As another followup to recent posts on Barnaby Joyce’s egofest (driven by the Howardian egofest), Lawrence Springborg has weighed in – in the Barnaby corner:
Queensland’s Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg said the comments helped highlight the faults in Labor’s scheme.
“Nobody should be surprised with Barnaby’s colourful language and original language, you always get that from Barnaby and that’s fine,” he said.
“One thing he’s actually addressed…is the cost of this to Australian families, who are already struggling in very uncertain economic times.”
So it looks like The Borg and the LibNats are signing up for the denialist club. Or sort of. Springborg’s position is somewhat obscured in the death by a thousand rhetorical questions maneouvre. And what, I wonder, does this mean for the CPRS’ path through the Senate?
Malcolm Turnbull, who is yet to announce a position on emissions trading, played down the differences between the Coalition.
He said the Coalition would speak with “one voice” on emissions trading.
“We’re very committed to action on climate change that is economically responsible and environmentally effective,” he said.
“We work as a very close coalition and I’ve no doubt that we will be responding to this legislation with one voice.”
It could be that Turnbull is hoping to pull the Nats into line. But given sentiment in many parts of his own party (including that of his Senate Leader, Nick Minchin, and of course, the recently prominent former Dear Leader), it may be that the Libs’ get pulled in the direction of Barnaby’s stand. Will the government end up having to negotiate with The Greens? This could get interesting. In a way, there’s nothing Kevin Rudd would like more – the political markers for painting the Liberals as sceptics, wreckers and denialists on Climate Change have well and truly be laid down already. But if he can’t blast the Coalition into submission rhetorically, how does his “balance” line survive having to negotiate with The Greens? … Of course, there’s always the other possibility – perhaps the most likely one – that the Coalition could split every which way in the Senate.
I’ve said before that this CC policy is a lemon. It gives free permits to big business at the expense of small business, so it’s no good for the economy. It also gives 97% of all money raised back in compensation so it’s bugger all good for the environment.
The Libs won’t like it because of the small business disadvantage, and the Greens won’t like it because it does nothing. In the end I don’t see how the gov can compromise with anyone with the lemon they’ve got.
IMO it’s a waste of time. If you’re going to introduce a trading system then it’s all or nothing. What we’ve been given is barely anything, and will in the end be simply a pointless exorcise in pushing money around gov depts that will accomplish nothing environmentally.
The problem with the “negotiate with the Greens concept” is that he not only needs the Greens, he needs both Xenophon and Fielding, or at least one Coalition senator to support it.
Xenophon looks like he could be brought into a deal that makes the Greens happy – see this. But Fielding?
well smokey:
The coal industry is going to be happy because it isn’t going to happen.
Labor is going to be happy because the Liberals are going to get the blame.
The Greens may be politically wise enough to not share the blame with the Liberals; we will see.
Getting started would have been better than nothing.
smokey: just because it gives the money back doesn’t mean it won’t cut emissions.
Essentially, it puts the price of carbon-intensive goods and services up more than other goods and services. Therefore, there will be a financial incentive to choose the less carbon-intensive ones.
I’m with Barnaby.
If Krudds CPRS gets the go ahead and the Greens will claim a moral victory, but the biggest losers will be the people of Australia who will suffer in the process.
This country needs to remain economically competitive on a global scale. Australia has a population of 21.5 million, China’s headcount is more than 1.3 billion. Why then should Australia be looking to lead the way on addressing carbon pollution when bigger economies are not?
I am neither a climate change sceptic nor a climate change denier.
However, I am a practical person. And I don’t buy the arguments of the socialist chardonnay set, the doctors’ wives, or the likes of Al Gore and Kevin Rudd that if we don’t act now on climate change we’ll all be doomed.
The climate on planet earth has been going through a cycle of changing from icehouse to hothouse and hothouse to icehouse since the planet was formed billions of years ago.
There’s little you or me, or anyone else for that matter can do to stop or even slow nature and its naturally occurring process. I freely recognise humankind has contributed to an increase in carbon pollution output, but our contribution is small when compared with nature’s. It doesn’t matter if we live in Australia or elsewhere on the planet. Nature will do what nature will do. So why then should Australia head down the path of a carbon pollution reduction scheme at the cost of jobs and livelihoods if it will make bugger all difference at the end of the day? Surely Kevin Rudd knows that, and he if doesn’t then he should get some new advisers!
If our globetrotting Prime Minister was fair dinkum about his commitment to a CPRS what possessed him to give $150m to Holden for a ‘green car’ build at Elizabeth? Jobs! Oh, and unions too! I’m told it’s not even a green car that’s on the drawing board, it’s a diesel that will punch out twice as much greenhouse gas as a Toyota Prius. Nice one Kevin.
!!!
2k9 Climate Denier Soup:
1) repudiate the title ‘climate denier’ (as eg. ‘religious’) and yet
2) demonstrate an ignorance of the key findings of some 20 years of comprehensive, inclusive, international scientific research
3) garnish with a version of the litterbug argument
@5 – you’re with Barnaby, and you’re also off topic.
What I’m interested in discussing here is how Barnaby’s stance affects the political prospects of the ETS.
Rob @ 2 – The alternative to Fielding is peeling off one Coalition vote, which on the evidence of their pre-Christmas farce, may not be too difficult if they’re split anyway in how they want to approach the bill (as they are). Having said that, negotiating with the Greens would change the shape of the bill.
This is an oft-heard argument from the Opposition, the commentariat, big polluting businesses and their mates in the less enlightened sections of the union movement. It can be rendered pithily in one sentence:
If we don’t fuck you, someone else will.
dk.au:
4) Do a little cut-and-paste edit of the resulting pap, and post it in full on someone else’s blog.
Don’t feed, etc., please folks.
As to the politics of it all, it remains my view that most of the key business peak bodies and emissions-intensive sectors realise that they are currently doing quite well from the ETS as proposed, and would not be doing so well out of an ETS which had to be negotiated with the Greens. Further, business groups would not be putting many of their eggs in the leaky basket of a prospective return to Coalition government at the next election, and would realise that the most probable alternative to the current form of the ETS getting through the current Senate with at least some Coalition support, is the kind of ETS which will get through a Senate in which the Greens hold the balance of power in their own right (which is the most likely outcome of the next election).
In short I would be far from surprised to see one or more Liberal Senators cross the floor to support Labor on the ETS, and shortly thereafter announce a career move to a plum job in the private sector.
There is another issue here on which Mark may well be able to shed some light. Rudd was a key figure in the Goss government, which was given much grief by the Queensland Greens and allied forces during its second term (1992-95) and, famously, at the 1995 Queensland State election. Wayne Swan was Queensland ALP State Secretary for much of that period. It is interesting to speculate on the extent to which that experience may have strengthened whatever previous aversion people like Rudd and Swan would have had to negotiating with the Greens.
I have also noted an increasing querulousness in Peter Garrett’s responses to criticisms by Bob Brown and the Wilderness Society. On the former:
On the latter:
Paul – it may have, but I suspect their aversion is typical of most right wing Labor types anyway.
Meanwhile, Warwick McKibbin is outflanking Labor on its left.
Blessed be the Possum. He articulates exactly what I was trying to say:
I’ll add that Springborg is a fool if he doesn’t realize the damage Barnaby is doing to the LNP. Most voters know what cliches are, and they know that’s what they’re getting from the man. And “original language” my ass. His language wouldn’t be out of place on an USENET thread circa 1989.
Why is it that the ‘we-don’t-have-any-influence-anyway-so-why-go-broke’ opponents of action never mention that we have something like the 14th or 15th largest economy in the world, and that most economies below us aren’t going to leapfrog over us anytime soon? And just whom is going to surpass our medium-sized power when the Europeans–the people with the currency of the 21st century–are also taking action?
Perhaps the denialists are concerned that China will build more DVD recorders than we currently do here…
(Also, are these creeping nations also going to surpass our not inconsiderable military power? Not likely. And there’s a source of influence with nowt to do with AGW.)
Also of relevance is Liberal right-winger Tom Switzer in today’s Sydney Morning Herald.
I read that, Paul, and heartily endorse it.
My advice as a Labor stooge to the stooges of the Liberal Party would be identical: go on, keep going Right. You don’t want the centre, you want the Right right. No, further. Heaps of room over there.
Hmmm, Switzer’s advice to Brendan Nelson as a staffer was *so* effective, wasn’t it?
Switzer, let us not forget, during the fag end of the Howard regime, was editorial page editor of the Government Gazette, now Opposition Orifice.
If the Liberal Party goes left, everything he has publicly stood for is in the very public toilet. No wonder he’s stroppy.
Back to Barnaby Joyce — Tony Windsor has today called him the Sarah Palin of the North. How very apt.
Jesus, for Switzer it’s all kulturkampf and strawmen when it comes to defining Australia’s magical conservative “centre of political gravity”.
Maybe the person who eventually rolls Turnbull can do a Nixon-goes-to-China with climate change policy and therefore win over the brainstemless Right to sanity?
I’d rather see Rudd negotiate with the Greens than the Lib nutters. They might actually be able to do something with it to make it work.