Malcolm Turnbull has left no-one in any doubt as to what he thinks about today’s defeat of the ETS with a blog entry on his website saying the Liberals have damaged the national interest - and themselves - by blocking the legislation.
It is a civil piece of writing, and in keeping with the position he doggedly stuck to this past week. But it has caught the attention of his party, which fears that Turnbull is so passionate about this issue that he could position himself as a booming voice of dissent from the backbench, keeeping the Liberals distracted and divided ahead of a poll fought over the ETS.
“Today the Senate rejected, for the second time, the Government’s emissions trading scheme legislation,” his entry began. “This is a very disappointing result, contrary to the national interest and the interest of the Liberal Party.”
“Australia needs to get on with the business of cutting its greenhouse gas emissions. We recognised that in Government and started legislating for an ETS. As Mr Howard has observed, the Rudd Government’s ETS is very similar to the one we, as Liberals, took to the last election.”
In the entry, Mr Turnbull risks angering Liberals by repeating his insistence that last Tuesday’s marathon Party Room meeting had ended with majority support for an ETS.
“We had a number of objections to the legislation and back in October the Party Room approved us proposing amendments to the Government which were, in large measure, accepted by the Government. The Party Room last week accepted the Shadow Cabinet’s recommendation that an agreement be reached between the Opposition and Government to pass the amended bill. These amendments would have protected thousands of jobs and ensured Australia’s ETS was more environmentally effective.”
In a way it’s quite academic now. He lost the leadership yesterday and Tony Abbott is running the show. What isn’t academic is the very real risk that Turnbull could become a flashpoint for grass roots Liberals who believe in climate change and want the party to act in a bipartisan way to tackle it.
At the other end of the Coalition’s political spectrum, there was an interview on Sydney radio today which National Party Leader Warren Truss probably wouldn’t have adored.
Chris Smith on Radio 2GB had Barnaby Joyce on, and was telling him how many callers to the largely conservative station had been demanding that Joyce go into the Lower House and even become PM.
Joyce replied:
“I reckon that’s what I might have to do. That’s probably what I’m going to have to do. I don’t really want to talk about it because it sounds like you are pumping up your own ego. I would love to get to exactly the same position that we are talking about…I would love to sit across the chamber from Mr Kevin Rudd and say let’s have the debate, I would love to have an election on this one mate because if you do we will tear you apart.”
Tony Abbott was certainly right yesterday in describing the Coalition as a broad church.
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