The Coalition are continuing their marathon climate change/leadership party room meeting after question time today. Clearly, agreement couldn’t be reached within the scheduled four hours. That’s significant in itself.
In developments so far, Andrew Robb has jumped ship, reports Bernard Keane at The Stump.
The government has made its offer on the Coalition amendments. Peter Martin has the text of Rudd’s press release. Writing in New Matilda, Ben Eltham characterises the deal thus:
Billions more taxpayer dollars will be sacrificed on the altar of making the emissions trading scheme palatable for big polluters.
It’s impossible to see this ‘bipartisan’ deal as anything other than a huge transfer from the household sector to the polluters, and one which, at least in the short term, will do nothing much to reduce emissions. The argument in favour is that it should be supported to lock in business and parts of the Coalition, in the hope that it can be improved over time. The argument against ‘pass now, improve later’ is put by Senator Christine Milne at GreensBlog.
In today’s Crikey, Bernard Keane described the CPRS as the worst ever policy process this country has seen. It’s a textbook example, as well, of how politics can completely derail the ostensible intent of a piece of legislation, except insofar as it continues to provide the government with a talking point or two on the actual issue (and that’s not much of an exception!)… So all eyes in the commentariat will now doubt be on the implications for the Liberal leadership. Ludicrous outcomes such as a Kevin Andrews ascension are probably outside the realms of likelihood, but then who knows with this mob?
The issue has certainly crystallised almost all the ructions within the Liberals and between the Nats and moderate Liberals. Continued resentment of defeat, the counter-productive relationship with the media, the tendency to tear down any leader who won’t play the right wing game in all its purity and nuttiness, self-delusion about electoral politics. It’s all there. And none of it is remotely rational in a political sense, or any other.
More to come later…
UPDATE [Ben Eltham]: Sky News is reporting that Wilson Tuckey has moved a leadership spill motion …
Update [Mark]: Tuckey’s leadership spill suggestion failed. Perhaps he shouldn’t rely on The Australian for an assessment of numbers within the Liberal party room.
Update [Mark]: The farce continues, as Coalition members get angsty over whether the meeting should adjourn for a dinner break.
Update [Mark]: I suspect what’s going on now is they’re trying to work out what spin to put on an outcome which is completely chaotic, because both sides disagree as to what happened. If Turnbull, as leader, says that the meeting has decided to accept the deal, it seems to me that all they can do if they don’t agree is to take up Kevin Andrews’ kind offer and make him leader. Or Andrew Robb. Or Tony Abbott or someone. But all the blather about legitimacy surely is just hot air, unless they’re prepared to actually dispense with Turnbull.
Update: Turnbull is giving a press conference, pointing to his strong leadership, and claiming that he’s saved jobs. The Twitter buzz might be as good as place as any to follow what’s going on.
Update: SBS makes about as much sense as anyone could out of the result of the meeting.
Update: What Turnbull should do now.
This is all lose lose now for Rudd. Truthers hate it and us warministas hate it. Will anyone be voting for the ALP next election?
Err. Yes. Don’t mistake what a tiny minority of voters in the blogosphere think for the views of the general public.
If there is a later Mark. Crazy, absolutely crazy times, and I’m inclined to agree with Bernard; certainly the most high stakes game of Uno to played by policy, and it’s all because of the senate at the moment. Interesting to compare and contrast with Howard’s autocratic and dismissive way of rolling out innumerable large scale (albeit not quite so large) policies, consultation be damned. Which is better? In this context it’s genuinely hard to say.
Indeed, patrickg. It’s Rudd’s big tent approach that has led to such a flawed scheme, not to mention the uber wonkery involved in its design.
Having said that, I have no doubt that Howard would have broken his ETS promise. But it’s worth speculating what a different Labor PM might have done.
The Liberal party room sounds like a bunch of suicide bombers on ice. They just might be insane enough to install Kevin Andrews as leader.
Oh yes, Ha! I wasn’t implying Howard would have actually done anything. I was just thinking about how much I (and many of us) used to rail against his back-of-napkin policies, released seemingly on whim, with large effects and no consultation whatsoever, cross-bench or otherwise.
We posit an alternative world where Rudd develops this policy without input from anyone else as being better – but maybe it just would have been a different kind of shit.
Eminently possible, patrickg!
Anyway, I’m off for a walk! Maybe when I come back Kevin Andrews will be Opposition Leader. Weird days!
Ps – I think you would have needed someone other than Rudd. He’s too much the wonk, and the big tent conciliator. Having said that, that appears to be the modus operandi of the social democratic leader these days. They’ve forgotten how to do any sort of political leadership other than the sort that’s about winning elections. There’s a very interesting question about how left of centre parties govern mixed up in this mess-o-rama.
Wilson Tuckey didn’t get the numbers for his leadership spill.
Interesting. He shouldn’t believe everything he reads in The Australian, then.
Ok, really am off now. Glad I don’t have to think about Kevin Andrews any more!
It’s very disappointing and perplexing too, unless you recall that the prime directive of all capitalist governments is to look after capitalists. Plainly they want to reconcuile that with winning elections but given the choice, the capitalist interest prevails.
Anna Bligh’s privatisation moves in Queensland and a little further back, the Iemma-Costa-privatisation of power supply attest to the force of this prime directive.
Clearly Rudd could have gone hard, and handed the opposition a CPRS that ALP and Green supporters would have liked and most uncommitteds would have lived with and then destroyed the Opposition in the next election. But that would have upset too many capitalist filth merchants and we can’t have that, can we?
Fraid it looks like you are right, Fran. Liberal and Labor, as companies, look after their shareholders first.
That’s why I’m voting Greens next election. For all the good it will do.
Yeah, its a dog of a deal. Thanks Libs for transferring so much of the compo from us to the polluters. What a win!
Just a small point: how does it reduce emissions again?
Fran, I thought it was the prime directive of all governments to eventually protect the elites regardless of their initial intentions. That said it is disgusting how much public money is now headed back into the private polluters and on that simple basis I’m inclined to think no action would have been a better outcome, especially as the CPRS isn’t going to do a damn thing about carbon.
On a lighter note, I am delighted to report that a prominent noisy little denialist with links to the local ALP defriended on facebook me today because I called him on his rant over the CRU emails. How is it someone can claim to believe in climate change but deny that science has anything to do with it? Truly amazing.
Apparently the government had to agree to significantly reduce compensation to households to increase compensation to the big polluters.
Doesn’t that tell you all you need to know about the Liberal Party’s priorites?
No Ginja. It tells me all I need to know about the ALP. Two faced.
At least with the Libs they are open about their interests.
Rudd is the PM the buck stops with him.
What? You actually voted for the ALP last time?
Yep. Sure did. I’m critical of the ALP because I actually had faith in them. Concern trolling aside I know exactly what the Libs are for. They don’t hide it.
Er, why did you have faith in them exactly? If climate change is an important issue to you, surely it makes sense to vote [1] Greens and preference the ALP ahead of the Coalition?
I wanted Howard out at all costs. More fool me eh?
Its theatre of the absurd.
I have to say, the policy aside, the politics of this have been breathtaking.
Watching Kevin and crew pin down the Coalition, the Libs and Turnbull in turn and methodically knock away their struts has been pure, ringside pleasure. The only mitigating factor tarnishing this complete political headlock has been the willingness of the Coalition to assist in their own humiliation.
“What? You actually voted for the ALP last time?”
Unless I’m reading more into that than there really is I must say I love the implied shock and incredulity of actually even considering voting for the ALP.
Just struck me as funny, not sure why.
I just heard that emissions reductions made by households are now to be counted in Australia’s progress. How appalling! Another backhander to the big polluters.
What is most frustrating is that the government could have had a scheme that ticked all boxes — equitable, environmentally credibly, economically sustainable but it passed in favour of something failing all these counts
Fran 26, I think the policy is that voluntary reductions are to be added to the reduction targets, so it is a strengthening measure. A criticism of the CPRS from the Greens was that voluntary actions would have no effect on the reductions, since they would have been subsumed into the targets.
To all those people saying they will vote Green rather than ALP, you do know, I suppose, that in the lower house this will be a totally empty gesture, as your preference will eventually go back to the ALP (unless you are planning to preference the Liberals!).
We do what we can Sam.
This little anecdote raises a much broader question in my mind, and that is this: to what extent is there a do-nothing tendency within the ALP and the union movement vis-à-vis AGW? And to what extent are the do-nothings’ basic concerns (that is, their ignorance and sectionalism) neutralised by Rudd & Wong going and receiving support-in-return-for-concessions from the Opposition in the negotiations?
Yes, yes, I know all good progressives should ignore the Marn Fergusons, Gary Grays & co, and just trust that they will never get the votes in caucus, conference or the trades halls to go full-out denialist rollback on the limited CPRS we’re about to get. But I assume they do exist, that they haven’t rolled over and died just because there is a type of reform process, and they could potentially be a roadblock if the Coalition got their obstructionist act together and declared themselves against any action whatsoever.
Have I just given an explanation as to how Rudd is secretly doing more than just legislating to stay in power against divided tories? Is he legislating to turn the ALP into a party that can only go forward, unimpeded by internal critics? (Though I imagine my questions might well be met by calls for Labor to have a good old fashioned purge of the minority, because heaven knows that would work wonders and make us all feel so good.)
With SBS reporting, since the Robb intervention, a 50/50 split amongst the liberal party room the whole thing may yet fall over. Fingers crossed.
I don’t see exactly where Fran@27 is coming from – to get anything past the Senate Rudd needed either the five Greens plus Xenophon plus Fielding or the Liberals.
The former was unworkable because while there was a way of reconciling Xenophon and the Greens via some form of massive handouts to SA and small business Fielding was a) out of his depth and b) already well down the denialist rabbit hole and never going to come to terms.
They could have taken a better bill that had G+X support to the senate twice and got a DD trigger but it would be much easier for the Liberals to oppose, subject to grumbling and whiteanting from the Ferguson-Carr mob Nickws has highlighted and subject to a massive scare campaign by the industries that were going to feel a bit of a pinch from it.
Not really an alternative as far as Rudd was concerned.
An alternative strategy might have been to try to win over the Greens and get two Liberal Senators over the line by looking after them.
But even if Rudd was interested in a Left strategy, which he probably wasn’t, it wouldn’t have worked. The Greens would have demanded that every coal fired power station be shut yesterday, that petrol prices should be $10 a litre, that aluminium smelters be shut forthwith and that all methane producing animals be slaughtered en masse. And that would have been day 1 of the negotiations.
Rann and Della Bosca could get them some women.
Well if the Greens did adopt that bargaining position Sam they probably would have got what they wanted cos really and truly this ALP have no idea how to bargain or play poker even when dealt a winning hand.
Honestly, they are hopeless and I don’t know why, surely some of the unionists know how to negotiate and bargain?
But all you have to do is whisper ‘boo’ and they roll over.
Embarassing.
Leadership spill possible for Thursday.
Kevin Andrews For Liberal Leader!!
Yay!!
re: what the Greens would have demanded. You’re being ridiculous, Sam. You can see their proposed amendments at the Greens MPs website. They’re quite reasonable and sensible, and are obviously a compromise between what’s they’d like and what they could get. I never understand why people are so happy to pretend the Greens are extremists, when all their policies are published on their website, easily found, and just as full of dull wonkery as policies from any party. That kind of joke made sense in the 70s, but it’s getting pretty boring now.
Leinad @32 said:
You’re assuming I wanted the bill passed this week.
Let’s rewind. Instead of the appalling mish mash that the CPRS was, we have a proper suite of bills and then when the Liberals reject them we go to a DD election in 2010 and get them passed that way, if necessary, at a joint sitting.
Ultimately the Greens would have supported this and the next election would hand the Greens/ALP a senate majority.
Incidently, putting good policy to one side, if one asks who needed this bill to pass more it’s clear the Coalition did — which is why the government could have done a take it or leave it thing, or worse, revised the bill to be less generous to the Liberals’ backers and utterly humiliated and dvided them when they backed down.
Nickws @30 I tend to agree that internal criticism seems very much out of style with this ALP. FWIW I put this down to two things. First the left right thing is a moving feast, a changing spectrum, one which seems to be defined by how far right popular politics can go rather than how far to the left. Second, as the ALP follows the trend to the right they jettison more of their left wing ideals (such as robust internal debate) in order to stay in power, as staying in power becomes the end and not the means by which change can be achieved. Seen this way the CPRS makes sense because it appeases some of the moderate right and delivers political power to the Rudd government. The extreme right will have to move further right and the Greens and residual lefties will have to make their own peace with a deal which apparently represents the middle way.
At this rate the ALP will change their name to the Liberal party allowing Malcolm Turnbull to join, the right rump will coalesce around the teachings of Bolt and elect Barnaby Joyce as their saviour and the Greens will become the real opposition in this country…
Nonsense! If the Greens get a big primary vote and the ALP candidate gets pushed to preferences but ultimately wins, believe me, the ALP candidate will pay attention to environmental issues. Besides, there are certain inner city seats where sitting ALP candidates are under real threat of losing their seats to the Greens.
Seems to me, if Malcolm survives tonight he’s going to have to resort to the Billy Hughes option. Hughes took over the leadership of the UAP (predecessor of the Libs) when Menzies stepped down after losing the Federal Election in late 1941. Before long the party was greatly dissatisfied with Hughes’ leadership and wanted to get rid of him. For reasons best known to himself Billy didn’t want to go. He avoided a leadership spill for up to a year by the astonishing tactic of never calling a party room meeting. No party room meeting, no vote. They couldn’t get rid of him. (I think eventually he was succeeded as Opposition leader by Menzies).
Tssk: if Rudd and Wong hadn’t agreed to the Coalition’s amendments they would have been accused of playing politics, not being serious about negotiating, spoiling for a double dissolution. The Greens weren’t willing to negotiate. Who was the government going to negotiate with? Steve Fielding? As always, Labor can’t win – but it’s done its best.
But people are missing what’s most important here. CPRS targets can be adjusted over time, what’s crucial is that we can go to Copenhagen with at least some kind of cap-and-trade bill passed. If the world’s worst laggard nation – after the US – has accepted cap-and-trade, that would make a big impact on the talks. In fact, that’s probably the biggest impact Australia could have on greenhouse levels – influencing international talks.
This reminds me of what the know-nothings said about the stimulus. Stimulus money should have been spent on this instead than that, they whinged (after a lengthy cost-benefit analysis). What they couldn’t get through their thick skulls was timeliness was the most important thing, not what the money was spent on. Something similar goes for the CPRS: a small target is not that important, hand-outs to polluters is not that important, one of the world’s brownest economies going to Copenhagen already signed up to cap-and-trade IS important. That’s where we get the biggest bang for our buck. Like the stimulus, it’s all in the timing.
Update [Mark]: The farce continues, as Coalition members get angsty over whether the meeting should adjourn for a dinner break.
…meant this insteat of that…
….sorry for constant typos….got to stop typing so quickly after coffee…
In other words: the numbers in the Liberal Party room are pretty much the same as they were when Turnbull became leader this time last year, split pretty much evenly with Turnbull on a majority of 2 or 3. Move on folks, nothing to see here.
The Machiavellian skills of Minchin and Abbott have come to absolutely fuck-all when it counted. Memo to Abbott: nothing wrong with switching sides against your leader, but it’s pretty much incumbent upon you to make such a switch very bloody decisive. Oops!
As to Andrews, it’s nobody’s fault but his own that he has a crippling case of relevance deprivation syndrome, a worthy winner of the Graeme Campbell Award For Most Deluded Git In A Major Party. lol@Sam@6
“It is despite the best efforts of the Howard Government, not because of them, that the Rudd Labor Government is so gutless and supine in the face of major challenges facing Australia”. Discuss, extra marks from rhyming couplets, on my desk by Friday please.
The Punch reports:
“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.”
http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/next-two-hours-could-seal-malcolm-turnbulls-fate/
Andrew, like I said, people shouldn’t rely on Peter Van Onselen for an accurate assessment of the numbers.
If Turnbull comes out on top, he should sack Minchin.
Thanks for the update, Daphon.
Looks like Turnbull has prevailed and held on to the poisoned chalice
The libs put their faith in johnny howard
cause costello was such a coward
which got them stuck in the poo
and unprepared for you know who.
Now as Tony Abbott pulls the pin
And Penny’s got an evil grin
as she turns dollars into CO2
KRudd dines on leader number two.
Meanwhile in another part of town
Ozzie Average is still driving around
oblivious to another great fraud
as Big coal collects its reward.
Mark 48
He might consider sacking Robb as well.
I agree, Mark. I can’t wait to see how Minchin will spike the SA State Libs this time, they’re such suckers for putting up with him for so long.
The real piece of political roadkill here is Abbott. He’s taken a big risk and it hasn’t paid off. He doesn’t have any numbers and ‘Battlelines’ isn’t exactly up there with Harry Potter (or even Teh Costello Memoirs) sales-wise. He cultivates the press gallery pretty well but it would be fascinating to see how quickly that adulation would pass if he ended up on the back bench and the caravan moved on (to use the D-Day analogy: Turnbull makes it off the beach and toward, um, Paris? Berlin? Who are the Nazis here, is Penny Wong Rommel? Never mind Turnbull, Andrews or anyone else, I think this metaphor – if not the very meme – is in peril!
As to van Onselen, he’s long been cultivated as a friendly face in the hostile worlds of journalism and academe. Part of being a plant is that you lose credibility when you toe the party line. Maybe van Onselen could run for Warringah …
Sam, the Greens are supporting Ross Garnaut’s position. i.e the expert economist that the Rudd Govt actually commissioned to design the CPRS.
Hehe, Andrew.
and @52, Sam, yeah, and as Andrew says, Abbott too.
I suspect what’s going on now is they’re trying to work out what spin to put on an outcome which is completely chaotic, because both sides disagree as to what happened. If Turnbull, as leader, says that the meeting has decided to accept the deal, it seems to me that all they can do if they don’t agree is to take up Kevin Andrews’ kind offer and make him leader. Or Andrew Robb. Or Tony Abbott or someone. But all the blather about legitimacy surely is just hot air, unless they’re prepared to actually dispense with Turnbull.
Update: Turnbull is giving a press conference, pointing to his strong leadership, and claiming that he’s saved jobs. The Twitter buzz might be as good as place as any to follow what’s going on.
So, they can’t even agree about whether they agreed to anything. The farce will continue.
I’d certainly enjoy some shadow front bench blood letting – if Turnbull is smart he’ll use the crisis to make his mark. Sack the whole lot of the old reactionaries from his frontbench – Abbott, Minchin, Andrews; and finally turn it into his party. Of he does that, he might even survive the inevitable 2010 drubbing as leader.
If he doesnt move on them, he’ll go down after the loss as sure as night follows day.
But then again, the fantasy island scenario of Andrews emerging leader is so mouth watering. Imagine the electoral wipeout in 2010 with that charmless robot at the helm. The nats could emerge senior partner!
Update: SBS makes about as much sense as anyone could out of the result of the meeting.
While UAP leader, Hughes wasn’t Opposition Leader – Fadden was. (Hughes was smart enough to know that that was a bridge too far.)
Of course they did get rid of him eventually first as leader and then expelling him from the party for remaining in Curtin’s War Council when the UAP decided to withdraw from it.
That makes a total of 4 political parties that Hughes led in the Federal Parliament, 3 of which expelled him. Since the other one lasted only two years before falling apart and merging with the UAP, I think we can presume it would have got around to it eventually if it remained viable for long enough to do so.
Yes, I see one of the SBS headlines is “Turnbull under emissions cloud”. Obviously very stuffy in the party room! And Wilson is the one he should be looking at.
Update: What Turnbull should do now.
hannah’s dad @ 25, I understand the incredulity. The last time I voted Labor was when Hawke got elected the first time. Since then, they’ve only rarely got even my second preference.
Labors’ been on a hiding to nothing since the election in the Senate. Rudd’s handling of this problem has been faultless. No other scenario could have been more advantageous for labor. look at the mess the coalition, the dingbats and the Senate are in and ask yourselves, what else could have been achieved without total disintegration of support within the electorate. Yes we all had ideals that have suffered but give him his dues, his course is still navigable, everything else is a shipwreck.
Martin B @ 60,
Thanks for that.
Meanwhile re Turnbull & Co.
I’m speechless. Talk of a spill on Thursday, but they can’t have a meeting unless Turnbull calls it.
I reckon this whole thing might backfire on him. Though sounds like his faction has the numbers in the Senate to get the CPRS through. (More’s the pity. It really is a case where no CPRS would be better than this Liberal party dog’s breakfast.)
The whole point of the ETS is to sacrifice billions of dollars of tax payers money.
Shorter Craig Mc: I don’t understand the difference between means and ends.
You can disagree legitimately about the effectiveness or even the need for the ETS.
However, it is inflammatory and irresponsible to traduce the bill’s supporters as co-conspirators in a plot simply to confiscate taxpayer funds for its own sake.
The Greens weren’t willing to negotiate.
Ginja, that is completely untrue. The Greens have offered repeatedly, in public, on the public record, in writing etc etc to negotiate with the government. Wong has never, ever reciprocated. It is quite clearly the government who decided never to negotiate with the Greens, not the other way around.
Even when the Greens put forward a comprehensive suite of amendments, which Wong herself acknoweldge was ‘much more work than the Opposition has done’ (on RN with Fan Kelly), they have still not attempted anything in good faith.
the latest update on attempts to negotiate with Wong by the Greens can be found here.
disclaimer: I’m currently an electorate officer for Christine Milne
Myriad
As you know, I regard the Greens as the most ethical of the parties represented in parliament and have great respect for Bob Brown and Christine Milne. They are impressive figures, IMO. The stance they have taken on the CPRS is beyond serious dispute amongst those of us who take mitigation seriously.
Nevertheless, I believe the time is long overdue when they should shift the balance from a focus on renewables to one based on low-emissions technologies which would allow them to include nuclear power in the options. Were they to do this I believe it would positively transform the debate in this country and allow the Greens to move from being seen as at best naive conjurers of pie-in-the-sky feelgood schemes to schemes that would actually work by large tranches of people outside the 10% of us who don’t accept this characterisation.
While renewables alone can make an impact at the margins, the numbers don’t support reconciling low-emissions and low footprint with the needs of urban and industrial society. It’s not a viable project.
I also think that the focus on MRET is wrong. It would be better to have a scheme that removed the advantages to cheap biospheric dumping of effluent and which lowered the ancillary costs of intermittents. A sound ETSbased system could do this.
Fran
I can personally see that in terms of the mainstream narrative it’s possible that some would take the Greens more seriously if we were to adopt nuclear.
However, talking in purely political terms first:
– the Australian public don’t want it, which rather scotches any possible electoral gain. I think if you were to look at the demographic who favour nuclear, they are a very poor fit with the greens overall and I doubt likely to change their vote on this alone.
- more fundamentally a rejection of nuclear is a pivotal part of the Greens charter and principles. Totally anathema to our party, and would never get up.
In terms of the evidence pro/against nuclear, while you obviously disagree, it has been looked at seriously and simply doesn’t stack up. Perhaps if thorium or gen IV plants actually existed and were feasible, this would spark a serious re-look at our policies, but neither of those technologies are anywhere near fruition. In the meantime, current nuclear power technology is irrevocably linked to the nuclear arms industry and escalation, and that runs in completely the opposite direction to the Greens Charter.
Myriad said:
It would be more accurate to say that the vast majority of the current supporters of the Greens don’t want it. As things stand though, the Greens are not only unlikely to ever form a government in their own right, but unlikely to move enough votes to nudge either of the major parties in the direction of policies that you and I would agree would be preferable. The question is though, whether a stance that didn’t explicitly reject nuclear power would be a deal breaker for most Green supporters. It’s certainly possible, but the Greens, as I see them, are more than a party just focused narrowly on environmental issues.
Equally, nuclear power is not what it was in the late 1970s. There is no particular reason why GenIII Thorium plants, or IFR could not be rolled out here, and both of these technologies have a significantly smaller footprint than NG, which is, after coal, the next best on-demand energy technology from an environmental perspective. As a matter of practice, there never will be the funds for wind or solar on the scale and timeline needed to both run major economies and achieve good environmental outcomes. One has to be realistic. If we insist on a renewables-only course, then in practice, environmental outcomes will be poorer because the roll out will never allow more than about 20% from intermittent sources. Geothermal isn’t available ubiquitously and will in any event require massive infrastructure if the power it produces is to meeet the 27GW peak that Australia usues. Natural gas will always be cheaper than that by a fair margin. So while the ostensible policy focuses on wind and solar and biomass, in practice it’s a policy for NG and for the covering fantasy of CC&S. I think that sooner or later, this realisation will open the minds of many Greens to nuclear power.
This poll trend doesn’t bear out the idea that nuclear power is more opposed than supported in Australia. The latest entry suggests 43% support it, and a further 22% were undecided. If the Greens were to do no more than call for a debate in the current context I believe a large tranche of both the undecideds and opposed would swing behind the idea of thorium and IFR. We really must get past the idea that Chernobyl plus nuclear weapons says everything one needs to know about nuclear power.
It is true that the bulk of those currently pro-nuclear are likely to be conservative voters, but the broader point is what the ALP does. If the Greens were to declare an open mind on, say, LFTRs and IFRs, then the ALP could take this up without being wedged to their left. Instead, it would be the right who got wedged. It’s hard to imagine that anyone voting ALP or Green would vote conservative because of the new policy on nuclear power, or succeed in setting up an anti-nuclear party that took up other green concerns that would compete effectively with your current constituency.
And let’s face it if one asks which technologies LFTR and IFR or CC&S is closer to doing the job we need it to do, the answer is very clear.
I disagree as a mater of fact. Israel and Pakistan have no nuclear power industry but are nuclear weapons holders. It’s far cheaper and easier to create weapons grade Pu with research reactors than from nuclear hazmat. One can refine uranium from seawater or coal waste at about $300 per pound, and while this isn’t economically viable for power production, it’s very viable as a route to nuclear warheads, assuming one were so minded.
Inceidently, I’ve looked at the Charter before and this is all it actually says directly on the subject of nukes.
Having a non-nuclear foreifgn policy amounts to favouring the elimination of nuclear weapons, which is fair enough, but it has nothing to do with nuclear power.
There’s nothing else in the Charter that explicitly rejects resort to nuclear power.
Fran and myriad, the couple of times I’ve suggested that it would be pragmatic to soften our stance on nuclear power at branch meetings, the room has been filled with a frosty silence and a heap of wriggly mouths.
It won’t fly.
Fran, I don’t wish to derail this thread with a discussion on nuclear & the Greens beacuse it’s all been said before on threads that were more relevant.
So in brief response
– as the poll analysis you linked to over at Possum says, there’s been a small weakening in opposition but its too early to say whether that’s a serious ongoing trend. And as the first comment notes – as soon as you add to the question ‘would you support nuclear power in your area’, support plummets.
– simply put our policy evidence base disagrees with your assertions about renewables and the viability (economic or otherwise) of nuclear.
– the nuclear fuel / weapons cycle extends well beyond particular national borders, and is well documented. In fact for the two countries you cite, their access to nuclear arms was through the stalking horse of being assisted to develop ‘legitimate’ civilian nuclear energy plants. The R&D, intellectual capacity, enrichment process and facilities (not to mention sources of uranium) etc. for civilian and military purposes are intertwined.
And as I’ve said to you previously, I personally will never support the nuclear industry & their government proponents, because their track record in particular of trashing the rights and lives of Indigenous people including our own is beyond shameful, and they can not be trusted (see recent efforts to use Indigenous Northern Australia as a nuclear waste dump).
DI(NR)
I can easily believe you. In the days not so very long ago when I took the view outlined above by Myriad, I’d have reacted the same way. There was a time when someone only had to mention the subject and I’d feel annoyed and I daresay that that is how many in the Greens currently feel.
yet I’d be surprised if very many of them have revisited the attitudes they adopted when they first cut their political teeth to see if their underpinning assumptions were still germane.
I formed my first attitudes in the 1970s and saw nucelar power very much in terms of “Mutually Assured Destruction”, a response very much buttressed by “neutron bombs” and Pershing and Chernobyl and the idea of waste being dangerous for 50,000 years. At the time, I knew little about just how bad coal was, comparatively — and certainly didn’t know that coal was the largest single emitter of radioactive hazmat on the planet.
FWIW Fran, I was 6 by the end of the 70s, and my views on nuclear – as on most policies etc. – aren’t rigidly set for all time. Not particularly long ago when I did most of my reading on climate change, it included a lot of in depth reading on nuclear, because like many people I think, I felt we really did need to look seriously at all options. It still doesn’t stack up for me economically, environmentally, morally or politically.
Myriad …
Maybe you should specify your reasoning over at
BNC
I’d be interested to read it, but I take your point that this should not hijack the thread here.
Anyone who says McNuclear McPower/McWaste is necessary for Australia is a fool! Why doesn’t Malcolm Turnbull call for it: because he knows that we don’t need it!
How can the Libs ever argue for Nuclear Power to combat Climate Change when most don’t even agree that Climate Change is real?!?
Absolute fools anyone promoting this concept! They simply want to bury the worlds Nuclear Waste and that is a fact! “Oh, how convenient: we have to bury ours so we may aswell bury everyone elses aswell!”
Watch out for bullyboy fascists! I don’t think I need to say that again, do I?!!?
I’m sorry David, but this analysis (as cogent as it is) doesn’t address my concerns about the Labor govt. needing a ‘centrist’ carbon reduction plan in order to finally neutralise genuine subterranean opposition within its ranks (both in the party and the allied union movement.)
Anyway, I see all the experts here have decided that analysing the phenomenon of the Fergusons and the Greys isn’t on, for some reason. Of course the fact that these forces in both Labor and labour are one of the reasons the CPRS is so mild to begin with is neither here nor there, I suppose. It’s too much trouble to examine genuine extant industrial social democratic forces when we can just wish for magical Left ponies to emerge, and curse stumbling blocks as not existing/being sellouts.
Now there Keithy …
Why don’t you put a number on the volume of waste implied in, for example, supplying 15-27.5GW via IFRs or thorium?
You do know that compared with the effluent from coal plants or even NG plants that it’s
a) tiny
b) easy to manage in one specific place since it isn’t airborne
and that even if, improbably, we took the whole world’s radioactive waste and the world only used LWRs this would still be a tiny quantity
right?
You do realise that if we did take the whole world’s nuclear waste that producing weapons grade Pu from any of it would become impossible, right?
Myriad74: the Greens weren’t willing to negotiate. The Greens’ position was to treat the world’s most carbon-intensive economy as if it were Denmark. C’mon, that’s not serious.
It’s hard to be too upset about that – Steve Fielding’s loopy position meant it wouldn’t have made any difference. And of course as a Labor supporter it’s fun watching that freak show called the Coalition blow its brains out. I suspect the Greens were also quietly hoping for a double dissolution in hopes of picking up more Senators than would otherwise be the case.
The Greens have been fairly reasonable when it comes to allowing the government’s agenda to pass. I could be wrong, but I get the impression that Bob Brown is willing to negotiate, while Christine Milne takes a more hardline position. If the clownish behaviour of the Coalition continues, we could be entering a really progressive period in our country’s history. I hope if the Greens have the balance of power they’ll recognize what a precious opportunity it is and not squander it by taking hardline positions.
Progressive periods don’t come along all that often and they don’t last indefinitely.
Ginja, that’s just bullshit. The Greens have been prepared to negotiate all along, but Labor hasn’t bothered to take them up on their repeated offers to do so.
As you say, though, it would have been academic with that idiot Fielding and, frankly, Xenephon isn’t much more sensible.
We’ll pick up the extra senators whether there’s a half-senate election or a DD.
Now there, Fran,… why isn’t Malcolm listening to you?!!?
C’mon David Irving, the Greens keep prattling on about “the science” as if every country has to cut back on emissions – to the dot – of what the science demands.
Like it or not, Australia is a big dry quarry. Unlike European countries we don’t have lots of hydro-electric dams and we didn’t build nuclear reactors before people started getting concerned about them in the ’70s. We live in big, spread-out cities.
The fact that the biggest laggard country – after the US – is also in the first group of nations adopting an ETS should count for something. But a realistic sense of politics and blogging don’t seem to go together. We need to do so much more on this, but let’s not pretend we can become Europeans overnight.
An unexpected win was that voluntary contributions will no longer be counted in the CPRS, so that big polluters won’t be able to free-load. There’s a huge pent-up demand for individual households to do their bit – just waiting for economies of scales for solar panels etc. to kick in and prices to fall (the reported over-subsription for the solar rebate is evidence of that). So a modest but important win.
Myriad74: the Greens weren’t willing to negotiate. The Greens’ position was to treat the world’s most carbon-intensive economy as if it were Denmark. C’mon, that’s not serious.
Even if your characterization was accurate, which it’s not, you seem to conveniently forget that it’s Rudd et al that came in and have led the return to evidence based policy, you know, like on the science.
The other thing they talked a lot about was leadership and vision – you know like the ability to envision and lead a transformation of the Australian economy away from being solely reliant on quarry economics, finite and unreliable as they are.
Also, apparently it’s ok for everyone else to put their wish-list out there and be taken seriously (and everyone understands its a public position from which to negotiate) but everyone like you magically loses that ability when it comes to the Greens.
The fact remains Ginja that neither you nor the Rudd government have any basis for saying the greens weren’t serious about being willing to negotiate because the government never tried.
sorry lost my last bit, which was -
what remains on the public record is the Greens’ repeated offers to negotiate, including preliminary statements on what they were willing to negotiate on, which from the get-go included the target. The government silence and refusal is also on the record.
Ginja @83: “There’s a huge pent-up demand for individual households to do their bit…”
Here’s the latest on BlueGen (household fuel cells) for electricity generation from natural gas, resulting in a 2/3 reduction in carbon emissions compared with coal-fired power:
“Ceramic Fuel Cells Limited [AIM/ASX: CFU], a leading developer of high efficiency and low emission electricity generation units for homes and other buildings, has appointed Neco, Australia’s leading green retailer, to distribute the company’s BlueGen power and heating units in Australia.
The non-exclusive agreement gives Neco the right to market, sell, install and service BlueGen units throughout Australia.
The BlueGen units, which convert gas to electricity via ceramic fuel cells, will be available for installation in Australian homes and buildings early next year.
BlueGen is the latest breakthrough in small scale electricity generation. Each BlueGen unit, about the size of a dishwasher, can produce up to 17,000 kilowatt hours of power a year – twice the electricity needed to power an average Australian home. Surplus electricity can be sold back to the grid.
BlueGen units can generate electricity at up to double the efficiency of the current power grid, providing significant cost savings off energy bills.
Neco is currently preparing a range of purchase options that will allow customers to achieve attractive financial paybacks whilst drastically cutting their greenhouse gas emissions.
BlueGen units can cut carbon emissions by up to two-thirds compared to coal-derived electricity. The first BlueGen units will be used for demonstration programs and showcase sites. Installation in residential and commercial buildings will begin from March 2010, when BlueGen units will also be available in Europe.
Neco is Australia’s largest retail and online eco store, selling more than 3,500 products that support sustainable living practices, including solar PV and solar hot water products. Neco provides end-to-end services in green markets, including product installation and after-sales service.”
Myriad74: it’s all a bit academic – even if the Greens were willing to bargain, it wouldn’t have made much difference. I would believe the Greens were serious about negotiating if I heard Christine Milne say something along the lines of: “Our economy, our cities, the whole way we live in this country is vastly different to that of Europe and so Australia probably won’t meet the targets that the science demands. We’ve always had abundant and cheap energy and that’s meant we haven’t taken energy conservation as seriously as countries like Japan. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be doing as much as we can. And so the Greens are willing to negotiate with whoever to get the best deal we can”. Instead the Greens said something about its target – what was it? 20%, 40%, who knows? – and that was all they had to say on the subject. Not a serious contribution.
You don’t have to trade your soul as the Democrats did with Howard, but I can understand why the Government wouldn’t want at times to be seen negotiating with the Greens. Not when the Greens don’t even seem to know what kind of country they live in.
Ginja, it doesn’t really matter what kind of country we live in. The bottom line is that if the whole world doesn’t have a carbon-neutral economy by about 2030, we’re fucked.
Myriad74: it’s all a bit academic
I’ll take that as you conceding that the Greens did offer to negotiate Giinja, thank you. What the outcome of such negotiations would be is another matter.
With regard to the rest of your post, I think this from Christine’s speech to the national press club says it best:
“In Australia, the dominant economic, social and therefore Labor and Coalition view, is that resource extraction underpins wealth, power and influence?—?always has and always will. Regardless of the physical capacity of the Earth to sustain it, regardless of the collapse of the Murray Darling or the climate impact of burning more coal or logging more forests, nothing will stand in the way of that extraction continuing. All policies to address climate change are seen through that cultural lens.”
It’s not that we don’t understand how Australia differs from other nations, it’s that we understand that being one big dryland quarry is not a sustainable or desirable future, and we are going to have to transform if we want a viable future on a living planet.
To refuse to look at what other countries do on the basis that ‘Australia is different’ is very blinkered thinking, and of course bears no reality to what actually happens all the time in policy development in this country across all political persuasions. Of course Australia is different. The development and implication of policy is as much about difference as similarity, and a perfectly legitimate starting point for such an exercise is to look to other examples, identify what is adaptable and appropriate for our own circumstances, etc.
The key is what kind of a society we aspire to, and what therefore is on offer that will help us towards that. I’d rather work towards a sustainable future for this country that lock it in to a highly constrained, uncertain and very finite future based on resource extraction. The regular, steady loss of many of our best thinkers, researchers and innovators is a testament to how bereft such an approach is. Climate change actually offered us a crisis that we could turn into an extraordinary opportunity. The policies that we’re getting in response represent an extraordinary failure of leadership and imagination.
Hey Myriad74, I’d like many of the same things you want for our country. But even as the world moves to a lower carbon economy somebody will still have to supply the world with iron ore. Wind chimes have to come from somewhere…sorry a bit of a low blow. Though the idea of a country of know-it-all “thinkers, researchers and innnovators” fills me with horror.
But if you’re serious about policy, you’ve got to start with the world – and Australia – the way it is and then do your best.
I have to read up on it more, but not including voluntary efforts in the CPRS means there’s lots of other ways to bring greenhouse gas levels down. As Ben Chifley said, it’s no use crying over spilt milk, just bail up another cow.
P.S. Can Greens for once stop the “Labor and Liberal view” shtick for once. As a Labor supporter I share bugger all with the Liberal view on anything.
Ginja, from the Left, Labor and Liberal are barely distinguishable. Hence the “Labor and Liberal” schtick.
I regard a Labor government as the least bad option.
David Irving, I’m most definitely on the Left and there are huge differences (what’s happening at the moment should be proof enough of that).
I can only suggest you read a newspaper, Hansard, and otherwise try to make yourself better informed about those huge differences between the parties.
P.S. That’s a bit harsh of me, David Irving.
But the stale Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum rhetoric – you strike me as too smart to really believe that.
Giinja, the best of the ALP movement are certainly justified in claiming difference from the rest of the majors – just as the far right is different but for opposite reasons!
However this is the crux of the Green difference from the left and right, in the context of climate change:
I say to future generations: there were such people in 2009. The Greens in 2009 understood there was a climate emergency. We have brought to the Australian parliament for decades and in particular for the last three or four years on a weekly basis, whenever the parliament sat, the scientific information and the economic information. We drove inquiries. We looked at everything from agriculture and peak oil to the impacts of climate change on ecosystems and biodiversity. Yes, there were people in this parliament who knew. There were people who brought this information to the parliament. There is not one single senator in parliament in Australia in 2009 who is not fully aware that the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme will not reduce Australia’s domestic emissions until 2034 and even then only after that if carbon capture and storage works-and I do not believe it ever will. So people need to understand. This parliament knew. There are no excuses. I do not want to hear, ‘Sorry future generations, we did not know what we were doing.’ This parliament knows exactly what it is doing and is choosing it.
It is choosing it because Liberal and Labor cannot get away from their philosophical underpinning that the earth has an infinite capacity to provide resources and absorb wastes and that the fight is simply between capital and labour and who gets the most out of the exploitation of resources. That is where the Greens are different.
I’ll leave it there, but thanks for the cordial exchange.
I’d just add that evidence from Europe is starting to dribble out that cap-and-trade is effective in bringing greenhouse gas levels down (even if diluted with big give-aways to industry).
But I don’t accept that the Greens have tried to play constructive role in this at all. They spelt out their position, reminded everyone yet again how morally superior they are, and told the government to take it or leave it.
But let’s wind this up.
I really will wind-up after this.
I just want to say that the Greens – Christine Milne, for one – do have interesting and worthwhile ideas for reducing greenhouse gas levels (it is their core business, after all). But they dealt themselves out of the game so early in the piece that those ideas never got an airing.
That’s a shame – and it doesn’t bode well for the future if the Greens gain the balance of power in the Senate.
Giinja, you can keep repeating it all you like, but it’s categorically untrue that the Greens dealt themselves out of this debate. The public record already shows this; and as the detail about the negotiations comes out, it will too. I’ve had a first hand view of how this has played out, particularly since the Greens launched their amendments and offered again in writing and in public etc. to meet and negotiate.
Hopefully The Greens will remember that to walk from Melbourne to Sydney you need to take a step and then another and another…not just one big jump.