It’s become something of a race to the finish between the Liberal leadership spill and the CPRS’ passage through the Senate. I haven’t seen much discussion out there of the implications of a defeat for the ETS bill. Those who are assuming that Rudd wins either way might want to think again. If the anti-Turnbull forces succeed in derailing the CPRS in the Senate, Rudd could indeed call a double dissolution election. As I understand it, he would have to go to it on the basis of the unamended bill. Or present the amended bill another time early in the new year. At this stage, if the CPRS – as amended by the Wong/Macfarlane negotiations gets through – he has the best of both worlds. He can square the circle between claiming to be on the right side of the climate change policy equation and satisfying big business and whispering to voters in coal seats that the timelines have been pushed out, and compensation increased. So he gets both green (if not Green) and brown votes… While pointing to Liberal insanity.
The politics becomes more challenging if the Libs change leaders, particularly to Joe Hockey, and the CPRS bill is defeated. The Libs will then run on “job destroying new tax”, and while Hockey would have to explain why he was for an ETS one day and against it the next, they’re likely to play down the denialism and go with the supposed economic arguments.
Interesting times.
It is unlikely to be passed. The Liberal senators who were in favour are defecting one by one, and the deniers are filibustering so that it doesn’t get passed before Turnbull gets rolled.
Laughably, Minchin has promised that it will come to a vote by 3.45pm this afternoon.
Could Turnbull loyalists join Labor to vote to cut off the filibusterers in the Senate today and just ram it through? Would be pretty extraordinary – possibly a sign that Turnbull thinks he’s done for. But if the legislation is passed, then the weekend and the monday spill simply becomes sound and fury rather than an actual change in direction. Would the Liberals roll him out of pure spite? Probably yes… but it still looks like the best outcome for Turnbull to me. Can you imagine the call from Turnbull to Gillard or Faulkner asking them to put the motion to end debate… http://wp.me/pIBUd-14
Mark, does that mean you disagree with Turnbull’s assessment (on AM this morning) that it would never be about the details, but rather simplified down to “action vs no action”, and on that basis the Libs would be destroyed?
Given the Gov’ts huge advantage in controlling the media cycle, I can’t see even Hockey getting out of that. Especially since everyone would know he was Minchin’s patsy.
So what are the implications for passage of the bill given the party room meeting is set for Monday morning?
Thats what Im thinking Francis – dont those clowns realise two can play it that way – disloyal, backstabbing and divisive?
If a few of the hardcore Turnbull loyalists flip them the bird, its game over. And they could hardly criticism them afterward either.
Mind you, if those numbers get low enough, the Greens are back in the equation.
“Could Turnbull loyalists join Labor to vote to cut off the filibusterers in the Senate today and just ram it through?”
Yes, but there needs to be seven of them (assuming the Greens continue to be greener-than-thou, which they need to be not alienate their base). And the Turnbullistas could be terminating their careers if they did. And if only a few did and the thing goes down anyway, then it will have been for nought.
If the Greens change their minds, then only 2 Liberals are needed. This is more do-able.
The Greens need to think carefully about this, and quickly. How confident can they be that something better will arise in the future?
I dunno Mark.
Maybe I’m estimating the information levels of the low-information voter, but I’m pretty sure that a) the majority of people understand by now that the CPRS is not going to be free, and b) support it anyway. Penny Wong and Kevin Rudd must have used the “costs of inaction will be greater than the cost of responsible action now” soundbite approximately a million times – surely it’s even got a run on Channel 10 on a fairly regular basis.
The other problem that the Liberals have when arguing on the economics is they’ve managed to throw away their “economic manager” credibility by going hammer-and-tongs after a stimulus package that worked spectacularly well.
My thoughts exactly, Mark. And, given voter confusion about the CPRS and sensitivity over the recent economic near-death experience, a campaign of this kind could have some traction. An election fought on climate change is not an ideal situation for Rudd, and a successful Coalition scare campaign could also have negative implications for the Greens vote.
“surely it’s even got a run on Channel 10 on a fairly regular basis”
Don’t be mean to Ten. They’re the most progressive of the commercials (bar SBS) by a country mile.
Robert @6, you’re probably right that most voters are aware that the CPRS will cost something but are prepared to accept it anyway, but I suspect there are a sizeable number of undecided/confused voters who would be swayed by an economic scare campaign. Enough to prevent the next election from being a complete rout for the Coalition, at any rate.
I dub thee Sir Faint of Heart, Lord of Little Conviction Mr Macknay.
Bring it on I say. We are playing for the planet here. I think the results of a DD in March 2010 would be utterly crushing for the right wing rabble, and if I have a doubt about its utility, it is that the Greens might again be irrelevant because the ALP would might get control of the senate in its own right even allowing that the Greens picked up seats, including that of Fielding.
That’s a risk I prefer to the certainty that this CPRS will damn mitigation efforts in the country for at least a generation and quite possibly be the difference between the planet avoiding the worst of the crisis and a roiling catastrophe.
With stakes like that, there really is no downside.
Won’t that depend on the toxicity of the LP leader as well?
A scare campaign run by Abbott, for example – won’t one cancel out the other?
Fran, you can ‘dub’ me what you like, but your conviction borders on wishful thinking. And while we’re on this topic, I’ll note that you’ve never backed up your repeated assertions that the proposed CPRS is ‘worse than doing nothing’, probably because it’s simply untrue.
Fran, this is nonsensical hyperbole, without any connection to reality. Whether or not humanity avoids a catastrophe (the planet doesn’t care) will be determined by what happens internationally, and by what the USA, China and the Europeans do. Australia’s climate change policy will have, at best, a peripheral and minor influence on these things.
Spooky @11, yep. If Abbott is in charge, I doubt a Coalition scare campaign would work. They need someone non-threatening up the front, like Hockey.
Yes, but how can the Libs run an economic scare campaign when it was their amendments that made the bill so generous to farmers and carbon polluters.
If you want to see fear, have a look at the sharemarket today. The ASX-200 is down about 3 per cent at time of writing and the biggest losers are the miners, particularly the coal companies. McArthur Coal is down 6 per cent.
The capital intensive mining industry needs certainty. And they were happy (why wouldn’t they) at the terms of the deal struck early this week by Wong and Macfarlane – and PASSED by shadow cabinet.
So Rudd can counter with the line that what business needs at times like these is policy steadiness, decisiveness and policy certainty – all the things currently absent from a terminally divided Liberal Party.
Rudd can say it was decisive action that saved Australia from the global recession and it will be decisive action on the ETS that can make Australia a player in global climate change negotiations.
This is an easy argument to run and, take my word for it, it will get a big tick from global investors.
Fran, I’m all for promoting little old Australia, but the Australian CPRS in itself is going to make the smallest amount of difference to the climate of the planet.
As a policy purist, I don’t like the CPRS because too much has been torn off and added on by too many. I’m not over the detail that much, because most of the debate makes my head hurt, but surely there would be a simpler way to get this done.
The government sets an amount of CO2 Australia can emit.
You can buy the ability to emit a tonne of CO2 for a price determined by the free market – like an auction on EBay.
Let the market do the rest.
Sell less CO2-emitting ability the next year.
Rinse, lather, repeat.
Sometimes you just need to get all the other stuff out of your head.
Tim@12 … sounded very familiar …
You didn’t think that one up all on your own did you? I am sure I’ve heard that claim elsewhere.
The fact remains Tim that unless we get world emissions stabilised within the next 20 years we are facing unacceptably high risks of the most serious consequences — perhaps 6degC by 2100. That methane trapping arctic permafrost isn’t taking any notice of our political needs.
Australia must lead from the front because at least amongst the substantially industrialised countries, we are the lead per capita emitter. This latest iteration of the CPRS simply encourages the doubters and the cognitively dissonant to conclude that it can’t be all that serious a problem, because if it were, we’d do something a lot more serious.
That’s sounds fine Howard, but the problem is that it is the market which has caused the problem in the first place [and the GFC also but who remembers back that far?].
I don’t get what the problem is. How has the government’s window of oppurtunity closed? How is the ‘best of both worlds’ Labor has now not entrenched for the forseeable future?
The Liberals doing a backflip now isn’t taking anything back to square one in the broader policy debate—all it might do is block the bill and give Rudd an excuse to go to a DD, something Labor has been holding in contingency all along.
The denialists in the Coalition don’t get any do-overs in terms of what is now the accepted cross-party consensus in the big wide world outside of Parliament House. All they get is the chance to lose enough upper house seats in a DD to turn the Greens into the new balance-of-power-party for the next five years.
Howard
Providing your scheme started in a suitable place (a serious cap) and established a trajectory to an even more serious place, then I’d be for that. Right now IIRC each Australian emits on average 25 tonnes per year. We would like to be down at 8 tonnes per year by about 2025.
Plainly, we’d need funds to facilitate the structural changes in energy and transport and agriculture and housing needed to make that possible, so we might start with a cap that costed CO2 at about $100 per tonne. I wouldn’t even mind if each household got a smart card and we had good product information so we could make suitable choices about how much of our ration we wanted to use or sell to others.
Fran @17: funny, your constant spruiking of nuclear energy while opposing the CPRS seems familiar to me too. But I wouldn’t sink so low as to imply that you are a rightwing troll in deep cover.
Thanks for clarifying that your assertion that the CPRS ia “worse than nothing” is without foundation.
Howard Cunningham, you’d be a ‘policy purist’ who just happens not to believe in the issue this policy is addressing, no?
If the majority of the Liberal Party apparatus is inclined to the same intellectual contortions, then god help the conservative side in this country…
Per Capita we are a huge emitter, but we aren’t a huge emitter. There aren’t enough of us.
When it comes to the crunch, we cannot make much difference on our own.
I understand the “leadership” argument, and have read the French quote about a million times, but it has to make an actual change in the total carbon emissions.
It is encouraging to hear countries like Brazil and China set targets, but the Chinese are ruthless, and will seize on any opportunity then can.
As someone who fully supports the concept of the superiority (for want of a better word) of the nation state, getting everyone in the world to act at the same time is very problematic. I concede that. So we have to get negotiating, but a bit of strong rhetoric from an Obama or Rudd wouldn’t go astray. However, strong rhetoric ain’t these guys’ style.
The main problem we seem to have in Australia (like 80% of the problem) is that Coal is too cheap.
So were cigarettes and beer and petrol.
Sam @6: “And the Turnbullistas could be terminating their careers if they did.”
Ahh, I think that should be “Turnbullistos” (most of them are men) not Turnbullistas (which implies mostly women)?
Anyway, in the full sweep of history, all the hullaballoo this week will just look like a desperate rear-guard action by a bunch of dinosaurs. The climate change denialists are headed for the electoral scrap heap, and must surely know it.
Tim
I’m glad you don’t assert that I’m a rightwing troll in deep cover. It wouldn’t make a lot of sense because the defeat of this latest CPRS opens the way to a far more robust scheme. The arguments I put here on AGW and other matters would be outside the skillset of reactionaries.
Barry Brook “spruiks” nuclear power. He’s no rightwing troll either. So do one or two other proponents of mitigation here, including at least one of the moderators. Were it possible to replace all of our stationary thermal capacity with nuclear by 2025, Australia’s emissions would plummet and we’d have cleaner air as a free gift.
Long before any nuke plants would be built, given the glacial speed of the Australian government approval process, the coal-fired power plants will have fallen off their respective perches.
The coal-fired plants are geriatric parrots now, and will be dead parrots within a decade or so. The coal lobby will shortly be reading Monty Python scripts.
“…e’s not dead, just resting…” or however it goes.
No new ones will be built, according to every spokesperson who works in that sector. The current ones will not get adequate maintenance, because they are cash cows on borrowed time. Centralised power generation will be in crisis.
The most likely future scenario, as far as I can see, is distributed power generation. This can be achieved using distributed smaller gas turbine plants, BlueGen units and renewable power, throughout the power grid.
Distributed power uses existing technology with low barriers to implementation.
Centralised nuke power will probably go the way of Betamax and centralised computing systems.
please can this not degenerate into a debate on nuclear power?
Howard Cunningham @23:
Happy days, eh?
(sorry, couldn’t resist!)
Fran, I was just reacting to your implication that I was using a right-wing talking point by pointing out that your position is (superficially) similar to those of many right-wingers as well. In general, I don’t find casting aspertions on your interlocutor’s motives a productive tactic. I see no reason to doubt that you are sincere, although I occasionally suspect you might have a case of Dunning-Kruger syndrome.
It’s simply a fact that Australia’s emissions make up a small proportion of the globe’s total, and the unfortunate use of that fact as a rightwing denialist talking point does not make it any less true. As for whether “the defeat of the CPRS opens the way for a far more robust scheme”, well, maybe, but it’s far from certain. I hope you are right.
For the record, I’m not anti-nuclear, although it’s pretty clear it can’t reduce Australia’s emissions in the short term, as I’ve said before. In the long term, maybe. In other parts of the world with existing nuclear industries, certainly.
Mr Denmore @ 15
The share market fall today has SFA to do with the CPRS. It is all to do with the debt refinancing problems in Dubai – unless the rest of global share markets are somehow linked to the Aussie CPRS debate.
I don’t think Rudd needs to pass the CPRS.
If the COALition don’t let it get through then they are to blame.
Not a hard point to emphasize to the public in the next year or so.
Worth lots of extra votes.
Despite what some pundits like to claim most of the public understand that climate change is real, is a problem and needs to be addressed.
Essential Research [from memory] had a ratio of 5:3 of the public saying ‘we need to do something before it is too late’ plus those who ‘think it is already too late’ as compared to those who follow the COALition line [whatever that will be in the next few hours/day/weeks/months].
ER also asked those who disagreed with the current CPRS/ETS, and they were only 30% of those polled, [and you could put me in that camp] and only 6% of them said they didn’t believe climate change was real.
So the voters for both parties agree that AGW is real and we ought to do something about it very very soon and the COALition will blatantly and transparently be the party to blame for stopping that if that is the outcome in the next few days.
@19 – Nickws, because the amended bill (which could not yet be the basis for a DD) contains the compensation for coal that Rudd probably wanted to see there all along, but which was held back for the negotiations with the Libs. It makes no sense, but if the Libs vote against it, they can then revive their claims about “destroying jobs” and they’ll run on that in mining seats.
@15 – Mr Denmore, sure, but being hypocrites has never stopped the Libs before. It probably doesn’t represent a huge political negative for Rudd, and you’re right that he’ll have lines to counter it, but it’s not quite the same as the Libs having ownership of the bill which will be the case if the Turnbull Liberals pass it.
Mark, how many Labor-held “coal seats” are there?
In Victoria, there are only two such – McMillan and Gippsland – both of which are held by the conservatives anyway. How many are we talking about in NSW and Queensland?
Charlton in the Hunter Valley would be one, Robert. There’s currently a stoush going on between racehorse studs and the coal industry about opening a new mine there.
Rob – I haven’t counted exactly, but there’d be a few in NSW and probably four in Queensland.
Ps – some of which are marginal Labor or Labor gains (eg Dawson) from the Nats last time around.
and there could be two fewer COALition seats after the by-elections in a week’s time. Strange time to be having a leadership battle.
I’d just make the point that business had one chance at a free ride – this CPRS, as constituted, now.
If its negotiated after Copenhagen, its going to be tougher on polluters – no question about it.
Thats why quite a lot of people on the left are hoping it goes down.
The Lib denialists and rent-seekers like TRU got this part of the strategy completely wrong. I suspect they were banking on the rest of the world being having a debate as retarded as ours is – WRONG!
Its only going to get harder on that lot.
The only “coal’ type seat in SA is Grey which is held by the Libs.
I note Greg Combert has a 12% margin in Charlton in NSW.
I’d be interested in the names of the others.
I’d be interested too, because there’s lots of indications that the polling in coal seats played a large part in the government’s decisions & design of the CPRS.
It certainly wasn’t the evidence guiding them, that’s for sure.
Coal schmoal. The Libs have Buckley’s of picking up a single seat in the whole land. especially when they’re “wait until after Copenhagen” line comes back to bite them on the arse – emission cuts are only going higher after that.
ALP up 3 Morgan points through all this bollocks.
An election fought on the CPRS will be significantly in the government’s favour. For a start, it isn’t at all clear that the liberals will have a consistent message for such a campaign. Delay? Carbon tax? Denial of a problem? All three? It isn’t easy for the liberals (as opposed to the Nats) to walk away from the CPRS altogether when: a) a large part of their business constituency wants the legislation in place; b) a significant minority of the parliamentary party think it is the best way to go forward; c) the CPRS is more or less identical to what Howard proposed when he was PM, as he himself said a couple of weeks ago.
The new tax line can be reasonably simply countered by the fact that most households will receive compensation at least as large as the impact on the price level from the ETS introduction. Keep in mind also that the initial price effects will be tiny (much smaller than the GST was).
The government also comes out of this looking quite reasonable. They will claim to be the only part with a commonsense, centrist position between the two “extremes” of the Greens and the Lib/Nats. They can claim to have negotiated in good faith with the Libs and then to have had even their large concessions ultimately rejected. I suspect this will play well in middle Australia, remembering that the government ALREADY enjoys a commanding lead in the polls because of its handling of other issues.
The CPRS (or climate change more generally) might be at the centre of the election campaign, but it wouldn’t be the only issue. The Liberals will be massively out-spent by Labor and Labor also have a superior messaging machine.
I’d be very confident of a significant victory for Labor.
Up to now Rudd and Wong have been trapped by their commitment to emissions trading and got away with the idea that some form of emissions trading is the only logical way to go. By now he probably realizes that CPRS is becoming more and more complex and an easy target for scare campaigns. If he is smart he will be relieved that the CPRS bill has been lost, play the importance of coalition deniers for all its worth and get on with a much simpler plan B to meet his 2020 targets. He needs to be careful to show that Labor can think beyond emissions trading and putting a price on carbon and is not merely playing politics. The real risk is that the coalition will come up with something better than CPRS while he stuffs around.
The key question with the coalition is to what extent what we are seeing is AGW denial vs real doubts about the wisdom of CPRS. If the new leader is smart he will remind us all that the coalition supported Kevin’s emission target legislation and reconfirm that support. In addition, he should move quickly to either propose an alternative or argue that some of the alternatives to CPRS (simple direct action, carbon tax, etc) should be considered in some detail before we decide what to do. The important thing is to convince voters that they are serious about climate action. The real risk is that the government will come up with something better than CPRS while the opposition stuffs around.
Mark @ 32, I question whether Labor doesn’t have the political capital to just keep those amendments “there for the good of the nation”.
Yes, I understand this would mean introducing them (the negotiated amendments) on their own in the senate if the Libs have bailed, but I think we’ve got to the point that they can just make political reality in this area.
Most interesting to me is the report on PM that the Liberal insurgent plan is, supposedly, not to vote the bill down, but to send it off to committee.
I know I’m getting ahead of things, but I think the ideal situation for the Anyone But Turnbull is not to come out as explicitly anti-CPRS, but to kick things down the road. To stall on making any party declaration.
Anyway, that is a profoundly unrealistic strategy IMO, and if it’s attempted then Labor introducing the Libs’ own amendments might just be the way to kill any chance Abbott or Hockey has of being an electoral small target through fence sitting…
John D – I don’t think you understand how much the government (and the bureaucracy) have invested in an ETS. There is NO CHANCE of it being dumped.
John D @44: “The important thing is to convince voters that they are serious about climate action.”
That would be rather hard from where they stand now, wouldn’t it?
They would have had a credible story if:
(a) They had said that they believed in CC but objected to the ETS in toto, and had a viable alternative.
OR
(b) They had said that they believed in CC but objected to the ETS in part, then proposed amendments, and had those amendments knocked back.
Instead, the mutineers have said variously that:
- they don’t believe in climate change,
- that they object to the ETS in toto, and
- that they want significant amendments to the proposed ETS, but
- that they are not satisfied when their amendments are granted.
I would say that most of the Liberal party senior members have an untenable position now.
Hopeless.
No bloody strategy or coherent policy to speak of.
Some nitwit National senator opined today how his granny benefited from the air conditioning in her Inverell nursing home, and how that was powered by coal fueled electricity generators.
Therefore, coal is good and wholesome as an energy input.
These denialist clowns are currently wormng their way through the legacy media of AM talkback radio testifying of hundreds, thousands of emails and phone calls backing their stance.
So they think we don’t know about spamming?
Are they really that stupid? Well, yes, I suppose.
Good article on Lberal party self-destruct. http://inside.org.au/reaping-the-whirlwind/
Moving beyond the domestic politics, which has been a lay down misere for Rudd – Rudd has a serious problem internationally. Copenhagen is most definitely back ON – and Rudd’s CPRS cant deliver the cuts needed.
No point sweeping this under the rug – its a MASSIVE problem for the ALP; especially, if LO is right (and I suspect he is) they cant let go of it. They’re either going to have to deliver cuts outside it – or drop hard on the cap, which will lead to big resistance and compo payouts.
LO @ 43 – It was interesting to see John Roskam in the Fin today making a virtue of the Libs being out of tune with the CAI and BCA.
One imagines they must be hoping for some support from the revanchist miners. Otherwise it’s difficult to see who’ll pay their bills, particularly if they persist in opposing electoral funding reform.
But it’s a significant development – the Libs (or rather the Minchin denialist Libs) becoming something closer to a whacky ideological party than a vehicle for big biz interests.
I don’t disagree with you about Labor having a message to counter the Lib flipflop (if flipflop there will be), but I think the anti-Turnbull Libs are banking on doing the whole GST devil in the detail thing. The complexity of the bill might be its undoing. No doubt they have in mind the campaign against the health care bill in the States.
Having said all that, I think they’ll have zero credibility of they toss Turnbull overboard, and it won’t be all that difficult for Labor to counter a scare campaign.
But it’s worth noting that there is some sort of political logic to the anti-Turnbull Libs’ line. Even if it’s weak, because they’re tearing themselves to shreds, and the whole debate over the CPRS has been on Rudd’s turf (even the response from The Greens imho).
Thanks for the link to the Abjorensen piece, Lefty E. It’s an interesting take.
Yeah its good Mark, I generally like Abjorensen (no idea who he is tho!). Also this one, not quite as exciting, but worth a peek: http://inside.org.au/the-split/
LO@46: You said that
I do understand – This is what makes the government vulnerable to radically new ideas from the opposition. If they are smarter they will use the opposition as an excuse to put CPRS on the backburner.
Elise @47: Quite right. This is what makes the opposition vulnerable, particularly if the government can come up with something better than CPRS.
Cheers, Mike! Sent it on to FB and the Twittersphere! The Liberal #spill is so much fun on social media! Stephen Feneley asked a good question earlier – are journos rendering themselves irrelevant by tweeting before filing their stories? The actual junkies who consume this stuff aren’t clicking through to the news feeds. Interesting point there about the big media push into social media paradox.
Saw it on FB Mark. I never twitter myself; one must draw lines! I must say, its all pretty exciting for Ozpolnerdia. Its a full-on split in the making; no doubt about it.
I believe Normam Abjoronsen has studied the Liberal Party and Australian politics. Pol sci?
That’s right, Ambi. Pol Sci at ANU. His specialisation is Liberal history. Published a book this or last year on the history of the NSW Libs. Writes for Crikey a fair bit.
Here is a bit of research about coal seats. First, the methodology and resources: spreadsheet, AEC search by electorate, australianminesatlas downloadable spreadsheet that can be data sorted by commodity mined and map reference longitude and latitude. The last was very useful because it allowed me to input the map coordinates into the excellent Mapquest website database and return with a map with place names which could then be input into the AEC database and with that i was able to populate my own spreadsheet, which was basically a modified s/sheet from australianminesatlas. I wrote a very rough visual basic routine to hurry things along.
Findings
* There are 108 working black coal mines and five brown coal mines (latter all in Vic: in Corangamite, Gippsland and McMillan).
* ALP sitting members have 88 of the mines in their electorates;
* National Party 15
* Liberals 10 mines
* ALP’s Joel Fitzgibbon is the coal king with 28 mines, Hunter, NSW; followed by Kirsten Livermore, ALP, Capricornia (Qld) with 26 mines; next is ALP’s Chris Trevor, 15, in Flynn (Qld); Bob Debus, ALP, Macquarie, NSW, 9 mines; next mark Coulton, NP, Parkes, NSW – 6; Bruce Scott, NP, 4 mines, Maranoa, Qld; John Cobb, NP, Calare, NSW – 3 mines; Nola Marino, Liberal, Forrest, WA, 3 mines; Greg Combet, ALP, Charlton, NSW, 3 mines; Darren Chester, NP, Gippsland, Vic (br coal), 2 mines; Ian Macfarlane, Liberal, Groom, Qld, 2 mines; Alby Schultz, Liberal, Hume, NSW, 2 mines; Shayne Neumann, ALP, Blair, Qld, 2 mines; Sharon Bird, ALP, Cunningham, NSW, 2 mines; Dick Adams, ALP, Lyons, Tas, 2 mines; Russell Broadbent, Lib, McMillan, Vic, 1 br coal mine; Rowan Ramsay, Lib, Grey, SA, 1 mine; Bob Baldwin, Lib, Paterson, NSW, 1 mine; Darren Cheeseman, ALP, Corangamite, Vic, 1 br coal mine; Catherine King, ALP, Ballarat, Vic, 1 br coal mine.
There are flaws in this analysis insofar as I haven’t included the size of the mines which have two semi elastic variables: size of each mine and how many workers it employs. Some mines like the giant open cut ops in Q have the fewest miners per tonnage extracted, lots of small mines on the other hand can be labour intensive and yet not produce as much per worker.
This has implications both in terms of royalties and threat of unemployment impacting on the local member (as in tar, feathers, rope).
I may have also made transcription errors in transposing the data but it is accurate enough for thsi discussion i think. I’ll save the spreadsheet in case I missed something.
@55 – LE, I never tweeted myself before #spill! It’s been a lot of fun during all this craziness. You do hear what’s happening much quicker than through any other medium. It’s best suited to fast moving events, I think. Less reflective than blog commenting, but it’s certainly got its place.
For anyone interested, follow LP on Twitter here:
http://twitter.com/LarvatusProdeo
Sometimes it’s me, and sometimes it’s Phil.
The most popular tag on Oz Twitter at the moment is #spill:
http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23spill
It’s interesting to watch which journos are worth reading there, too. Often ones whose byline isn’t well known.
@58 – thanks for that, Sir Henry.
The CFMEU has been working closely with the ALP on all this.
I suspect that the focus group research shows that there’s a bit of a wait and see attitude, but that if the Libs run a scare campaign, they will have tested likely themes.
The other thing to remember with the “coal seats” is that while employment in the industry (particularly open cut) is not itself huge, it’s both highly concentrated, and recognised by those living in these regions as powering a lot of secondary economic activity and therefore jobs.
So I’m sure Rudd wanted the extra compensation and pushing out the timelines in there, which he’s got if the amended CPRS passes. With ALP governments on the nose in NSW and Qld, he won’t want any bombs going off in marginal Labor seats.
Having said that, Turnbull has done him a favour by pushing the leadership vote out til Tuesday. There should be enough Liberal Senators not sure how it will go and worried about their career progression, I should think, to pass the bill.
I am fascinated by Bob Brown’s role in this. According to Antony Green, Bob and the Greens will be clear winners in any DD and that the ALP would be better off in an standard general election plus half a senate. It is fortunate then that the Greens’ principles and political advantage come together so neatly.
My tip would be no DD, Sir Henry.
And I haven’t had a close look at the Senate (which is always uber risky to speculate on, in any case) but I think in a half senate election, it’d be 3-3 ALP/LNP in Qld. I’m also not sure that The Greens will win back their NSW Senate seat. I’m really not convinced there’ll be a sole Greens BOP in the next Senate if we don’t have a DD, and I’m sure Rudd would be happier if there weren’t. Glad to see the back of Fielding, for sure, but it suits him to have someone else – Xenophon for instance – to play off The Greens.
Ah, ah, ah, Mark, you are hurting my brain:
You can be sure that, in a half-senate election, the coalition will lose one Qld Senate seat (remember that they won 4/6 Qld senate seats in 2004) – that seat will either go to the ALP or Greens.
There’s no guarantee the greens will win a NSW seat as the ALP has usually had a strong primary vote in NSW. Although a very long shot is the Greens winning one seat, ALP three seats and coalition two seats – twice before the coalition only won 2 NSW seats (in 1990 and 1998 – ALP won three and Dems won 1).
It seems very unlikely for Fielding to be re-elected in Vic – so that seat would probably go to ALP (or Greens).
So what would that make the new senate – ALP + Greens = 39 senators – one more than half?
This is assuming pretty “usual” results.
And in 2004 there were 3 labor senators and no greens elected in SA, 2 labor senators and one green elected in Tas, and 2 labor senators and one green in WA.
It seems unlikely that the numbers of labor + green senators in these three states would decrease at the next election, so I suggest it’s likely that overturning the unusual Qld coalition overhang and Vic results will increase the total ALP + Greens senate seats by at least two in the 2011-2014 senate term.
Yep, Sacha, that seems most likely. But assuming usual results in a Senate election is a big bet, as I’m sure you’d agree! I’m pretty sure I’ve seen Bartlett speculating on a 3-3 split in Qld.
I agree – and Qld is often hard to pick due to the relatively low labor primary vote – but I’d put money on the coalition losing one Qld seat. I’d also put money on the greens or labor winning Fielding’s seat.
@59 Twitter during #spill made the blogs and the newsfeeds look like yesterday’s printed matter. The OZ rss was standing still, Crikey and others barely better.Both had abbott resigning as first on the feed for an eternity when that was so old on the rolling twitter maelstrom. The journos really came into their own. Really worked well. On the spot events interspersed with the odd wry comment. Perfect. Someone said (can’t remember who) that they’d be more inclined to pay for the journos twitter feed than anything else. can see the point. You could really make a case for paying for the tweets of someone actually in the room. I think there is also excellent scope for the journos to lead readers back to the more reflective pieces in blogs afterwards. (print, who cares). Even the smartarses (such as myself) had their reflexes worked over trying to feed satire into the crazy mix. Very big day, and I think a milestone day for reporting in this country.
Having said this – it’s can be very difficult to predict senate elections – it seems to be that a slightly different result in one state (e.g. Tas) can lead to vastly different control of the Senate.
Yep, as Martin B pointed out – the Greens dont need to win anything new to get BOP in 2010. Just a return to normal in QLD and VIC will do it.
Its therefore Odds-on Greens will have BOP – despite frenetic and predictable pre-election shitstorm from Murdoch press.
I also rate Green chances in QLD very good indeed. 2004 result was a coin-toss ATL fluke anyway.
@69 – Worst of Perth – I think the interaction between #spill on Twitter and links back to more reflective, slower paced blog posts and discussions has been very valuable indeed. And agree about the value of tweets by journos close to the action. As I noted, most of them aren’t the well know by lines either.
In all this time, incidentally, I don’t think I’ve clicked through to a single MSM article.
@71 – Not too sure about that, Lefty E. A Democrats Senator isn’t quite the same thing as a Greens one, and I think Andrew Bartlett – who I imagine would know more about this than any of us – has more or less said the Qld default is 3-3 to the major parties. Open to correction, of course.
The Greens will probably pick up 1 senator in the next election whether it is DD or not.
Tasmania.
It is the only state they normally gain a quota on their primary vote.
If it is not a DD election any other Greens senate wins will depend on preferences, presumably from the ALP.
Without preferences from one of the majors they may win no extra senators.
The Greens therefore could be minus 1 senator net [from WA] if they are not preferenced by the ALP and fall back to a total of 4 from the current 5.
Or they could pick up more or something else, who knows?
Mark, have you seen the analysis of Newspoll over at the Australian suggesting that rejecting the CPRS is likely to be very damaging to the coalition vote in metropolitan marginal seats? It will be interesting to see whether people like Possum agree with their interpretation of the data…
Thanks for the heads up, LO. I’ll have a look in a sec. My initial comment would be that the CPRS is still not well understood generally – and we’re actually into the summer torpor season where few but us political junkies are paying much attention to all this. Peter Hartcher did have a point on Lateline last night, though, when he said that Rudd had boxed the Libs (and Greens) into his frame on the ETS, but hadn’t made the case effectively to the public.
I’d also suggest that in these situations, focus group research often gives a better picture than quant polls, as it enables an in depth preview of how particular themes and messages may play in advance of when battle is actually joined, as it were.
That is probably true Mark, but I think that Labor have an advantage in that they have a clear, consistent line to run about the approach they are taking and lots of giveaways to satisfy those thinking about the issue through the hip-pocket. I just cannot see any scenario now where the Libs will have a credible line of attack, given everything that has taken place in recent weeks.
I also notice that more than a few commentators have started to speculate about a realignment of the conservative side of politics, which we touched on in a thread a few weeks back. Not sure that is likely (a split that is), but if Abbott won a spill, or Hockey ended up leader and then undermined as Turnbull has, it would be interesting to see whether the liberal Liberals thought it worth the risk of breaking away (or the conservatives did if Hockey became leader and also wanted to eventually pass the CPRS or a variant of it).
Certainly fascinating to think about what the ramifactions of such a split would be…
See Geoffrey Barker’s piece in Crikey for an example. It is made more interesting in that Barker is aligned with the liberal wing of the Liberal party…
Actually, LO, my Crikey subscription ran out today and I didn’t have time to renew it!
I’m not too sure about a realignment/split just yet. They need another election defeat, first, I think, and someone with real passion to lead it. The default position probably is to paper over the cracks and stumble towards defeat. It could get interesting if Turnbull loses, though.
I’ve been writing another post, but I’ll have a look at the Newspoll story now.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/politics/liberals-facing-election-rout/story-e6frgczf-1225804771480
Very interesting.
I’m with you. I’d like to wait and see what folks like Possum say about the poll, but it may well have an impact on the Liberal MPs’ thinking. If not the Senators. They seem mostly mad. But then most don’t have to worry about elections.
Those numbers are a lot higher for Coalition support for the CPRS than I’d expected. I’ll have to stop listening to the media!
New thread on the poll:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2009/11/28/newspoll-coalition-wipeout-in-cities-if-they-go-down-denialist-road/
Twitted #spill too. Fsascinating. Am registered on Twitter now but I’m buggered if I can work out how to make a comment.
(Eats words with no regret about being anti-Twitter.)
I think any talk of a [meaningful] split is pretty high atmosphere stuff. Those liberals (and people in the Labor party just as much) know which side their bread – and more importantly, Austrlia’s democracy – is buttered on: major parties are almost criminally advantaged at all stages of the democratic process here. Sure, you get the odd outlier, but those are people swimming against the stream. Anyone with a shred of political nous would be aware that splitting would blow their chances to oblivion.
Agreed, patrickg.
Paul – click on the help page on Twitter – there’s a useful little video tutorial on how it all works.