. I appreciated this accurate, balanced commentary from the SMH.
In 15 minutes the Party will vote on Turnbull’s leadership and some say that even if he retains the leadership that he does so temporarily since his support base has crumpled. I’ll update as the day goes on.
Update 1: 1.23pm: No spill. Motion lost 48-35 in a secret ballot. Only 42% of the Liberal Party seek the mass suicide option. I’ll outsource to The Punch, further updates.
Update 2: Abbott resigns from the front bench after he and Minchin cannot persuade Turnbull to force a delay in considering the CPRS until after Copenhagen. This looks serious for Turnbull and I doubt he can survive. The impact of the denialists in the Coalition has been – at best – to force an expensive, unnecessarily expensive and ineffective CPRS on Australia. At worse – for the Liberal Party – no CPRS will now be passed and Australia will be identified as an immoral, untrustworthy nation in the midst of the global climate change crisis. A double dissolution of parliament seems likely in which case the Coalition will suffer further permanent electoral damage.
“The Parliamentary Liberal Party is an illiberal, shambles at present and the National Party is worse”
Presumably because they’re not as one on AGW and/or Labor’s Carbon Profiteering Rorts Scheme Harry?. That may yet prove to be a much wiser and more sensible approach than the unified Groupthink at EAU’s Climate Research Unit, if the emails coming from there and the growing world scientific community’s response to them are anything to go by Harry. This is big and getting bigger by the hour and the Groupthinkers are looking wobbly all of a sudden. Even Monbiot has ditched the Groupthink now and you get the feeling a lot of important people might have to face the future question- Which side of the fence were you on with the Great AGW Groupthink disaster? MSM are switching on everywhere to this distinct possibility now.
I could argue with you on conventional lines, Observa, but I’ll just say that I think politicians have a responsibility to be informed on the political implications of what I regard as mainstream science – in this case climate science.
I have voted consistently for the conservative side of politics for 30 years.
I have respected Nick Minchin and Tony Abbott for years but wonder whether I have misjudged them. Are they just crass politicians who derive their views from their immediate political groupings and from websites promoting junk science? Do they read, do they seek to be informed?
They seem to be totally uninformed on the issue of climate change and yet it is an issue about which they have strong strident views. Minchin cites Plimer as an authority on climate science and sees Copenhagen as a communist conspiracy. Abbott supported the Howard ETS but opposes the current ETS which is essentially the same.
Moreover, both of this pair are prepared to sacrifice the electoral prospects of their party on the basis of the views of a scientific lunatic fringe. No matter how much I detest the heavy hand of the socialists I will never again vote for people Like Abbott or Minchin.
Oh and Observa I am not interested in entering into the debate as to whether warming is (continuing) to occur and that it is for the most part linked to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.
Fair enough Harry but consider this. I’m an agnostic on AGW but am vehemently opposed to global ETS and carbon credit creation, particularly after the GFC we’ve just been through. So much for belief in unelected officials to monitor and control money supply via the credit creation process. However I’m totally convinced we need to move to greater reliance on resource taxing generally for the obvious reasons. That includes straight carbon taxing for the peak oil problem but mainly because it’s use is the means by which we convert our natural environment so rapidly for our wants. You’re correct that generally the market side of politics hasn’t really comprehensively addressed environmental concerns in the electorate generally.
Whist I think there’s a vacuum there, Coalition pollies have every right to be deeply skeptical of global ETS. Many of them would know first hand what a can of worms it really is practically speaking and would be rightly suspicious of the motives of its advocates. They would be close to the practical problems I outlined with La Trobe for example and would be opposed to what they’d regard as a pile of stinking manure. I must say in their place I’d be tempted to abstain on voting on mass for anything to do with Rudd Labor’s CPRS and give them enough rope to hang themselves on it. Turnbull and Co have no doubt argued that whatever their thoughts an ETS has been sold to the electorate and that being the case, it’s their side’s beholden duty to make the best of it and curb its worst excesses and any unforseen/ignorant mistakes on behalf of the Govt. In the end that stance has prevailed but there would be many still with the stench of manure in their nostrils, me included. That’s politics but it remains to be seen who is wisest wrt an ETS over the long haul. You need to understand that there will be many like me who see an ETS as a policy of no (or extremely difficult)return, much like water rights and the MDB nowadays. If Rudd Labor had implemented an immediate and regular timetable of planned increases in carbon tax with offsetting income tax immediately they took office, there would have been real accrued results and much less angst now. That of course is not their honest and open agenda with an ETS.
As an aside here Harry you do have to consider EAU’s CRU emails as evidence of an Abu-Ghraib moment. Not fatal to an overall AGW beacon of light perhaps, but nevertheless extremely unhelpful to the cause. My sage advice is don’t defend their rogue behaviour or you’ll be run over by a morally outraged scientific community aware of the threat to their integrity and standing with the broader public.
Yes, they are just crass politicians who derive their views from their immediate political groupings plus any immediate short-term advantage they may derive from their position. What are you, born yesterday?
I do not share the views expressed here. An ETS is folly in principle and much greater folly in current timing. Too often those supporting an ETS appeal to science for support: as an appeal to authority (Turnbull on radio with Alan Jones); to hundreds of lines of research (Monbiot); to tens of thousands of papers (newpaper letters). Yet, when you look further, there seems little agreement in spite of huge public expenditures. Basic measurements are in dispute; there is no agreement about the atmospheric residence time of Carbon, for example; much of the “science” is numerical modelling done by people who share and do not independently construct their own modelling code. And as modelling is only possible on a scale that is too large to be used predictively, and since predictions well into the future are not disprovable, it is not science anyway. The most reliable conclusion is that human activity has some impact on climate; that this is probably negligible or, at least, tolerable with adaptation/mitigation policies; that even if there is some warming in the long run (the world seems headed for a multi-decadal cool period), this may be beneficial (for example, in developing countries). Current reports from the UK of the shameful death rate of old people from cold, should put most people off an ETS.
Sir Henry, Your sarcastic retort may well be justified – maybe I was naive. But I always thought Minchin was a capable politician who listened to reason. Very much so too for Abbott. I admit I may well have been looking for years at political gloss not intellectual integrity. If that is the case, yes I was a dummy.
Ian, Your response is confused – you alternative between attacking an ETS and then jumping on climate science. An ETS is the cheapest way of controlling emissions if you wish to hit an emissions target. On the science – the uncertainties are great but where is the science that provides a better account of what is happening to climate. Finally, attacking theory on the basis of uncertainty is a two-edged sword – things might be much worse than we expect.
I’d agree with Ian that all too often skepticism about a global ETS is deemed to be flying in the face of proven science when belief in AGW and a belief in ETS are really two separate issues. AGW fans like FOE and the Greens are increasingly lining up with Coalition skeptics on ETS and they’re not alone by the results of a survey taken last weekend-
“The Survey, commissioned by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Queensland, released by ACCI and undertaken by Galaxy Research over the weekend, indicates that:
• 71% believe a CPRS will raise electricity prices;
• 49% believe there would be job losses if we move in isolation;
• 82% do not believe enough information has been provided about the CPRS; and
• 54% believe Australia should delay introduction of a CPRS until after Copenhagen.”
That’s where many Coalition pollies are rightly coming from and if AGW fans feel justified in bagging all ETS skeptics with the ‘ant-science’ tag, then AGW skeptics and ETS skeptics have every right to question just where some of their scientists are really coming from. At EAU it’s pretty clear now that there has been much ‘anti-science’ going down and please explain. We all need to understand that the AGW question and ETS to deal with it are uniquely different questions, albeit the latter question only arises because of a large yes to the former.
Alan Wood in the Oz cuts through this lesser being’s waffle to neatly encapsulate our thoughts and the big picture-
‘WHAT a mess. In the space of four months Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull will have burdened the nation with an ill-advised renewable energy target and a flawed and questionable emissions trading scheme, both in the name of saving us from an allegedly imminent global warming disaster, which they won’t.
As a result we have seen the return of economic rent-seeking – the lobbying of government for taxpayer support – on a scale not matched since Australia’s tariff wall was dismantled in the latter decades of the 20th century, and the economic and social costs will not be negligible.
The renewable energy target, an unproductive bit of political tokenism popular with governments across the world, was eagerly embraced by our local political class in August.’
The only terminology I’d more succinctly define Alan is ‘our local political class’. They’re the ‘Graduarts Class’ or ‘Graduazzi’ and unfortunately you can deck the halls with bows of polly to them nowadays.
Observa, this “AGW fan”*** agrees that the CPRS as it is is not really worth having. That’s because Rudd was much more concerned with destroying the opposition than doing our bit to limit AGW.
Strangely, though, I do agree with Harry – Turnbull has come out of this looking quite good. He’s handled an absolutely impossible situation about as well as anyone could. Not that this will – or ought – to save his party from annihilation at the forthcoming election. As a rusted-on Lib you have every right to be bitter.
*** more accurately, “sane believer in a theory about as well demonstrated as evolution or quantum mechanics”, as distinct from those preferring to be part of a blog tribe. Cherry-picked and context-free quotes from 10 years of someone’s private email correspondence don’t change the observable facts or the inevitable implications one iota.
And yes Virginia of Western Sydney, there is a Father Xmas. He’s the poor bastard paying off the plastic in January and beyond for everything from Council subsidised worm farms, pea straw mulch, rainwater tanks, State Govt mandated solar feed-in buybacks and Federal subsidies for insulation, energy saving whitegoods, wind and solar power and HWS, etc, etc. Bah Humbug!
Turnbull’s speech at 7pm today was gutsy and out of left field. He did look and sound like leader. But the Liberal Party of Australia, having been taken over by the far right with help from John Winston Howard, will get rid of him and elect Tony Abbott. That’s the ticket. The only thing left is for Kevin to give Malcolm a job after it is all over.
Your site’s clock is running about three hours ahead of itself H.
Make that two.
I hope I fixed it. The bourgeoisie are so anal when it comes to matters of time.