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Julia Gillard might still need the Greens for support on important legislation, but the success of the carbon pricing package doesn’t mean a solid partnership has been formed.

In fact, it is possible there will be some big brawls ahead as Labor minister stop biting their tongues and tell the Greens what they really think.

Or more accurately, tell the electorate.

Continue reading "This could be the end of a beautiful fake friendship" »

The Opposition will keep fighting the carbon pricing scheme because there isn’t a lot else of similar weight which would recommend a vote for Tony Abbott’s troops at the next election.

And it’s easier than coming up with functional policies Mr Abbott could call his own.

The Nationals’ Barnaby Joyce joined the chorus of outrage after the passage of the Clean Energy Future bills: “It is not a defeat; it’s an adjournment.”

Continue reading "Abbott will keep flogging the carbon horse, of course" »

Two years after Kevin Rudd’s carbon pollution reduction scheme crashed in Parliament, Julia Gillard is poised to achieve what he could not: a fixed price on carbon leading to a full emissions trading scheme from 2015.

Debate in the Senate will be “guillotined” later today to bring on a vote on the bills thereby concluding the crucial legislative phase of what has become the most divisive political argument in decades.

The 19 bill package setting a $23-a-tonne price rising by 5 per cent for the following two years is expected to pass on a combination of Greens and Labor votes.

Continue reading "Gillard’s carbon victory more toxic than sweet" »

So the Gillard government has now rammed its 19 carbon tax bills through the House of Representatives.

This is despite an emphatic pre-election promise that there would be no carbon tax under a Gillard led government, in defiance of strong public opposition to the tax and in spite of overwhelming evidence that a carbon tax is not in our national interest.

The bills will now move to the Senate.

Continue reading "The carbon tax: all economic pain, no environmental gain" »

The carbon pricing plan is now a millstone around the neck of Labor, dragging it down at a rate being starkly charted by recent opinion polls.

But, to confuse rock-based metaphors, the party and its most apprehensive members have no choice but to keep their shoulders to that millstone.

To relent by dropping the policy or dropping its mistress, Julia Gillard, would condemn the ALP to a decade out of power marked by internal animosities and blame placing. If the carbon pricing scheme is abandoned between now and its scheduled start next July the Government will have established that for five years it as been incapable of implementing its highest policy priority. That is not a recommendation for re-election.

Continue reading "Carbon tax: The lady’s not for turning" »

Labor strategists believe that in normal circumstances, their Prime Minister has both sufficient time and enough fibre to turn things around.

Indeed, “fibre”, in this case “carbon fibre” is perhaps Julia Gillard’s last best hope. But first, she must get voters to listen.

And that is the hard part. As today’s Galaxy Poll suggests, many voters may never again be inclined to tune into `Gillard FM’, bruised as they are from what they see as an unforgivable breach of trust on the carbon tax.

Continue reading "No one’s tuning in to Gillard FM" »

Julia Gillard is asking many in middle Australia, maybe half of the electorate, if they are prepared to forego around $1 a day to prevent climate change getting a lot worse.

She is arguing that the $1 is a fair and realistic investment with a worthy and guaranteed dividend.

That’s the essential message from the huge bundle of spending and levying and tax cutting announced yesterday with the release of the carbon pollution pricing scheme.

Continue reading "Gillard’s won this skirmish but there’s a battle ahead" »

The Carbon Tax? It’s all about the vibe. Whether the Prime Minister stands or falls and whether the damn thing works, it’s all about the vibe.

First, the PM vibe – since her survival seems to be a topic for more immediate concern than the survival of the planet.

There are two crucial questions to ask about that. Are voters still listening to what Julia Gillard says or have they already switched off and are just waiting for an election? And just how much credibility does she have?

Continue reading "Carbon tax is no answer for all these questions" »

Julia Gillard has attempted the political equivalent of cold fusion - making a big new tax popular. Having backflipped on a promise not to introduce a carbon tax, and against trenchant opposition from a barnstorming Tony Abbott, Ms Gillard had little choice but to plough on, to crash or crash through.

Her solution after months of tortuous negotiations and endless parried questions on the details, is either genius or lunacy. Time will tell.

It has involved transforming what was expected to be a painful exercise in de-carbonising the economy into a big win for most voters.

Continue reading "Spoonful of sugar helps carbon medicine go down" »

It’s been a long journey, people, from the days when there was not going to be a carbon tax to now, when there very much is going to be a carbon tax. So what will it all mean?

Ask political reporter Gemma Jones in this Cover It Live, or head to news.com.au where they’ll have all the details and analysis.

Share your thoughts above in the live blog, or below.

Continue reading "Carbon tax: Open thread and live blog" »

It should be possible to sell Julia Gillard’s climate change package to voters. Despite Tony Abbott’s alarmist claims, it can be portrayed as a good news story.

Take what Treasurer Wayne Swan has dubbed the “battlers’ buffer” - an undertaking that low-income families will be generously over-compensated.

The promise is that these people will be reimbursed in full for the extra costs they face under a carbon tax, and then get an extra 20 per cent on top of that. They will, in other words, be financially better off. The Prime Minister and the Treasurer told us a couple of weeks ago that around three million households would be in this category.

Continue reading "Gillard’s hanging out at the Last Chance Saloon" »

Christopher Monckton – the British hereditary peer formerly known as ‘Lord’* – has revealed plans of a possible Government plot to silence him.

The renowned climate change sceptic has had a turbulent visit to our shores, with a string of appearances cancelled, an on-air dust up with Adam Spencer, and a reported order from Fairfax to remove the title ‘Lord’ when referring to his Monckness.

This morning, Monckton told the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster (please do note the irony here) that he had wind of a plot to shut him up. He told Adelaide breakfast radio duo Matthew Abraham and David Bevan:

Continue reading "Oh Lordy, Monckton, it’s a Government plot" »

Who is Labor listening to when it comes to policy?

Senator John Faulkner last week blasted his party for setting its policies based on focus groups tapping public opinion, instead of heeding the voices of its own members. He warned that Labor risked losing a generation of supporters and voters if it did not listen to its inner voice and accept that internal debate was not disunity.

In that case, whose opinion is Labor heeding in persisting with its pursuit of a proposed carbon tax?

Continue reading "Carbon tax: Labor’s not listening to the people" »

So the left-wing apologists from Get Up and the ACTU are now imploring us to just “say yes” to Labor’s Carbon Tax. 

They may as well have added “this won’t hurt a bit, honest” to their patronizing new advertisement.

I’ve often thought that the moral supremacists at Get Up occupied a very different Australia to the one in which I live.

Continue reading "A carbon price? Tell ‘em they’re dreaming" »

The Government will be hoping that the convoluted and dense reckoning of professor Ross Garnaut will counter the slick and glib one-liners of Tony Abbott.

The Opposition has successfully been telling the public that a “carbon tax” - or on occasion the “toxic tax” - will wreck household budgets already flattened by other cost-increasing factors.

The proposed carbon price has been depicted as a financial horror which would dwarf those already-punishing family expenses.

Continue reading "Carbon pricing: At least Garnaut hasn’t been gagged" »

The climate change debate has never been hotter, with family groups outraged that Cate Blanchett (among others) has thrown her not-particularly-substantial weight behind carbon pricing. Here, the Australian Youth Climate Coalition’s Anna Rose talks about the need for urgent action.

Sixteen-year-old Alana volunteers with the Australian Youth Climate Coalition. When asked why, she tells the following story: “When I was 14 my brother was born. When I first saw him, I thought about his future and I almost couldn’t face it. I couldn’t bear to think about the world that he was going to grow up in to. So I decided to do something about it.”

Life is very different for young Australians today. Gone are the days when young people can plan our futures without factoring in an ominous shadow looming over our plans for our lives, careers and families. Not since the Cold War have young Australians faced a future so uncertain.

Continue reading "Climate change: Bugger Cate, we must ALL act" »

It should come as no great surprise that the Federal Government’s Climate Commission has produced a new report with dire warnings backing Labor and the Greens’ case for a carbon tax.

The report would really have created headlines if it said climate change was not real or that a carbon tax was not a necessary part of measures to prevent it, along with carbon sequestration.

There was nothing much new, apart from a claim that sea levels could now rise up to one metre by the turn of the century, which is higher than even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s top range forecast of 0.18m to 0.76m.

Continue reading "The Climate Commission report is full of it" »

This week in federal politics might in later years be seen as decisive to the elevation of the next Prime Minister of Australia.

That’s because the Government will have to deal publicly and intensely with the two principal issues shaping its fate – border protection and carbon pricing.

The Opposition will launch a demand for a wide-ranging inquiry into the cost and administration of detention facilities and of asylum seeker management generally, starting with the no-holds-barred premise that the centres are now places of “havoc, chaos and riots”.

Continue reading "Will the next Australian PM please stand up?" »

Australia’s climate change policy debate is far from over. Earlier this month Kevin Rudd conceded it was a mistake to shelve the ETS, and yesterday Rio Tinto joined the fray, warning Australia not to go it alone on pricing emissions. At The Punch we realised we hadn’t heard much about the international experience, so we spoke to Scott Wyatt, Energy and Environment Advisor at the Delegation of the European Union, about how carbon pricing (they have an ETS) has gone in the EU.

Q. How does carbon pricing work in the EU? Is it similar to the proposed Australian system (what details we have!)?

A. There are differences in scheme design, but the principle is very much the same as (the cap and trade system) proposed under the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme White Paper.

Continue reading "Q & A: How does carbon pricing work in practice?" »

Greg Combet has more policy hounds on his tail than any other minister. He is in charge of the introduction of a “carbon tax”, and the arguments against him have been outnumbering those for.

So the Climate Change Minister went to the National Press Club to highlight—and he hoped erase—some of those policy problems which are dogging this attempt to get up a pricing mechanism for carbon pollution.

He all but ticked them off, one by one, in front of the audience.

Continue reading "Combet on carbon: What he said and what he meant" »

If the Government really wanted us to have an informed debate on a carbon tax, it would share with us what it knows. However, we know there are things the Government knows but isn’t letting us know.

The latest round of debate was sparked by Julia Gillard’s release of the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee’s paper on a carbon price mechanism.

Never mind that this committee is chaired by Gillard herself, or that membership of the committee was based on preconceived support for a price on carbon. Or that Gillard solemnly promised to us before the election that there would be no carbon tax under a Government she leads.

Continue reading "What the Govt won’t reveal about its carbon tax plans" »

The Prime Minister has been strutting her stuff in the Oval Office, but back home, her popularity has gone pear-shaped. There has never been a poll plunge so swift as this week’s Newspoll.

So what can she do to rediscover her mojo? is there any way back? Here’s what The Punch team thinks ...

Continue reading "Gillard’s guide to regaining her mojo" »

Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s carbon tax announcement represents one of the most brazen and fundamental pieces of political dishonesty in recent memory. That she chose to make the announcement surrounded by the Greens Senators and independent MPs upon whom her government depends gives us a telling insight into the factors at play.

If we look at the situation objectively there are only two possible explanations for such an announcement. The first is that Julia Gillard knowingly and deliberately told an enormous lie before the last election in a craven attempt to win over conservative voters.  The second is that Bob Brown and the Greens are in charge and the Prime Minister has been reduced to little more than the public face of a Greens Government.

Judging from their public comments over the past few days, Senator Brown and his deputy Christine Milne both clearly subscribe to the latter view:

Continue reading "PUNCH: It’s way too easy being Green" »

You are currently paying polluters to pollute – they should be paying you.

Did you know that your tax dollars are currently paying polluters to pollute?

A carbon price is part of a vitally important process of turning that around – making sure that the big polluters pay for their pollution and some of that money comes back to you to help build a cleaner, healthier, happier community. A carbon price, teamed with policies like a feed-in tariff, means we can drive investment towards the solar future while making sure that governments have the funds to help people struggling to make ends meet.

Continue reading "COUNTERPUNCH: A carbon price is the answer" »

Independent MP Tony Windsor has revealed this morning that he has received death threats following the Government’s carbon tax announcement.

This follows yesterday’s decision to ask the media to gather around and listen to an abusive phone message he had received, calling him an “f’n dog” etc, etc.

This is really nasty stuff and despite Windsor’s grizzled rural “she’ll be right” veneer, the member for New England is no doubt personally a bit concerned by his new role as pin cushion for anti-carbon tax hatred.

Continue reading "Windsor’s world of death threats and carbon taxes" »

Julia Gillard has staked the future of her government on winning the political battle over a carbon tax.

She claims to be standing on principle, strong in the belief that “carbon pollution is a threat to our country and our future”. And she accuses Tony Abbott of being opportunistic and irresponsible in opposing her two-step proposal for an emissions trading system.

It is strange to recall that just 10 months ago Gillard was demanding that then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd shelve plans for an ETS.

Continue reading "Carbon tax, climate change, credibility and a cynical con" »

Julia Gillard has staked the future of her Government on a costly, complex, and probably unpopular climate change policy.

And she had to break an election commitment to do it.

Call it brave or perhaps crazy-brave but Ms Gillard is nothing if not a quick study. She plans to move fast and get it done this year. Not for her the glacial pace, the bloated timelines, and reams of ponderous reports favoured by Kevin Rudd.

Continue reading "Last man standing will be winner on carbon tax" »

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has announced today that she intends to introduce a fixed cost for carbon emissions by July 1 2012, with the introduction of a cap and trade emissions trading scheme within three to five years after that.

We’ve all known it was coming, but for a carbon price to move out of the abstract and back into the real world is a massive jolt to the political system. This announcement is a big one: for households, for business, for the environment and for Julia Gillard’s future as Prime Minister.

As my colleague Samantha Maiden at the Sunday Telegraph tweeted this afternoon: “My considered if profane opinion on carbon price: Gillard is best when in combat mode. She’s just called on biggest s***tfight of her career.” True dat.

Continue reading "Gillard’s make or break carbon price plan" »

``Everywhere you go, always take the weather with you,’’ goes the much loved Crowded House song.

But if you’re in politics, it’s more often the weather which takes you and its colossal force can sweep you away.

Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott should remember this because climate and climate related politics have shaped many a political turn over the years.

Continue reading "When the weather can change the political climate" »

There won’t be mass lay-offs of lawyers, advertising executives and journalists if policy makers get it wrong on climate change. Trade in skinny lattes is not tipped to move offshore. Sales of Birkenstock sandals are also expected to remain unaffected.

Inner-city proponents of tough action on climate change don’t always get it. That’s because middle-class professional jobs and communities aren’t the battleground of climate change policy.

If you wear steel capped boots to work and drink instant coffee you might not spend much time talking about climate change; but it is the blue-collar workers in Western Sydney and our great industrial regions that have a real stake in the debate.

Continue reading "Yuppies have nothing to fear from a price on carbon" »

Well silly old me. There I was thinking the 2010 federal election was about economic management, border protection, broadband and leadership.

Turns out it was about light rail for north Hobart, the reintroduction of tariffs for the banana industry, an hourly limit on poker machine betting, new rules governing the length of answers during Question Time and the urgent introduction of an emissions trading scheme.

For all the talk about who has the biggest mandate, a separate and more compelling point should be made about the emergence of a raft of left-field side issues as bargaining chips in the battle to form government. And that is – none of these independents has any mandate at all to use them as conditions for supporting the major party.

Continue reading "The national policy agenda which nobody voted for" »

What a great night to be Labor. As the Party swept back into office with a mandate to lead global action on climate change it seemed like the entire nation had grown a few inches taller.

The energy on the ground made the excitement of Kevin 07’s electoral triumph seem like a mere entrée to the main, as thousands of young people on booths around Australia literally enthused swinging voters into embracing the future.

Forgive my hyperbole just this once, but this was a night when the rules of politics were rewritten, where principle drove politics and the people responded by voting to reject fear and confront the reality of global warming.

Continue reading "Yes we will: remembering a campaign that never was" »

As we enter the last few days of the election campaign, climate change seems to have Tony Abbott in a muddle. As his record shows, he seems to be confused about whether he understands the science or not, and whether he believes in emissions trading or not.

First, his position was that the consensus on climate science was crap. Then he backed an emissions trading scheme when it was Howard’s last hope of winning over a dissatisfied electorate. 

When that didn’t work, he reverted back to his original views and ousted Malcolm Turnbull, telling a group of school students that it was warmer at the time of Jesus. Now he tells us that climate change is important, but he doesn’t want a price on pollution, ever. Boy, is Tony Abbott one confused man.

Continue reading "Confusion vs inaction: our leaders’ real climate colours" »

It gives me no pleasure to say this. But cataclysmic climate change is going to happen, with all its promised attendant devastation, and neither you nor I nor anyone in power is going to do anything about it.

People don’t fix predictions. People fix problems. And until the western world truly feels the burn, then climate change is a prediction, not a problem.

Lethal floods in Pakistan haven’t swayed us.  Drought in Africa hasn’t swayed us.  The worst heatwave in Russia in a thousand years hasn’t swayed us. Even our own murderous Black Saturday bushfires in 2009 haven’t knocked any sense into our heads. Perhaps if Sydney’s waterfront mansions plunge into the harbour, taking property prices with them, we might demand action.

Continue reading "Climate change: we’re cooked." »

Is your CEO or director on “Out of Office AutoReply” this month? If so, chances are that they are far from the southern hemisphere. August is holiday season in the North and with the long standing link to Australia’s heritage, it’s a good bet that there is a European and probably London stopover on the way. 

Having just returned to Australia via the climate policy desert of the USA, the European climate change landscape couldn’t be in starker contrast. Whilst American media seems destined to miss the BP oil spill as an opportunity to get their citizens to connect the dots between fossil fuel pollution of all types and drive their own leaders to climate action, Europe is a different story.

In the European climate world, business meetings and conferences talk of how to deal with climate change and when, not if? They talk of the risks of extending pollution reduction targets even further, not of avoiding targets at all. Climate deniers are forced into backrooms and dare not raise their heads far for fear of ridicule. A career in UK climate denial is accompanied by US and Australian visa applications because jobs are thin on the ground there.

Continue reading "European climate attitudes can teach us a lot" »

Julia Gillard will never be accused of being a conviction politician.The announcement of a ‘panel’ to decide her climate policy is the final step in the Labor Party handing over its policy development to focus groups.

This makes the NSW State Labor take-over of the Federal Labor Party complete. While we thought Kevin Rudd was hollow, Julia Gillard makes him look like a man of steel.

This is presumably the same Julia Gillard who in late 2009 said, ‘we can’t afford any more inquiries, reports or investigations into climate change’.  So presumably, this didn’t include talk fests.

Continue reading "Death by focus group under Prime Minister Gillard" »

On Friday, Gillard announced Labor’s climate change policy in the lead up to the election. She announced her intentions to create a citizens assembly to evaluate the evidence for climate change and confirmed that an interim price on carbon would not be considered by the Labor government at least until 2012.

Ironically, she announced this somewhat vacuous, indecisive plan at the University of Queensland – theoretically a place for young people to “move forward” and a place of long-term sustainable innovation.  Furthermore, she made this announcement to an audience of young people.  Young people, who have a stake in their government taking decisive action on climate change to protect their futures.

I am all for community consensus when it means taking practical and tangible steps to ensure that the interests of stakeholders are respected in decision-making processes.

Continue reading "Gillard’s people’s assembly ignores the people" »

Gillard’s certainly been galloping, but she’s not polling too far ahead.

The mad pre-election scramble for support has begun and the latest wild grab for ammunition has taken the form of a controversial refugee policy. Gillard played up to her rapidly forming image as one of the few straight talking, honest pollies when she said she wanted a “frank, open discussion” about Australia’s borders. She then proceeded to make decisions with insufficient Cabinet consultation, and indeed neglected to inform the Prime Minister of the country on which she planned to dump the sea-bound asylum seekers.

That, off the back of caving in to the big mining companies, confirming a belief in but lack of commitment to resolving climate change and a remarkable lack of progression when it comes to gay marriage, lead up to the election polls released today.

Continue reading "New-look Labor is a free advert for the Greens" »

Julia Gillard might be excused for thinking this leadership business is pretty straightforward after swapping a few ministers around and fixing the mining tax. But this was not so much political genius as common sense. From here on in however, it gets harder.

At her first press conference as Labor leader, Julia Gillard said she wanted to get three things sorted before she pulled the election trigger. First order of business was the issue du jour, resolving the Resource Super Profits Tax. Then came asylum seekers and community anxiousness over continuing boat arrivals, and finally, repairing Labor’s standing on climate change.

But first things first. Kevin Rudd’s clumsy reversal on emissions trading aside, it was his self-started fight over the RSPT more than anything else, that was killing the Government.

Continue reading "Now for the hard part, Julia" »

On Thursday Kevin Rudd stepped down from office and Julia Gillard took his place as Prime Minister of Australia. Between 9pm on Wednesday and midday Thursday, Australia’s leadership underwent a historic reform. 

Rudd resigned in an unprecedented move during his first term, and the first female Prime Minister stepped into his place and delivered a speech full of resolve to get the Labor Party “back on track”

The hype surrounding this leadership change is somewhat akin to the fanfare excitement that heralded Rudd’s appointment to office in 2007.

Continue reading "Is the political climate really changing?" »

Australian voter confidence in Kevin Rudd’s statements has slumped to such a low that he may as well have set up shop on Sydney’s Parramatta Road selling used cars.

There may be a small consolation for the Prime Minister in taking a drive down there to see that they still manage to do business.

Polling of thousands of voters shows trust in the nation’s leader has practically evaporated. Despite the sustained Labor attack on the credibility of Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, it is Rudd who is seen by the electorate as the bigger fake, and by a wide margin.

Continue reading "Survey shows voters’ loss of trust in Kevin Rudd" »

Kevin Rudd’s ‘passionate’ outburst on climate change during an interview with the 7.30 Report’s Kerry O’Brien on Wednesday night shows he’s out of touch with voters as much as his temper.

In response to criticism that he lacks the political kahunas to go to a double-dissolution on climate change Rudd said professed “Penny Wong and I sat up for three days and three nights (at Copenhagen) with 20 leaders from around the world to try and frame a global agreement. Now it might be easy for you to sit in 7:30 Report land and say that was easy to do. Let me tell you mate, it wasn’t”.

And the tone of Rudd’s voice suggests it wasn’t just in Copenhagen that he was getting sleepless nights and by the emphasis he put on the word “mate” it was probably code for something else.

Continue reading "7.30 meltdown shows PM is hot under the collar" »

Global warming has struck again, with the heat now on our Prime Minister whose approval ratings have dipped below 50 per cent for the first time in the wake of his decision to delay the ETS.

For those who believe that climate change is a real threat (to our politicians), the figures will provide further vindication. Rudd joins Turnbull, Nelson and poor old Pete Garrett with bloody noses after getting too close to the heat.

For the deniers, this is more a case of a politician hoisting on his own petard, being punished for walking away from an issue which he had described as ‘the great moral challenge of our time.”

Continue reading "Climate change continues to wreak havoc for Rudd" »

This morning Malcolm Turnbull has announced that he has reversed his decision to retire from politics at the next election.

You can read stories from both The Australian and AAP on it. The Liberal Party has confirmed Turnbull’s decision, telling colleagues he was overwhelmed with public support for him to stay on.

But perhaps the biggest factor in his decision to stay on is the Rudd Government’s decision to dump its CPRS, the policy which engineered his downfall as Liberal Party.

So what does this mean for the Libs?

Continue reading "It’s back to the future with Malcolm" »

It is all a bit hazy now. But this time three years ago there was a real buzz around Kevin Rudd, a sense of excitement on the part of many voters that the Howard era was coming to an end, making way for a fresh, modern, forward-thinking leader who better suited the times.

Someone who recognised and would act on the challenge of climate change, who understood the importance of broadband, wanted a more humane approach to border protection, believed working families deserved a better deal on issues such as childcare. Someone who was also a self-described fiscal conservative who understood the importance of maintaining a surplus and not driving the nation into debt.

Superficially at least, Rudd’s 2007 campaign had a similar vibe to the victories of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair in the United States and the UK – Clinton after 12 years of Republican rule, Blair after 18 years of Tory domination, both of them young men, Clinton, saxophone in hand, jiving on stage to Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop”, Blair in shirt sleeves, smiling broadly and looking upwards as if to a better future to the sounds of “Things Can Only Get Better”.

Continue reading "How Rudd took out an AVO against Kevin07" »

I’m just trying to work something out here. Since December, the Rudd Labor Government has been under siege from the Abbott-led Liberals for pushing ahead with a “great big tax on everything” in the form of an ETS.

The Liberals blocked the ETS. The Liberals urged Kevin Rudd to drop it on the grounds that it was the wrong policy for Australia. The Liberals argued that the rest of the world wasn’t taking such drastic action on climate change and nor should we.

So today Kevin Rudd dumped the ETS, not just because of the political reality that he can’t pass it anyway, and noting also that the rest of the world wasn’t taking such drastic action on climate change. As a result of all this the Liberal Party is now attacking Kevin Rudd for breaking his promise. There are days when the adversarial nature of our effective two-party system delivers point-scoring so transparent and juvenile that it’s an insult to our collective intelligence, and today is such a day.

Continue reading "Liberals should cut the crap on climate" »

It should be a great time to be a Green: a first term Labor Government governing from the centre; the defining local and international issue is an environmental one; our lives are being buffeted by one extreme weather event after another.

2010 is a crunch year for the third force in Australian politics and, for many, the great hope of progressive change, with a federal election beckoning, the dream of controlling the Senate is looming large

But something is not happening for the Greens right now: despite growing disillusionment in the Labor Government, their vote is flat-lining in major polls and it is twice as ‘soft’ as the two major parties. We asked voters how strong their voting intention was, and these were the results.

Continue reading "Greens struggling to grow in heated political climate" »

It’s fairly clear to anyone who watched Kevin Rudd on the ABC’s Q & A this week that a group of young Australians very succinctly exposed the shallowness and symbolism that underpins much of Labor’s “policy” argument. 

These young people displayed a healthy scepticism and an ability to see through polly-speak that many of our national journalists could learn a thing or two from. Indeed, in the aftermath, some journalists seem almost shocked by Rudd’s inability to clearly answer a question which isn’t scripted and for which he has not been briefed. 

(Despite the embarrassing prelude of the “Ask the PM” Sunrise questions, which saw Rudd floundering.)

Continue reading "Hollowmen and shallow decisions" »

The head of the UN’s climate change panel (the IPCC) Rajendra Pachauri has released a novel that combines lessons on climate change with sexy story lines.

The protagonist in Pachauri’s book is eerily similar to Pachauri himself: an environmentalist and former engineer who inexplicably has a lot of sex with women (I can’t say whether the last part as any basis in reality). According to The Times the book: “mingles lectures on climate change with descriptions of Sanjay’s sexual encounters, including frequent references to “voluptuous breasts”.

Following last week’s visit from the Skeptic Dark Lord Mockton (who looks and sounds like an evil mastermind from a new climate themed Bond film) I can’t help but wonder if some of the increasing confusion about climate change stems from the eccentric oddballs who we’re told to believe.

Continue reading "No wonder we’re confused about climate change . . ." »

Well it won’t have the same political impact as the Hewson birthday cake answer in 1993 but it was almost as unintelligible. 

It’s likely to go under the radar today with the Opposition releasing their own carbon reduction policy, but if anyone saw Kevin Rudd’s interview on the Today show this morning you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Asked by Karl Stefanovic how the ETS would affect the price of a loaf of bread, milk and petrol the Prime Minister managed to mangle all three answers.

Continue reading "Kevin Rudd cooks up a John Hewson birthday cake" »

Climate scepticism is all the rage these days and it’s become very fashionable to doubt the scientists and suspect global fraud.

The sceptics will denounce mainstream opinion for attempting to supposedly silence them, all the while loudly denouncing their opponents on talkback radio, the internet and mainstream press. They criticise minor errors in massive reports and loudly attack sloppy emails, but they play fast and loose with the facts themselves.

Sceptics are rarely accountable for their statements on temperature, on climate or carbon dioxide levels, preferring instead to rely on unsophisticated arguments like ‘it’s crap’.

Continue reading "Climate changes sceptics a threat to national security" »

Our American friends remember The Alamo, we see Gallipoli and North Africa among defining moments in national pride and self-sacrifice against seemingly insurmountable odds.

These initial bloody defeats led state and nations on to ultimate victory against powerful foes.

It’s drawing a long bow to compare any of those to the political battle now being fought on global warming, but one prominent climate realist has done that, and it’s sure to grab some attention.

Continue reading "It’s El Alamein revisited as climate war heats up" »

In a move reminiscent of John Howard’s “headland” speeches ahead of his successful 1996 campaign, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott last night delivered the first of his direction statements ahead of this year’s poll. And he adopted a decidedly green hue, saying it was time to scotch the misnomer that conservatives could not be good environmentalists.

The speech contained two policies - the national takeover of the Murray-Darling river system and the creation of a so-called 15,000-strong “Green Army”  - and a promise of more to follow, with Abbott conceding he did not yet have a finalised position on carbon emissions but would do so within the fortnight.

The first policy should have Kevin Rudd worried as if he had been acting as a decisive national leader he would already have stepped in to wrest control of our biggest river system off the squabbling states. The second policy seems more a bit of gimmickry - and expensive gimmickry at that, with a potential bill of up to $750 million to send 15,000 environmental fix-up folks into the bush at $50,000 a pop.

Continue reading "Abbott goes green with one top idea, one dodgy gimmick" »

Whatever happened to the grand promoter of the great big ETS tax – Prime Minister Rudd?  Channel 9 said it cost $1.4 million to take 68 people to Copenhagen.

What was the cost of the remainder of the 114 that actually went?

Up to Copenhagen the great tax advocates were Mr Rudd and Senator Wong who have suddenly gone very quiet and given all the running to junior Minister Peter Garrett.

Continue reading "Garrett sings from wrong song sheet on Copenhagen" »

Copenhagen certainly was the right place to hold the biggest cocktail party of the 21st century - otherwise known as the Climate Summit.

After all it was the home of Hans Christian Andersen who wrote “The Emperor’s New Clothes” in 1837.  It is truly a suitable parable.

In the story we had swindlers posing as weavers and convincing the Emperor that they could “manufacture the finest cloth to be imagined ……but the clothes made of their material possessed the wonderful quality of being invisible to any man who was unfit for his office or unpardonably stupid.”

The swindlers in the Andersen Tale demanded large sums of money in advance and asked for (and got) “the finest silk and the most precious gold cloth” and worked at empty looms until late at night.

In Copenhagen the attendees certainly got lots of money in advance and lived in great luxury.

Continue reading "The Emporer’s Copenhagen cloak: a fairy tale" »

“Doth protest too much”. The ageless quote from Shakespeare’s Hamlet comes to mind when assessing world leaders response to the Copenhagen climate conference. 

Lashings of praise have been heaped upon the Copenhagen Accord from Obama, the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Kevin Rudd and other world leaders.  It has been described as a “meaningful agreement”, “a great step forward” and “significant and positive”.

What would an agreement deserving of this kind of praise look like?  The world needs a comprehensive global response that will deliver a safe climate, that is a minimally change climatic system that can support humanity to meet our needs.

Continue reading "What went wrong, from on the ground in Copenhagen" »

The last month’s political twists and turns, culminating with the Liberal Party’s extraordinary lurch to the right and populist fear-mongering on the ETS “tax on everything”, make it look increasingly like Australia may never reach a political consensus on climate change.

Adding fuel to the fire, after much of hype and high hopes Copenhagen fizzled, failing to deliver the binding international agreement which would have delivered a resounding mandate for Kevin Rudd’s proposed course of action.

Back at home, Tony Abbott’s fiery rhetoric has been starkly reminiscent of another political turning point in 2001, which involved a hapless group of refugees in a sinking boat. Just as the 2001 Tampa election hysteria was fuelled by political opportunism and the politics of fear, so too the response to climate change appears to be heading down the same path.

Continue reading "Are older Australians more sceptical of climate change?" »

If anyone is looking forward to the Christmas break it must be Kevin Rudd. The Prime Minister who created a narrative about his administration that it’s the can-do team on climate change has had the two biggest ticket items, the ETS and Copenhagen, all but fall over in less than a month.

While neither were strictly his doing (he was in the US when Tony Abbott nabbed the Liberal leadership and killed off a deal on the ETS), the Prime Minister had placed himself at the centre of both, no doubt confident a victory on either would be a huge political win.

He calls the outcome of the closing days in Copenhagen “frustrating”. I imagine that’s just the tip of the melting iceberg for how he really feels. And now Mr Rudd needs to work out how to take an issue that until six weeks ago was a political bonus for him and stop it turning into a political nightmare. And he’d better do it quickly.

Tony Abbott wasted no time yesterday framing the debate from here on. He told Sunday Agenda: “Look, I suppose good intentions are better than nothing, but Mr Rudd has failed his own test. He said a couple of years ago that what we needed to get were real targets against real timelines.  He said, real progress means real targets against real timelines, and certainly by that standard it’s been a comprehensive failure.”

It was the words “his own test” that rammed home the point. At Copenhagen Kevin Rudd went from “friend of the chair” to the guy waiting outside the room when the three-page non-binding “meaningful” agreement was struck.

Continue reading "Nopenhagen" »

The collapse in Copenhagen shows the power of the polluters over the politicians.

The oil coal and big resource companies put off the day of action and edged the world further into super-heating.  That means worse drought, bushfires, snow- melt, tropical storm damage and accelerating sea level rises.

Penny Wong has blamed the failure to reach consensus in Copenhagen on a few “radical nations” like Venezuela and Uganda. But tiny Tuvalu has also championed real action on climate change by calling the promise of money, in return for agreement on inaction, “thirty silver coins” from the rich countries.

Continue reading "The PM needs to drop his refusal to budge on a target" »

It’s snowing here in Copenhagen, as leaders feel the heat over climate change.

In the winter gloom, the flashing lights of police motorcades snake through the city. Is it Obama, Gordon Brown, or Kevin Rudd? It’s certainly not the President of the tiny, vulnerable Maldives, the shock troops of rising sea levels.

Walkouts by developing nations, angry clashes between protesters and police, people dressed as polar bears, Greenpeace ships moored in the canal not far from The Little Mermaid statue, business leaders selling wind power, electric vehicles, even shoes with recycled rubber soles.

Continue reading "Copenhagen: let it snow, let it snow, let it snow" »

Dylan fans will be familiar with the stream of consciousness liner notes on the back sleeve of Highway 61 Revisited where the Zimmer-man writes of Savage Rose and Fixable and the Cream Judge and the Clown, of Lifelessness saving the world, of the Phony Philosophers and the Beautiful Strangers.

I was compelled to re-read this unusual piece of writing this week after subbing an opinion piece written by Barnaby Joyce and have decided that if Dylan has a literary heir in this country it is the newly-installed shadow minister for finance.

Joyce has now written seven opinion pieces for our website The Punch and the marvellous thing about all of them is that you could buy a pack of Gitanes, slip into your skivvy and beret, and recite random passages aloud in a Soho coffee shop with Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue playing in the background, and the critics would hail you as the greatest beat poet since Ginsberg.

Continue reading "Barnaby knock knock knockin’ on Kevin’s door" »

While Kevin Rudd desperately reschedules his attendance at the Copenhagen Summit in a craven attempt to ensure he’s in the presence of US President Barack Obama, there are very interesting parallels in the political scenarios on either side of the Pacific.

These are two political leaders elected in almost Messiah-style euphoria.

Their elevation was supposed to ring in “change” after long periods of conservative Government that the elites and media had openly grown to loathe.  There was little public scrutiny of the substantive skills each man would bring to the job – their popularity was a triumph of style over substance.

Continue reading "The mirror ‘Messiahs’ dogged by bad policy" »

IF climate change really represents a threat to our civilisation comparable to the Nazis than it is time for us to stop backing off in half-hearted surrender and instead tell Mother Nature to shove it.

Recently in arguing against the “disaster track” of a Copenhagen UN compromise agreement on reducing emissions, NASA scientist James Hansen - in many ways the granddaddy of climate change theory - said global warming should be treated like an evil enemy.

“This is analogous to the issue of slavery faced by Abraham Lincoln or the issue of Nazism faced by Winston Churchill,” Hansen said. How did Winston Churchill and more broadly the Allied powers defeat the Nazis and their Axis partners?

Continue reading "If climate change is a battle, let’s have a war" »

Hardline conservative Christians helped orchestrate the flood of correspondence that convinced Liberal MPs to ditch support for Malcolm Turnbull and the emissions trading scheme.

One site that published repeated calls for direct lobbying of politicians was Catch the Fire Ministries, a church whose pastor earlier this year said the Black Saturday bushfires were divine vengeance for liberal abortion laws.

It has also emerged that Cory Bernardi, one of the Liberal senators who led the revolt against Turnbull, called on supporters in late November to wage an email campaign to persuade his colleagues in the Senate that the public was outraged at the ETS. His email was published and endorsed by a website popular with fringe conspiracy theorists.

Continue reading "The holy war on climate change" »

A lot of my comrades on the Left of politics are walking around as if the ascension of Tony Abbott is an early Christmas present, but I’m not so sure.

While some see the rise of the Mad Monk as the Tory version of Latham’s 2004 election car crash, I think the risk is we are gearing up for a re-run of the 1999 Republic referendum.

That was the ballot where Abbott, as executive director of the ‘No’ vote managed to convince battlers to keep the Queen as Head of State because the alternative would be to have the nation run by a bunch of wankers - like Malcolm Turnbull. A decade later and the Left is still coming to terms with the anti-elite backlash that the Republic Referendum – and arguably the 2001 Tampa election – unleashed.

Continue reading "Left should beware Tony Abbott’s war on wankers" »

Tony Abbott has rejected the dominant ETS paradigm. He says he wants, though, to re-balance business and household behaviour and incentives to move the economy to new, cleaner, climate adjustment technologies, but not cripple employment in key industries in the process.

Here’s one suggestion – turn payroll taxes into ‘climate adjustment’ levies, at neutral total cost to business. Then expand business and household rebates on all expenditure on green technology – tax avoidance based on positive, environmental citizenship.

Instead of taxing jobs – always a stupid tax arrangement – treat carbon emissions as an externality and turn the tax into a levy, but allow people to neutralise this levy only through investment in emission reduction technology.

Continue reading "Power to the people on an ETS - without a new tax" »

I arrived in Copenhagen, usually a pretty, peaceful Danish city on Thursday.  As the Copenhagen Climate Conference has approached – starting tomorrow morning – a tension has been building in the air.  It feels like the calm before a storm, when the wind begins to whip up and you can just feel something coming in the air. Walking around the city there are accents from across the world, posters displaying climate change events, protests and technologies, and groups of people closely discussing and speculating.

Over the weekend I have been participating in the 3rd Annual Conference of Youth attended by approximately 1000 youth from over 150 countries. 

The youth movement has been growing exponentially over the last few years – in Australia the Australian Youth Climate Coalition has grown ten fold from 5000 to 50,000 in one year – and this is beginning to represented at the United Nations with a large youth presence at these negotiations. 

Continue reading "Youth delegates have no time for skepticism at Copenhagen" »

Australia, congratulations. We now boast a brand new opposition leader from the far-Right, who proudly declared, say, eight or nine times in a single interview on Tuesday that he would not support climate change legislation, terming it a ‘big new tax’ on the Australian people.

So here we have the new political tactic of our Right- simple, snappy, and to the point- “that other lot want to TAX you!”

This tactic is nothing new, of course. Ben Chifley once observed that the Australian public ‘votes from the hip-pocket reflex’. The Right is simply banking that this is still the case.  Shrewd.

Continue reading "Can the West really be ‘taxed’ on climate?" »

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.”

Continue reading "Turnbull’s blog entry shows he won’t go quietly" »

The current debate is not about the science of climate change.

The climate has always changed, it always will. At some level man must be contributing to it.  I strongly believe that reducing pollution can only be a good thing not only for the environment, but also for the Nation’s productive capacity and our kids’ future.

However the ‘debate’ over man-made global warming has now been hijacked by those who claim that if you are arguing against the Rudd Government’s Emission Trading Scheme then somehow you are arguing against the environment.

Continue reading "The carbon tax debate Australia never had" »

We gave Malcolm a lend of the Party, but the members want it back.

This is the clear message I have received from Liberal Party members by way of 7,500 emails (and rising) and hundreds of phone calls – not to mention close encounters of the personal kind.

The claim that the Coalition Party Room agreed to support the Labor Party’s amended C.P.R.S. legislation imposing an E.T.S. Tax is not true. The Party Room rejected it.

Continue reading "Bronnie Bishop: Malcolm, we want our party back now" »

In order to help people better understand the last week, an anonymous Liberal front bencher has made available excerpts of their private diary to comedians Matt Kenneally Toby Halligan.

MONDAY 23/11/09 MORNING

Booked holiday flights to Hawaii for Friday evening.

ETS bill before senate tomorrow. Still don’t understand it.

Air conditioning was playing up. Stood in front of fridge for a while and felt better.

Continue reading "Secret diary extracts of a confused Liberal MP" »

“Australia generates 1.5 per cent of global greenhouse emissions and this ETS will reduce world levels by the smallest sliver, which self-evidently will have nil effect on global climate whether you believe in climate warming or not.” Barnaby Joyce – The Innate Problems With Labor’s Emissions Trading Scheme, 17/12/2008.

Using numbers to lend credibility to a flimsy argument is not a new tactic. In the case of those opposing serious action on climate change however, one statistic about Australia’s proportionate global emissions forms the central flimsy plank of their argument. The argument goes that given Australia is responsible for only 1.5% of global emissions, anything we do to reduce CO2 levels is hardly going to make a dent globally. We can’t save the Great Barrier Reef, so the rest of the world is going to have to.

It must test well in focus groups because everyone opposing action on climate change has been trotting it out ever since the debate began. And let’s be honest, as a message it is working.

Continue reading "If we can’t lead on CO2, we shouldn’t in sport or science" »

IT is almost two months to the day since Malcolm Turnbull defiantly proclaimed he could not lead a party that failed to act on climate change.

It could well be his epitaph because it looks increasingly likely they will be his famous last words. His war-like comments in a radio interview on October 1 will come back to haunt him tomorrow when a leadership challenge is expected to try to finally resolve the Liberal Party’s internal angst and division over the Emissions Trading Scheme.

Aside from internal manoeuvrings and mutinous rumblings within the party, the Liberals have a bigger problem. They are sending mixed signals to the electorate about where they stand on climate change and this is worse than death by a thousand swords for a party hoping to win Government at the next election.

Continue reading "Confusion reigns online over ETS and the Liberal Party" »

THERE is a hilarious moment in the Hitchhikers’s Guide to the Galaxy when it is explained to one of the last remaining humans, Arthur Dent, that things are not what they seemed.

Shattering his life-long assumptions following the Earth’s destruction - that’s intergalactic progress - a higher being explains to the hapless Dent, that all those white mice in labs that humans thought were part of various experiments, were in fact, conducting an experiment on us. Humans were not as wise as they thought and now, their planet had been obliterated to make way for a hyperspace bypass.

I thought of this on two counts in recent days. First, there is the parallel with what Malcolm Turnbull, has been telling his troops: do nothing about climate change and the Earth as we know, will be destroyed.

Continue reading "Libs adrift in a hostile galaxy" »

Australians expect their political leaders and their political parties to take effective action on climate change because it is an important issue for them and their children.

The Opposition has always had significant concerns with the Rudd Government’s CPRS legislation. That is why we fought for changes to the proposed scheme, to improve its design and protect Australian jobs.

As a result of the changes secured by the Opposition, tens of thousands of Australian jobs have been saved, farmers have been protected by permanently excluding agriculture from the scheme, $1.1 billion in direct support to small and medium businesses will be delivered, and the threat of blackouts and interruptions to the electricity supply has been removed.

Continue reading "Climate debate a turning point in Liberal Party history" »

The honour of being elected as a member of the Federal Parliament carries with it very serious responsibilities.  Each of us are charged with seeking to do what is right, to listen to the views of our constituents, to represent the political parties that endorsed us, and ultimately determine what is in the nation’s interest. 

My decision to resign from the Shadow Ministry yesterday is one I did not take lightly. I felt compelled to do so because I reached the conclusion that it is not in Australia’s interests to support Labor’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). 

This is a position which was only strengthened by the fact that there was a clear majority in the Coalition Party Room in favour of voting against this legislation, despite what our leader concluded.

Continue reading "Why I quit shadow ministry and won’t back Labor’s ETS" »

The Liberals are currently staggering around the corridors in Parliament House like a bomb has gone off. In political terms it kind of has. The past 36 hours has smashed Malcolm Turnbull’s authority, failed to produce a viable alternative candidate for the leadership, transformed manageable differences of opinion into bitter personal hatreds, left the frontbench a mess with three resignations already and possibly more to come, not to mention a looming reshuffle just to add further fire to an already incendiary situation.

Liberal MPs are openly talking about their sadness at the way the whole thing crashed around their ears. They are worried about their seats and had wanted one of two things to happen - to achieve a quiet consensus on a CPRS deal and to quietly pass the legislation, or for the talks with the Rudd Government to fail and to vote against it. Instead they have got open internal warfare.

Their biggest fear is how it will play out with traditional Liberal Party voters who cannot fathom the logic of what the party has done in embracing a lose-lose situation, whereby people who believe in climate change will give full credit to the Government for introducing a CPRS, while people who do not believe in climate change will punish the Opposition for backing it.

Continue reading "Grass roots revolt the biggest fear for battered Libs" »

Last night Malcolm Turnbull announced his party’s support for the ETS bill with the resigned cheerfulness of a man who knows his days are numbered.

He looked more like a defeated leader at the end of a campaign thanking his supporters than someone who had just prevailed over the Opposition old guard.

It was a pyrrhic victory and nothing he said could disguise that fact.

Continue reading "Malcolm Turnbull: ideology’s latest victim" »

Malcolm Turnbull has retained his position as leader of the Liberal Party after winning a secret ballot on a motion to spill the leadership by 48-35. Punch editors will be posting the latest developments, commentary, pictures and video here as they come to hand. Times are AEDT. Refresh this page for updates.

4pm: Question Time over, the Libs limped their way through it the poor sods, they looked like a footy team that had just got thumped in the GF. Read our coverage of the day unfolded below. I will post a new piece later today wrapping up Turnbull’s two days of hell, and his future from here.

1.55pm: Time for Question Time. The Punch will be covering it live here - join in, should be fun.

1.50pm: Battered Libs limping their way towards chamber for QT. One MP just told me this is their equivalent of DLP split. Total and unabiding fury between the two camps. MPs also talking up hockey as best consensus candidate for leadership change in new year.

1.41pm: News round-ups of the events at the partyroom meeting now available at news.com.au and The Australian.

1.33pm: It’s certainly a better result than yesterday on the CPRS - but it won’t give Turnbull any security. Almost half the party still out to get him…

1.31pm: Joe Hockey speaking after the meeting. “Clearly this issue has done us incredible damage and I hope the Australian people forgive us…”. Emphasises the Liberal Party is a progressive party. Says given the mood of the party the 48-35 result was a good result for Turnbull.

1.29pm: It’s understood Joe Hockey was sounded out by the right for leadership on condition he opposed the CPRS. Said he’s not interested in starting his leadership career by selling his soul.

1.28pm: Kevin Andrews says he accepts the result of the ballot, but 35 is a significant number in the party room, which makes a strong point about the position on the CPRS. He says of Turnbull: “of course he has my support, he’s the leader of the party.”

1.23pm: No spill. Motion lost 48-35 in a secret ballot.

1.14pm: Cannot find a single Lib who is taking Kevin Andrews’ candidacy seriously or as a genuine threat. With Abbott not in the mix Turnbull shouldn’t get rolled.

1.13pm: Parliament security, at the request of the Opposition Leader’s office, are preventing journalists from congregating near the party room. Not sure why, as people inside the meeting will text developments to the press gallery anyway.

12.56pm: Samantha Maiden of The Australian writes on Twitter: turnbull has just walked into office with dep COS credlin. looks really upset

Continue reading "Live blog: Liberals in crisis" »

HIS voice hoarse and breaking from arguing his case over 12 hours of solid meetings, a haggard Malcolm Turnbull declared “I’m the leader” six times last night at a defiant but probably futile press conference aimed at asserting his authority over a political party which is split almost exactly in half.

By the end of the press conference he looked like a doomed man, almost resigned to his likely demise as he faces betrayal by members of Shadow Cabinet, abandonment by the National Party, with almost half the party now canvassing a leadership spill as early as this Thursday - or protracted sniping ahead of his execution at a later date.

The press conference started in bullish fashion. Flanked by deputy leader Julie Bishop and chief climate negotiator Ian Macfarlane, Mr Turnbull declared he had won “overwhelming” party support for his deal with Kevin Rudd over the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

Rubbish, rebel MPs were saying to reporters via SMS and in corridor chats, explaining that 40 MPs had spoken against the package and just 33 in favour - and that Mr Turnbull had inflated the numbers by arbitrarily including Shadow Cabinet in its entirety in the yes camp, getting him the paltriest possible majority at 47 to 46.

Continue reading "Last plea of a doomed man" »

UPDATE 8.20pm: Total chaos as meeting ends, set to resume at 8am tomorrow, strong talk that he will be challenged, massive press pack outside Party Room, Turnbull apparently has 41 MPs behind his ETS Plan and 33 against, MPs saying it is not a strong enough mandate to back the ETS, Turnbull has apparently blown up inside meeting, says nothing to press on way out. More to follow.

Update 8.15pm: Sky News reports the back bench vote actually came out 41-33 against the CPRS, but Turnbull declared with the shadow ministers he could get a majority in favour. According to David Speers he made this announcement while some Senators were outside the room. To say they’re unhappy is an understatement.

Update 8pm: Apparently the No vote disputes the party room numbers on the CPRS and are going to move a leadership spill. Kevin Andrews confirms he would put his hand up if the spill gets up.

Update 7.40pm: Malcolm Turnbull says he’s won the support he needs in the Coalition party room. But they’re reconvening at 8pm and there’s rumours of a leadership spill.

Update 5.10 pm: Perhaps not surprisingly Tuckey couldn’t get enough hands up for his motion.

Update 4.50pm: Wilson Tuckey has just moved for a spill of the leadership in the party room. The motion won’t get up without a majority show of hands. But it’s sure to make Malcolm Turnbull’s day just that much worse.

Continue reading "Next two hours could seal Malcolm Turnbull’s fate" »

Update 10:55am: Shadow Cabinet signed off this morning on Malcolm Turnbull’s deal with the Government over the CPRS, and it is now being debated by the Coalition Party Room.

No. But he’s the Right Faction’s stalking horse should Malcolm Turnbull falter in his handling of the CPRS - which in the eyes of the more skeptical and conservative Libs he is already doing. And if there is a blow-up in the Party Room today, Kevin Andrews is expected to run for the leadership.

In what is looming as a chaotic and unpredictable day, the Right Faction is positioning itself to inflict a potentially mortal wound on Turnbull by moving a spill in protest at his excessive concessions over the carbon pollution reduction scheme.

Kevin Andrews is not the Right’s preferred candidate - but he is the one who has volunteered to go over the top on behalf of the party’s conservatives. He told SkyNews ominously yesterday that “At the moment we have a leader but I am a loyal servant of the party and I will do any job that I am asked to do,” Mr Andrews told Sky News.

Continue reading "Is this the next Leader of the Liberal Party?" »

Today The Punch celebrates the ground-breaking policy work being undertaken by visionaries within the Coalition party room in an effort to address global warming.

With 31 per cent of the population now signing on as climate change deniers these fine Australians are leading a national movement that can make us all feel better in the face of those flighty Nobel Prize winners who insist on preaching Armageddon.

In saving the planet by denying there’s a problem, the likes of Nick Minchin, Tony Abbott and Barnaby Joyce are contributing to a global body of work that has cured cancer, ended domestic violence and prevented the Holocaust.

Continue reading "Elvis has left the building: a brief history of denialism" »

The Climate Justice Fast!, an international hunger strike for action on the climate crisis, is currently on day 17.

Let’s be frank. Australia’s response to climate change so far is a disgrace. It is well understood, by even Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong, that the emissions reduction targets of the carbon pollution reduction scheme (CPRS) are scientifically inadequate to effectively respond to climate change.

Even if it’s maximum reduction target of 25% by 2020 is implemented, and other nations make similar efforts, atmospheric greenhouse gasses will still overshoot a safe level, very likely pushing us past tipping points that lock into place disastrous runaway climate change.

And once we take into account our world-beating per-capita emissions, combined with our chart-topping standard of living, our nation’s token efforts on climate change become simply impossible to justify.

Continue reading "It’s our fault not enough’s being done on warming" »

While there is a lot of heat surrounding the climate change debate, one issue that has received less public attention is the impact of global warming on our health.

Adelaide is currently experiencing a record breaking heatwave and has been on catastrophic fire danger alert, and this even is before summer has even begun. These events provide a timely reminder of the consequences of extreme weather on the health and safety of the population.

With global warming, inevitably we will suffer more heatwaves with longer and hotter summers. Australia - more than almost any other country- will be vulnerable to climate change-related illness and death.

Continue reading "The health risks from climate change are mounting" »

UNLESS Malcolm Turnbull is Harry Houdini, he is about to join the likes of John Hewson as another `almost was’ wealthy businessman who promised much but ultimately could not manage the politics.

Things could hardly have gone worse for him this week. Just when he had the Government under real pressure over its faltering management of the Oceanic Viking crisis, problems on his own side overwhelmed him. Next week looks harder again.

He must be wondering why he left a perfectly successful career in business for this. He may not be wondering for much longer.

Continue reading "Holding our breath to see if Malcolm survives" »

Momentum is a fundamental concept in both physics and politics.

It’s a concept climate change skeptics like Barnaby Joyce just don’t get.

As Penny Wong and Greg Combet shepherd the sensible people in the Australian Parliament towards a bipartisan agreement on a CPRS, Barnaby is still out there howling at the moon to his diehard audience of deniers.

Continue reading "Climate challenge missed by Coalition howlers" »

The introduction of the CPRS Bill or the ETS, whichever you choose to call it, is a mechanism where the Government will collect in excess of $70 billion tax revenue in the first six years and potentially hundreds of billions of dollars thereafter.

The commission earned by bankers and brokers will amount to multiple billions of dollars and the financial imperative for them to support the scheme is overwhelming.

This new tax will not save the Great Barrier Reef; it is not going to end the droughts; it will neither contribute to Greenland freezing nor thawing.

Continue reading "Why I am still voting no to this ridiculous CPRS" »

The patrons leaning on the bar at bustling country pub Flannery’s and Gore were shocked when a wild-eyed man with a slide-rule in his pocket burst in the door.

The man leaps on the bar and shouts: “Everybody, this pub is about to collapse.

“I’m an engineer and I’ve just been looking at the walls outside - they’re about to give way.” In the stunned silence, some punters think they hear a faint creaking noise from the walls, but can’t be sure it’s just not the crickets.

Continue reading "A climate change parable, where you write the ending" »

With another boat load of asylum seekers intercepted and reports there are at least 10 Coalition MPs vowing to cross the floor on the ETS there’s plenty happening in Federal Parliament. You can see our Question Time coverage after the jump.

Continue reading "Question Time Live: 17/11/09" »

Are you feeling left right out of the political debate in Australia?

As the parliament prepares to consider the Rudd Government’s ETS and the global bureaucracy invades Copenhagen, I’m getting a little tired of the forced and clichéd polarisation of the climate change and other important debates, such as border protection.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was on Friday when #KRudd tweeted the world at 6.54pm saying “Time for the “do nothing” climate change skeptics (sic) to stop playing roulette with our kids future. KRudd.” It was one tweet too many. Seriously, what a silly and juvenile thing for a PM to say.

Continue reading "Rudd tweets insults to every fair-minded Australian" »

Clean coal is in essence, an oxymoron. Much like ``friendly fire’’ or Kevin Rudd’s ``tough and hardline but humane’’ asylum seeker policy dubbed ``compassionate brutality’’ by one wag recently.

Of course, in the case of ``clean coal’‘, the term is used to suggest that it actually exists. Yet it doesn’t -  least not yet.

Doubtless, it is a fine aspiration, especially given the world’s heavy reliance on coal, and it’s central part in global warming. But an aspiration is pretty much all it is.

Continue reading "Clean coal doesn’t exist, but nuclear power does" »

IF you squinted in a particular way, it was just possible to see last Sunday’s extraordinary meeting of the Coalition joint party-room as a triumph for Malcolm Turnbull.

But the bar was set pretty low. He may have emerged from the four and a half hour marathon armed with the authority to negotiate with the Government on emissions trading, but it was a Clayton’s mandate.

Consider for example its qualified nature - remembering at the same time, the Government’s pre-condition that it would only conduct talks with the Opposition if its negotiators had the authority to deliver its numbers in the parliament. On this score, Mr Turnbull’s authority looks shaky. Theoretically at least, he could get 100 per cent of what he asks for from the Government, and still not be able to say yes without a separate party-room meeting to approve it.

Continue reading "Dejected opposition all at sea over border protection" »

Note: ABC Breakfast host Virginia Trioli made this “you’re crazy” hand twirling gesture after interviewing Senator Barnaby Joyce on the issue of the ETS. Trioli obviously didn’t realise the cameras were still on. She later rang Senator Joyce to apologise, he quipped to the Punch that he couldn’t quite hear because he had been placed in an asylum.

Apparently some television commentators think that I’m the insane one.

Maybe that explains the place where I work.

Obviously, if I’m not me who am I?

Continue reading "If you think I’m crazy, have a look at the ETS" »

If Malcolm Turnbull achieved nothing else yesterday he may have at least shut Wilson Tuckey up for five minutes.

Yesterday’s five hour joint party room meeting was a victory for Malcolm Turnbull but it was one that doesn’t leave a great deal of time for basking in the afterglow.

Malcolm Turnbull and Ian MacFarlane now have the right to sit down and discuss a set of agreed amendments with Penny Wong and Turnbull’s leadership is safe until at least the end of the year.  And while it’s not much Malcolm Turnbull will take any small mercies at the moment and they’re ones he has fought hard for.

Continue reading "This is the tiniest little victory of them all" »

Editor’s note: Malcolm Turnbull has a huge fight on his hands this Sunday when the Coalition has an extraordinary party room meeting to decide whether to negotiate with the Rudd Government on the Emissions Trading Scheme. Kevin Andrews is one of many Liberals who, contrary to Mr Turnbull, think the Bill should at least be delayed until after Copenhagen.

Let me pose a simple question about the ETS. By how much will the price of a litre of milk and a loaf of bread increase once the ETS is introduced?

And let me give you the simple answer: No-one knows! But increase in price they will, because Mr Rudd’s ETS is a tax on everything.

Continue reading "You wouldn’t let Rudd up the GST, so don’t accept his ETS" »

In conventional Wayne Swan fashion, he was triumphant as he unveiled Treasury’s stern rebuttal of Frontier Economics research report into an alternative emissions trading scheme.

Given the Rudd Government’s deeply flawed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, the Coalition had commissioned the report in order to inform discussions about a better carbon trading scheme. But yesterday Mr Swan informed reporters that a $3.2 billion hole had been found in Frontier’s alternative by the Treasury Department.

So where is the modelling? Mr Swan has refused to release it and until he does, Treasury’s alleged rebuttal amounts to zip.

Continue reading "Hey Wayne, show me the money problem with our ETS" »

The reason the job of federal opposition leader is the toughest gig in politics, is not simply that it’s a hard thankless slog with endless headaches and slim prospects of success.

Or that outside the immediate pre-election period, you are largely irrelevant to voters. Sure, these aspects don’t make the job much fun, but at least they are relatively predictable.

No, the real reason is that to have any chance of success, you need a team focused on winning when in reality, you’re more likely to be heading up an ill-disciplined rabble.

Continue reading "The bitter irony for Turnbull’s leadership" »

One of the more infuriating moments in sport is when your opponent invites you to “look at the scoreboard’‘.

This smarmy gesture suggests a quick punch to the midriff might be called for but you know how that would end up. In politics, this “look at the scoreboard’’ taunt is delivered daily.

And it too produces some fairly self-destructive responses including infighting, silly public comments, and acts of straight-out treachery.

Continue reading "The score: Brendan Nelson, 1, Malcolm Turnbull, 0" »