http://larvatusprodeo.net/2009/11/24/d-day-for-the-liberals-and-the-governments-cprs-giveaway/

http://blogs.crikey.com.au/thestump/2009/11/24/turnbulls-torment-robb-turns-on-his-leader/

going by A. Crabb on twitter there was a lot of nervous list-checking and whispered convos with Hockey.

But I do think he could make a good cabinet minister in Rudd’s government. I think he could have the imagination and smarts to be be a good industry minister, for instance. Much better than that space waster, Kim Carr, in any case.

Therefore, I believe, Abbott knows that if he were to become Liberal parliamentary leader the party would be reduced to a small, right-wing rump.

I think it can be argued that Abbott understands that the best hope for his tendency within conservative politics is to be a ginger group within a party with broad electoral appeal.

The problem for the Libs is that they have no one who promises to be a vote-winner who can simultaneously prevent the party’s factions from tearing each other apart.

I’ve been saying it for some time but there has never been a riper moment since 1947 for a major institutional overhaul of non-Labor politics in Australia.

I expect to see a “Progressive Party” and/or a “Values Party” come into existence soon after the next federal election.

But he is a dead leader walking and will go soon. Rudd should offer him a place in the Cabinet if he switches to the Labor party. He’s make a better minister than half the Cabinet.

I reckon he’d retain the seat of Wentworth. He is one of them. Labor of Liberal, it doesn’t matter.

Malcolm will resign from Parliament. Rudd will make him the Australian representative on whatever the international organisation on CC comes out of Copenhagen.

My bet is on “Chief Artificial Coffee Creamer Officer“.

Any chance he had of representing himself as leading a party enlightened on the policy response to climate change is gone completely, no matter what happens in tomorrow’s party room debate on the amendments negotiated between Ian Macfarlane and Penny Wong.

Mark your LP bashing is speculative partisan spin not based on hard evidence and unlikely to survive an effective test on its implied electoral prediction. Have you or any other LP’ers actually made any predictions on this and if not how are we supposed to test your model?

The LP is not much worse than the ALP on climate change. One should not forget that it was John Howard who was the first PM to commit to an ETS. And it is the coal-mining union dominated state ALPs that are currently the worst offenders when it comes to worsening carbon pollution.

The LP’s divisions on climate change policy have not caused it to lose votes just yet. Quite the opposite, at the moment polling reports there is a softening support for CPRS in the community. That will harden as the earth cooks.

Its true that if the denialists win and the LP caucus rejects the Wong-McFarlane compromise bill then the LP’s long term (decade +) climate policy credibility will suffer. But this process has not gone through the formality of occurring yet.

Nor will it occur.

For the better part of two years I have predicted that the L/NP will sign onto an ETS, simply on the basis of the strong convergence tendency in the AUS political system. On 05 JUL 08 I predicted that the L/NP will eventually support some form of effective CRPS:

The LN/P will fall into line with ETS. More so than the ALP did with the GST.

[snip]

This is because the vast majority of the AUS populace are fair, reasonable and well-informed. And our political system reflects this.

There is an underlying community consensus of good sense, 51% of whose votes the L/NP must attract in order to hold office. So I am sticking to this prediction despite the hysterical tantrums being thrown by various figures in the LP party room.

I do not think the ALP wants to risk a Double Dissolution and I do not think that the marginal seat-warmers in the LP have the guts to fight one on this issue. As I argues on Quiggin:

I predict that Rudd will accept LP amendments, waverers in the LP back-bench will blink and that that Parliament will vote for some sort of watered down ETS.

Of course the major party political convergence on policy (which I have been hammering on since 2001) does not mean that the policy will be ideal. My model of economic policy making predicts that our leaders tend to “take the path of least resistance between Right-wing vested interests and Left-wing public opinion”.

The ETS fits this model. It is a token to Left-wing public opinion but pays real money to Right-wing vested interests. The result is what, in AUG 08, I described as a Potemkin village carbon trading schemes.

If Rudd was serious about carbon constraint in particular and ecological sustainability in general he would slash immigration by at two-thirds, to say 200,000 pa all up, so that it just covered population losses through emigration and sub-replacement fertility levels. But instead immigration is running at 500,000+. THAT is where the real carbon overload is coming from.

But both parties want massive immigration as it suits the interests of a capitalist state to have as many consumers and tax-payers as possible.

In truth the wiser heads of both parties just wish this issue would go away since it causes more headaches than it cures, especially amongst the noisy fringe elements in each party’s base. So they will both be glad to get this bill through, which accounts for the unprecedented show of front-bench bi-partisanship.

The Centre will hold, as it always does in Oz.

God killed all those devilish dinosaurs 4000 years ago so that God-fearing folk could refine their remains and use the petroleum products to drive to Christian churches to pray for the end of the world.

When the world ends the righteous will already have been enraptured into heaven, leaving all unregenerates (you know who you are) to suffer God’s ultimate sulphurous, brimstone-laden wrath.

It’s about time that the Liberal Party got square with God’s Big Battalions.

Vote 1 Kevin Andrews. It’s what Jesus would do.

I suspect it is because Opposition Leader Isobel Redmond has a background in the law and is well aware of the pitfalls of dipping her oar in, particularly when one of the protagonists is famously litigious…

Or maybe the Greens will grow up a little bit and become a broadly representative political party. That would be preferable.