If he ran into the environment by accident he’d immediately call the SES to get him out.

LOL.

Do they even have “environment” in Vaucluse. I believe they only have lawns, grounds and in Turnbull’s case, the estate.

Garrett knows what he thinks about nuclear, but he has to contend with Martin Ferguson and Joel Fitzgibbon who are rampantly pro-nuclear. Rudd has promised a debate but has virtually said they’ll be doing what Beasley had decided last year. That is selling it but not using it ourselves. Garrett is saving his comments for the internal ALP debate.

Silkworm, Howard decides their climate change policy. Turnbull is learning a few lines to support it. But he has nothing to offer. If he ran into the environment by accident he’d immediately call the SES to get him out. Luckily for him the session ended just as Garrett started up on the Barrier Reef and Kakadu.

1. Turnbull quoted Garrett from the late 80s saying higher economic growth meant more greenhouse gas emissions. To have zero greenhouse gas emissions means we have zero economic activity (a strawman), and that Garrett was in favour of less economic growth and lowering our material lifestyle.

2. Turnbull advocated nuclear energy, saying Garrett opposed it yet supported ALP position of selling more uranium overseas. When O’Brien asked Garrett about nuclear energy, Garrett totally evaded answering the question, instead choosing to talk about promoting solar, geothermal, wind, etc., and using Kyoto to do it.

O’Brien should have pressed Turnbull more on Kyoto. Turnbull, as usual, was blustery and evasive on this.

Garrett could have taken the opportunity to point out the costs of nuclear energy (hidden carbon costs in start up and decommissioning (a la Caldicott), problems of waste disposal, increased terrorism risks, etc.). Garrett knows all these arguments, but ‘petered’ out.

We are left wondering what position Peter Garrett really holds on nuclear energy. Is he there to placate the green movement, and allow the development of uranium mining once Labor gets back into power? Has he sold out to corporate interests, as Hawke did before him?

Someone needs to hold Garrett’s feet to the fire. Is Turnbull the only one who can do it?

I’d like to hear Bob Brown chiming in on this. Maybe Brown vs Turnbull vs Garrett in a three-way joust. Maybe throw in Caldicott too.

If it’s good enough for the states and feds to get together over the Murray – it ought to be good enough for the Canberra parliament to come together over CO2 pollution.

That’s not how politics works – but this case should be an exception. There is nothing left to debate.

progressive Co2 caps
Co2 trading
massive funding for alt.energy to catalyse the transitional period – bugger it if a few losers get funding – as long as national focus is put on the area and it all gets a hefty kick start

I’m well on the way to complete deafness. This is due to repeated glue ear episodes as a kid. I’m eligible for a hearing aid but haven’t bothered as yet because I can lip-read fairly well and also took the time to learn Auslan a couple of years ago. There will come a time, however, where I’ll have to bite the bullet and do something about amplifying my hearing. I’m lucky I work in a job where my environment is quiet most of the time. Teaching high school wasn’t so easy, believe me.

Ken’s description of partial deafness is spot on, and I’ve always had quite a bit of sympathy for Howard because of it. Deafness not only means opening your mouth and inserting your foot from time to time (which is what has clearly happened here), it also means not being able to sing and – as you age – having flat, atonal prosody (something that’s getting worse for Howard over time).

I also met Peter Garrett on one inauspicious occasion. It was at a meeting to discuss the formation of an Australian Greens party. Myself and another Green were thrown out because we already belonged to a political party, which happened to be the fledgeling Sydney Greens. The instigator of this action was Peter Garrett. The hypocrite should have excluded himself, as he belonged to the Nuclear Disarmament Party.

Peter Garrett cannot be trusted, as Bob Brown knows all too well. The problem with Peter is his ego, but a secondary problem is that in many ways he is doing it all for Jesus.

The 7.30 Report should be interesting tonight.

Or alternatively, for the world to provide him with small digs in The Hague where he can rehearse lines like “i do not recall”,”that is not what i heard”and that old favourite “i have no recollection” while he tries to explain away his complicity in that dicky Mesopotamian thingy.

Look, (And Listen) unlike many here I have a certain respect and grudging admiration for Howard. He’s behaved just like I’d want my chief employee to behave during real shit hitting fan stuff like Port Arthur, the Asian Currency meltdown, the Bali Bombing and the Boxing Day Tsumani. And tactically he’s a very effective (and damn lucky) pollie.

My big gripes with him are manufacturing and/or enhancing fake crisises for political opportunity and utterly blowing the resource boom bonus on electoral handouts instead of on ICT and TDL infrastructure. We had a golden opportunity over the last decade to utterly rewire and relink the place – real nation-building stuff – and he blew it. Not to mention getting us involve in that Mesopotamian fiasco. You’ll notice the rest of the world dosn’t think any the worse of Canada and NZ for deftly sitting that one out.

And now he’s visibly (and audio) impaired. Regardless of where you boogie on the political spectrum, put a fork in him, he’s done. No more energy, no more vision, no more sound. Time for Costello, Abbott, Turnbull, Rudd, Gillard and Garrett get it on. Sure they’ll fight like cats and dogs, but at least it will be over new bones in a new century.

It’s now more than time to give Howard some token Board memberships, a think tank sinecure or two, a decent advance for his memoirs and the majestic bronze statue he deserves in a Canberra park full of uninhibited pigeons. Then the rest of us can all get on with the 21st century.