CPRS defeated in Senate: Open thread
December 2nd, 2009 by Mark Bahnisch | Published in Climate change, Politics | 173 Comments
The CPRS has been defeated in the Senate, with only two Liberal Senators supporting the legislation – Judith Troeth from Victoria and Sue Boyce from Queensland.
This is the first fruits of Tony Abbott’s leadership.
The potential questions are many:
(a) Will the Liberals have any credibility in proposing some form of alternative to the CPRS given the circumstances under which Abbott came to the leadership;
(b) How will this affect Rudd’s position in Copenhagen;
(c) Will the Liberals be able to get any traction with the polluters/industry/National party inspired “big new tax” line;
(d) What are the chances of a double dissolution?
Discuss away!
Update: Possum on Abbott and the polls:
Abbott, by going in hard against emissions trading, is on the wrong side of public opinion by at least 35 points in every demographic — going as high as 58.
Australia, the most intense carbon pig in the world, will have no credibility in Copenhagen.
The extreme right has frustrated the majority of Australians, the verdict of the last federal election, their own Coalition policy at the last election, a solemn agreement with the Government in the national interest, and successive decisions of their own party room.
They are enemies of democracy and the Australian people.
a) The libs have no credibility on this.
b)Rudd’s position in Copenhagen will be the same as previous: no one will pay serious attention to him
c)Liberals will not get any traction, not least because their amendments were going to send billions of dollars to the big end of town.
d)Much as I wish otherwise, DD will be seen as too high risk by Rudd. What reason does he have to think his ratings won’t continue getting better.
If The Greens had voted for CPRS, then 34 ALP + 5 Greens + 2 Libs (Boyce + Troeth) = 39; 30 Libs +5 Nationals + 2 Independents = 37. If Greens had voted for CPRS, it would have been passed. Interesting?
Update: Possum on Abbott and the polls:
Terry@3 said:
No, because the Greens were right to reject this. They would have been pilloried if they had voted for this rort, and rightly so.
OTOH … maybe the government can cut a deal that the Greens plus 2 out of Boyce, Troeth, Humphreys and Xenophon can live with betyween now and February. That would be interesting.
Terry, it is interesting, but can we assume that the liberal floor-crossers would have done so if they thought the bill was actually going to pass?
Mike – spot on. Couldn’t agree more. The Liberals will be assigned to the dumpster of history in double quick time.
Judith Troeth is bowing out at next election. She’s pretty committed to issue. If there was going to be a time when she chose to do something rather than just make a statement, that may be now….
Its probably worth considering what a CPRS deal with the Greens would look like when considering the chances of a DD. Rudd has to get something through eventually. Would it be easier for Rudd to get re-elected in the future with the current CPRS or a stronger one?
At Copenhagen it won’t matter a damn. The world leaders will save their abuse for the climate change deniers. They might even be happy with the Greens and Xenophon for holding out for a stronger ETS and tell K.rudd so. If they notice at all.
The ALP, by not threatening DD but calmly, through Julia Gillard, announcing that it will resubmit the proposal at the next parliamentary sitting of the senate and allow the Opposition plenty of time to mull this legislation over the Xmas break and January, is on a winner.
This is absilutely the right way to go about it because it robs the Colaition of two jibes it has been emplying: 1. That this legislation was designed to give Kevin Rudd a “bauble” with which to “strut the world stage” at Copehagen; 2. it is not clearly now “rushing” this legislation through without proper consideration.
The corollary of the interregnum is that the Coalition will actually have to marshall some genuine arguments to justify its rejection for the third time and that will be a lot harder.
Even then, the ALP would be wise to wait until July or August for an election – it will I think have a choice of clearing senate decks in a DD or do a half-senate standard number, whichever suits its purposes better. In the meantime, the Opposition will burn its resources in a continuous campaign mode until then.
And by July it will be clearer what the US, China and Japan intend. If it transpires that Australia may be disadvantaged in trade with the US through the provisions of an import tariff against countries that do not take steps to mitigate global warming, then the Coalition will not have a leg to stand on and will take grevious punishment at the polls. Timing is of the essence.
For further advice, ALP strategists, Mark has my number.
The Greens might sincerely believe that nothing is better than the CPRS.
Or they might think that they will be dealt in to the next round of negotiations.
Maybe they will be, or maybe they won’t.
If there is a double dissolution then the government will most likely be able to pass the CPRS in a joint sitting without the support of either the Greens or the Liberals.
The DD becomes a real option from Saturday July 3 2010 onwards.
Good outcome. The Libs are no longer in sheep’s clothing, the ALP have been forced to go to round two, will receive a massive reality check from rest of the world in Copenhagen, and move on to a scheme which actually does something meaningful. My money’s on Rudd shying off a DD, so it should happen with a Greens BOP after the next election, to prevent the obscene rent-seeking we have just witnessed, and up the targets closer to where we need to be.
Word to ALP strategists – I know you worry about workign with the greens, and they the right will make about that. But the game will probably change considerably after Copenhagen: passing the next CPRS with the Greens will come with a LOT of cover from the rest of the world.
If The Greens had voted for CPRS, then 34 ALP + 5 Greens + 2 Libs (Boyce + Troeth) = 39; 30 Libs +5 Nationals + 2 Independents = 37. If Greens had voted for CPRS, it would have been passed. Interesting?
What’s interesting is that it shows that if the ALP had actually had the balls to follow the polls and work on a stronger CPRS with the Greens, there was a real chance to get it through with Xenophon + 2 sane libs.
There’s been much opining here and at other places that it simply was a waste of time for the ALP to talk to the Greens because they didn’t offer enough cross-bench votes and getting a deal with us + Xenophon + Fielding was impossible. It was, but as I’ve put forward a few times in response, there was never any exploration by the ALP of doing a deal with Greens + X + 2 sane Libs – kind of ironic looking at events today.
Let’s hope they actually bloody consider it this time in Feb.
and wot Lefty E said.
For what the developing nations, including Australia are really up to pre-Copenhagen, read the latest Guardian Weekly. Assuming it doesn’t completely dissolve into a farce (something Australia has been playing an active role in facilitating), the chances are much more likely that Rudd will come back from Copenhagen with credible arguments for stronger action. What he was trying to do was lock us into the bare minimum, which was of significant hindrance to global negotiations. Just ask all the African countries that walked out of the meeting we chaired in Barcelona, because our 450ppm target was completely contrary to what they know they need to realistically survive.
So what will the Liberals’ new climate policy be?
I suppose the prior question is, what stance will they take on the scientific or factual issue? If we look across the aisle at Labor climate policy, and try to understand its logical basis, it goes something like this: We accept what the IPCC says about how the climate works. We also accept the political target of restricting warming to less than 2 degrees. In Bali in 2007 the IPCC said that we have a 50% chance of doing that if developed countries reduce their emissions by 25-40%, with respect to 1990 levels, by 2020; and we have committed to a 25% reduction by 2020 if everyone else does their part.
The step before the Wong-Macfarlane negotiations came when Turnbull said he accepted the government’s targets. At that point the conditional 25% effectively became Coalition policy too, and all that remained was to negotiate the form of an ETS.
Now all that has been overturned. So how deep will the revisions go? Will they go all the way to the beginning and express skepticism or agnosticism with respect to the IPCC? Will they retain Turnbull’s consensus on targets? Will they say they favor an ETS of a particular design? That would be hard to do, after voting against their own amendments to the government’s scheme.
I would suggest a simple education campaign on the ETS leading into next year. That would corner and effectively neutralise Abbott’s position on the issue and give the agenda solely to those who want action on climate change. Blitzkrieg Abbott out of the agenda.
Sam,
No – the DD is only a valid option now up until the point where the government re-introduces the legislation in the lower house with amendments, as they have said they will do in February. Effectively, the Government has now killed the DD option by their plans to re-introduce (if, indeed, they do).
They must know that the Libs are likely to reject again, so I can only presume that they are admitting that all their high rhetoric about urgency over the last few weeks was the nonsense we all knew it was and that they are going to wait until the earliest date for a normal half-senate election – which is the date you gave (IIRC). Again, IIRC, they would thn have to wait even longer for the Senate to actually change to get the legislation through.
Effectively, the government has said that they are now ready to wait almost a year to get this through, just to avoid a DD.
The government does’t need Greens + X + 2 sane libs
It needs Greens + 2 sane libs or
Greens + X + Troeth
Both Brown and Milne looked pretty sick sitting on the right wing side of Troeth and Boyce when the vore went down, Brown actually had a word to say to Milne as well (would have loved to have known what he said) – something like – christ I hope our voters understand our position.
Andrew 18, the government can introduce a bill in February and then assuming it’s voted down, go back to the Senate in May/June. If it’s voted down again, that gives them an immediate DD trigger to be used in July.
The bill in February doesn’t have to be the one that’s just been defeated. Indeed there would be no point since that one was the outcome of negotiations with the opposition and they will have the benefit of Copenhagen outcomes for the next bill.
Andrew Reynolds said@ 18:
There are at several things wrong with that.
1. They don’t know that the Liberals are likely to reject it again. By February, Abbott may have exposed himself for the dimwit he is. They may well have conceded two by-elections and we may well have had a summer in which bushfire and heatwave were the main news items. The HC crazies will not change their mind, but some of those 29 who voted for the bill and are in the senate may cave.
2. Troeth, Boyce, Humphreys and Xenophon may have got a deal going with the ALP and Greens and it might pass that way.
3. While it would have been better from Rudd’s POV to go to Copenhagen with a bill in his pocket, (Obama too would have preferred that Waxman Markey had passed) one can only get what the parliament will give you. If the parliament refuses what can you do but accept that and move on?
4. Having a DD before July 1 would put the house and the senate out of synch. Very untidy and you get your senators for one year less. You might as well wait for July 1 and get the full benefit of the opposition ripping itself to pieces.
Having partially listened to Labour’s Agriculture? Minister at the Press Club I conclude that Labour are well and truly married to an ETS solution. I guess that that means a normal election programme. The CPRS was to do nothing for some time anyway so a 12 month wait would force Abbott to show his hand in time for changes to CPRS if necessary. My best guess at this stage. Too bad!!
Problem with this approach is that it gives the Libs time to experiment with creative ideas (not that I believe that they know how to do that), and the space in between here and the next election will be a perpetual mud slinging match through which no good message will be heard. And there is little chance of any real legislative progress on any front.
Now I am really confused. I am sure that we were told that this was the last chance.
This legislation HAD to be passed NOW, otherwise Bambi dies.
How did that change over night/ Why no election now on this generational genocide denial?
Where we misled?
Doesn’t it really need to be passed now?
Methinks the Business Council of Australia and the Australian Industry Group will not be at all pleased with this outcome, as the CPRS with the Coalition amendments was far and away the best deal business was going to get. Now the best scenario for the top end of town is the passing of Labor’s CPRS at a joint sitting post-DD – without Coalition amendments – and the likelihood that if the current Palriament runs its full term, the Greens will have a lot to say about the final shape of Australia’s climate policy after the next election.
Abbott’s latest message:
Well there’s this thing called the NNPT to which Australia is a signatory and India is not. All governments have backed this treaty, including the Howard government, so the question is what does the Opposition think about the NNPT?
It’s interesting that for all their talk about being strong on national security, they seem ready to subvert the NNPT. I think they should be queried on that, especially since Australian troops are deployed in the region and Pakistan in 1999 threatened to use tacticval nuclear weapons against India. If Australia sells to India, must it not also sell to Pakistan?
Doesn’t India have 12% of the world’s th-232? You can use that to generate power but, no plutonium. Hmmmm …
So if the Greens had supported the legislation, with the two Libs we would have had CPRS legislation. The libs have no credibility of this issue and the greens have very little. If they had passed the legislation the Greens could have campaigned on strengthening it, arguing they are part of the solution. But because they couldn’t get what they want, they spat their dummies and nothing got up. The Greens like the Libs are part of the problem. They don’t have implementable solutions so they just posture. Get the mirror out people, have a good hard look at yourselves.
’2 sane libs.’
They were only going to vote for the Lib Labor amended version and said as much.
Yes – that NNPT is working so well!
The Israeli solution is clearly more effective but is so non-PC.
“Methinks the Business Council of Australia and the Australian Industry Group will not be at all pleased with this outcome,”
The Libs just cost them billions of dollars. Hope they don’t expect much help from them at the next election campaign.
Unlike the other two parties who have been pure posturing Steve1, the Greens have put on record exactly why they couldn’t support the CPRS in its current form (take a quick stroll through this week’s hansard), and more than anything it was because it locked us in to not being able to strengthen it in the timeframe the science demands.
It’s very simple. If the ALP’s CPRS had been weak but a step forward & amendable later, the Greens would have supported it. Hope you’re putting the same crap to Xenophon by the way.
This letter from Barry York to the Canberra Times indicates a great way forward IMV.
“Dear Editor,
A progressive alternative to a carbon tax, and to state intervention to make coal more expensive, would be for the Australian government to start spending as much on science and R&D towards the goal of cheaper base-load primary energy as other countries do on restricting carbon emissions.
Intellectual Property rights should be suspended as part of this radical approach as private ownership of science and technology only hinders our contribution to the common world effort to ‘do something’.
The Rudd government has increased funding for science and innovation but it still remains laughably low.
The aim should be to improve material living standards and to make everything cheaper, not restrictions to make everything unnecessarily more expensive.
Climate may get warmer or cooler, and carbon based fuels will eventually become more expensive due to gradual depletion of their cheapest sources. The way ahead is not with subsidized solar panels and medieval wind-mills but with vastly increased investment in science and R&D into geo-engineering and fusion energy”.
If Abbott were to pick up on this type of alternative (to the Rudd policy of really doing nothing but pushing up the cost and lowering standards of living while achieving absolutely nothing as far as the weather goes) then who could doubt that the pseudoleft liberals and social democrats that continue to support the ALP would have swung to the right of the conservatives like Abbott and joined with the extreme right greens as they dribble on about western ‘affuenza’as they conference in Copenhagen! !
Iain
I think in my ire I doubled the number of libs just because you never can be too sure. ;-) But as you say, Troeth, who is principled and has nothing to lose, would have been enough.
ALP fail.
Thomas – while I’m not for a second suggesting it was an easy gotcha, the point is Rudd & Wong never even tried, not even as a plan b. They just relentlessly pursued an even crapper scheme with the libs, and frankly seem to care far more about using it to destroy malcolm / libs than produce good policy.
What I find most bizarre is that they’ve had the polls to produce stronger and clearer, more effective action on CC all along. It wasn’t like they even had to be particularly politically courageous.
Steve 1 – It takes two to tango.
If the Greens had been involved in negotiations with the Government – the negotiations with the Coalition would never have taken place – The Government was never interested in getting the Greens support or making any concessions to them. The willingness of the Greens to compromise was never tested.
Tthe government was solely interested in a bipartisan deal with the Coalition for a variety of reasons some good, some not so good.
Legislation that would have got the votes of both dissentng Liberals and Greens is something of a chimera – a vision splendid that disappears as you reach out to grasp it.
Now I am really confused.
So what else is new?
No, you just didn’t get it.
The rejection of CPRS has given us all a lucky escape. CPRS was a dog of a system and becoming doggier with every added amendment. If it had passed, it would have been well after the next election before it had any effect on emissions at all.In addition, the associated disruption would have given climate action a bad image that would have added to fears that climate action=job loss and other economic disasters.
It beats me why progressives are so keen to support a neo-liberal construct like emissions trading. We should be using the opportunity provided by the rejection to get on with plan B so that real action can be started before the next election.
Tim @ 34
Apart from the witty ad homs – do you have any reasoned response to the questions raised?
No?
I doubt anybody will because the answers expose the hypocrisy and lies of the ALP.
One of the interesting and appealing features of an ETS — even a fairly weak one — is this. With an ETS it would be possible for the public to drive up the effective speed of the progress to lower emissions.
Imagine that the Rudd government had had a weak but better scheme than the current CPRS — eg all permits auctioned, all sectors in, a fine for those who purchase insufficient permits of 150% of the rolling average for the year of the shortfall … but a weak target — say only 40% per capita cut on 2009 by 2025. (IIRC this would mean that each of us only emits on average about 15 tonnes of CO2e per annum in 2025)
Organisations such as Greenpeace, the WWF, or anyone else interested could set up a not-for-profit trust which could raise funds from the public to purchase and hold permits for a minimum of say, 99 years, driving up the price by reducing the available supply. Those of us who wanted to privately offset our emissions could also go into the market to buy permits, even though we obviously wouldn’t be required to do so, putting further pressure on the supply and thus price. This would almost certainly be cheaper than buying solar panels or setting up our own wind turbines, or buying a prius, and probably more effective.
Instead of lobbying the government for stiffer targets, we could ratchet them up ourselves.
That would not be possible, for example, if the way we did this was through a carbon tax.
Sam / Fran,
A DD election can be held at any time without fear of the Senate and House of Reps getting out of sync, as a DD election clears out all Members and Senators immediately – it effectively resets any and all clocks on timings of elections, length of service and anything else. Check the constitution (section 57 and the effects of a dissolution of the Senate – S.13) to clear this up.
If Rudd had wanted to, he could have flown back, visited the GG and asked for the Senate and House to be dissolved right now, starting an election campaign that could have been no more than (about) 30 days long, limited only by the fact an election is held on a Saturday.
Once the writs were returned after the election there would have been two completely fresh Houses, with all new (or re-elected) members a few weeks later and we could have had this voted on and, presumably, passed by February.
The fact he does not shows that his rhetoric on this has been completely and utterly false. He does not regard it as urgent and is happy to wait for the normal election cycle.
(first time poster – be gentle with me!!)
The Govt should have started a simple education campaign a long time ago, rather than continual bleatings demonising anyone who isn’t in 100% agreement with them.
No sensible person disputes that action needs to be taken on climate change. Even if you’re not completely convinced by the science, the precautionary principle applies.
But with all the exclusions and all the compensation, does the Govt’s CPRS represent effective action, or is it just a revenue grab with little discernable environmental result and a chance for Rudd to grandstand on the internatinal stage.
John D, Totally agree with you.
Incidentally, what did others make of watching Abbott’s victory speech where he repeatedly said words to the effect “bring it on, I’m looking for a fight”?
Did anyone else have this absurd mental image of a bolshy drunk swaggering about, making rediculous threats and punching the air?
Then Barnaby joined in today with more of the same. “Bring it on” says himself with his army of millions…
Presumably Rudd will just stand back and discuss things calmly with the rest of us bystanders, while these loons prance about punching the air and demanding a fight?
“…..Brown actually had a word to say to Milne as well (would have loved to have known what he said) – something like – christ I hope our voters understand our position….”
iain@19 that is just so silly. Green voters would know full well why The Greens rejected this, even more fatally flawed, bill since the Liberals walked all over it.
They tend to keep up with the details and would have been bitterly disappointed- and probably would have walked- if Brown and co had passed it.
Hypocrisy and lies have been on display on a daily basis for weeks and it’s all coalition, but then if you’re going to be a denialist you do need to have your eyes shut and your ears covered for a lot of the time. Not a good look for your nay-sayer mates in the Senate either and there I was about to give them a single digit number on the next ballot paper
Paul @ 24
In the middle of the hubbub yesterday, Combet announced that the deal negotiated with the Libs was now the new Labour position (sorry, in the hard copy Age today, but can’t find the link). ie. the joint sitting, if there is one, will be looking at the no-polluter-left-behind, ‘$7bn better than before’ package. Chances are this is what the ALP was after all the time, they just wanted something left in the chest to offer the coalition in negotiation.
Now that’s a good scenario for the top end of town…
Fran Barlow @37, my word you do seem to have a lot of faith in the “invisible hand” of the market.
Presumably you also don’t factor in “legislative risk”?
When we got our solar panels installed last year, we sold our REC’s straight away for $50/REC. As I said to better half at the time, “legislative risk” looked like a strong possibility for the foreseeable future. Given the jawboning about the likely measly $/tonne of carbon emissions, $50/REC looked to be as good as things would get for a good while. We decided to get while the get’n was good.
On the other hand, you say you would like to pay good money to hold an equivalent piece of paper with dubious claim on the environment, to try and force the “invisible hand” of the market to do the right thing, environmentally speaking. Really???
I have to admire that level of unbridled faith in markets these days!
Elise, what I saw was a bloke who’s shit-scared and whistling in the dark. (I’m not frightended…I’m not frightened…I’m not frightened…)
Fine @46, that was real good – made my day!!!
Umm, are fear and aggression soulmates?
Myriad74 @ 30
If the ALP’s CPRS had been weak but a step forward & amendable later, the Greens would have supported it.
ANY legislation is amendable. Brown, Milne and Minchin have the same position – If I can’t have everything I want, I (and everyone else) will have nothing.
“Umm, are fear and aggression soulmates?”
Definitely Elise, definitely.
Sorry about the bold. Still finding my way with all this new fangled technology.
The government needs to get out their and counter the Liberal campaign of deceit. They can’t keep leaving it to the likes of Ross Gittins. That means a public education campaign. What is the ETS? How does it work? How does it compare with what other economies are doing? What are the consequences of not passing it?
Andrew@48
This legislation would not be amendable because it would locvk in targets that would be the basis for investment. You’d have sovereign risk objections, compo on a grand scale and thus a serious constraint on amendment.
Elise@45
I do have confidence that if the settings are right the other players will want to preserve the integrity of the securities they hold. That’s one of the reasons that the reactionaries prefer a carbon tax to an ETS. It’s easier to game, and when it is it can fall victim to populist subversion by posturing politicos. With an ETS, business is wedged.
So the Greens’ position wasn’t academic after all. Greens supporters here will try to absolve them of blame as usual. Gullible Greens supporters will never accept that the Greens are as opportunistic and cynical as every other party. The Greens always get the benefit of the doubt – the major parties never do.
Bob Carr for once was spot on when he said the Greens’ internal processes and preselections are never scrutinized in the media (unlike the major parties whose internal politics are subjected to minute scrutiny). Indeed, though it’s only a tiny caucus, how much media attention was given to whether there was dissention in the Greens over their hardline position? There’s so little scrutiny of the Greens that I don’t even know how they come to a decision or whether decisions by the party are binding on all MPs. Unlike the Democrats, the Greens seem to vote as a block all the time.
Andrew@39
A DD prior to July 2010 would set the beginning of the term for the sentaors elected to July 1 2009 meaning that the lower half of the senators go until July 2012. one year before the reps expire. After July 1 2010 of course, it’s different.
And let’s face it — Rudd is not going to want to campaign early and during the summer holidays. March is as early as you’d want to go, and this coincides with his political interest as it’s quite possible, and perhaps even probable, that the Libs will have a new leader by then.
Fran @52.
Yes, I know the “sovereign risk” excuse. It just happens not to be true. Otherwise no regulation, regulatory framework or tax rate would ever be able to be changed.
Ginja said:
That would be because they aren’t. Sometimes they are wrong (their position on nuclear power for example) but they are about as ethical as any party is likely to be in the current circumstances. Here they were absolutely right to vote this down.
…I should say bloc.
Fran @52: “I do have confidence that if the settings are right the other players will want to preserve the integrity of the securities they hold.”
You mean, like the way they preserved the integrity of the REC’s???
C’mon Fran, stop being an idealist for just a mo’ and look at the real world.
Ginja as it was you pushing the line that the Greens were academic, while I & others pointed out repeatedly that the greens had offered to negotiate & help find a way through the senate other than the libs, your post is just farcical.
As to the pollywaffle about Greens processes consipiracies, blah blah, the press is invited to every one of our conference, and you obviously haven’t tried very hard to find info on preselection etc. as the Party’s charter, national constitution and state/territory constitutions are all there.
“ANY legislation is amendable.”
But it cant override the constitution, Andrew. The Constitution requires that the commonwealth compensate justly when it compulsorily acquires property, including intangible property such as rights of profit or use. The ETS would have effectively created property – which doesnt currently exist – in emissions. Just as we did with water. Future governments could have been up for billions in compo claims when larger cuts were introduced – create a huge barrier to reductions, which doesn’t currently exist, and we dont need to introduce. That’s (one of a few) things the Greens rmean when saying the ETS as proposed “locks in failure”.
It is also not true, as Bob Carr claims, that Greens preselections are ignored by the MSM. The NSW Greens preselections for the Senate and the NSW Legislative Council have receive prominent (albeit tendentious) coverage in the MSM (and quite a bit of attention from the blogosphere, not all of it flattering).
It is easy for Mr. Abbott to be gang ho about an election. He knows that Labor Government would not call a election before August 2010. Contrary to a earlier letter, a DD before the end of July would put the houses out of sync. Mr, Rudd has the option of putting new legislation before the House, and after being twice rejected have grounds for a new DD. There are also other bills that have been rejected that also give grounds.
Fran: re. ETS allowing wedging of the market via not got profits buying carbon permits to drive up the price and achive early top out of the carbon cap. Wouldn’t it be easy to limit the trade in permits to registered traders and exclude not for profits on the grounds that the latter introduce a market distortion?
Andrew 39, Rudd can have a double dissolution now, but the terms for half the senators would be backdated to July 1 this year, which means that the next election would have to be held in the first half of 2012, effectively giving Rudd a 2 year second term, assuming he wants the Senate and Reps to be kept in sync.
If he holds a DD on July 3 2010, then he gets a 3 year second term.
Of course he may choose to go half senate instead but that would also have to be in 2nd half of 2010 to keep the houses synced.
Could Rudd have called a DD election now and bugger the syncing? Yes, but it would have meant a campaign through the Christmas season and beyond. Not really practical.
LeftyE@ 60
So the Greens higher suggested target was their final, all that is ever going to be needed, level because it too, on that analysis of the Australian Constitution as the last best haven of derivative traders, would be unamendable. How prescient of them.
There are book shelves and bookshelves of constitutional case law on what “property” is and isn’t. (Funnily enough, the answer they come to isn’t “theft” although given Fran’s historical political affiliations I was surprised at her concern to make sure sovereign risk was addressed)
I’d be surprised if Senator Brown looked at any of it before he signed off on that particular spurious media release.
You are so right Razor, ALP lied (about the urgency). And so have the Coalition, numerous times, more substantively, especially their new leader, Tony Abbott. Ergo, politicians lie. Now pop a Valium and have a lie down.
Fran says: “They don’t know that the Liberals are likely to reject it again. By February, Abbott may have exposed himself for the dimwit he is…”
But Fran, if the ETS is re-presented in a form that is not substantially watered down in accordance with the LP/NP rhetoric, or indeed, if it has more stringent provisions with higher targets and some polluter largesse withdrawn, then the Coalition cannot possibly pass it, so ALP know that the Coalition has to vote it down or lose completely any vestiges of credibility that are still remaining after their internal debacle. Add to that an imminent election and they will not be able to argue any position to the electorate, save one dictated by Minchin, Tuckey, Joyce, etc.
The only question is how far will the snooker themselves into the right-hand pocket.
Razor @37: As a response to disingenous nonsense, my remarks were as reasonable as was required. Glad you thought they were witty though. ;)_
Simple question, not such a simple answer.
When you say “effective action”, defining “effective” depends on your interpretation of the state of the science, your view on how international negotiations are likely to work.
The ultimate consensus goal seems to be “prevent a global climate disaster”. Australia obviously can’t do that unilaterally. So the immediate tasks of our actions on climate change are:
a) to convince the world to sign up to a global agreement that will prevent a global climate disaster (whether this is still possible is open to debate, but at the very least we can slow down a global climate disaster to the point where we can figure out alternative things we can do to stop it).
b) To set up an architecture that allows Australia to play its part in such a treaty when it comes, including discouraging us putting in long-lived infrastructure that is incompatible with our likely obligations under such a treaty.
c) Contribute to the global effort to invent technologies that will make it possible to maintain an acceptable standard of living while avoiding the aforementioned climate disaster.
On a), the CPRS is pissweak, but it’s equally pissweak as the other announced commitments around the world so far. And the fact that we’re prepared to put it into law says something. Furthermore, while it is not strong enough, it is not nothing.
On b), the Greens argue that it “locks in failure” (in fact, you can read there critique here by encouraging investment in things that aren’t compatible with where they think we need to be in the long term.
On c), the ability to buy unlimited permits on the global market rather than make emissions reductions at home means that a lot of the reductions will be things like preventing peat bog drying in Indonesia – which is important, admittedly, but not really contributing to the technological developments we will ultimately need to go to zero emissions in the future. However, the knowledge that there will be a carbon price, and that its long term trend will be up, will contribute to the global consensus among businesspeople that investing in low-carbon technologies is likely to be profitable.
A CPRS negotiated between Labor and the Greens would have been much better than this one. But I am still unconvinced that it is a wise idea to knock the current one back on the assumption that a better one is just around the corner.
Well, yes, serious players will actually worry about pesky things like s 51(xxxi)of the Australian Constitution.
Spurious? Afraid not. The High Court has a long record of interpreting “property” widely to include intangible property such as rights.
Would a polluter win the case? Uncertain – more than reasonable case though.
Would they sue the Commonwealth, and give it a crack with the best constitutional briefs money could buy? You bet your ass. 100% chance.
Following up my #16 – “what will the Liberals’ new climate policy be?” – here’s an indication. Unconditional 5% reduction; it’s premature to discuss anything deeper; and meanwhile reviving the nuclear debate. The next step is to say how they propose to achieve their targets, if not by an ETS.
Lefty@60 – you are correct in that the ETS would create a property right as happened with water. I remember very clearly the long and rancorous fights as a result of water rights being tradeable. At that time real estate agents and investors were running up and down the rivers buying up water allocations. The same rentseekers will be around like flies if emissions are regarded as tradeable as has already been mooted. I’m probably being too naive to hope that emissions will finally be legislated as non-tradeable attachments to a set of emissions.
“ANY legislation is amendable. Brown, Milne and Minchin have the same position – If I can’t have everything I want, I (and everyone else) will have nothing.”
If you mean amendment of a Bill, then recall the Greens proposed 22 amendments back in October, which Penny Wong described as “a significant amount of work” (http://www.climatechange.gov.au/minister/wong/2009/transcripts/October/tr20091013.aspx). As I recall the government accepted none of them and made no counter-offers to the Greens which makes it rather hard to believe there was any good faith bargaining from the government. On the other hand the Liberals extracted numerous significant concessions from the government and still rejected the deal. That’s not the same thing at all.
If you’re referring to amending legislation already on the books, that’s possible if and only if you can convince the Government of the day to accept said amendments in the lower house, which requires a particular type of leverage, not usually found with minor parties in the Upper House.
d
LeftyE@69
So I take it that as a “serious player” and from your resort to roman numerals and avoidance of the point, that you agree that if the Government’s target is unconstitutional so must be the Green’s higher target.
Whoops: should read “future changes to the Government’s target” and “so must be any changes to the Green’s higher target.”
myriad74 that has been my point for some time. This PM has had a tremendous amount of political and electoral capital so there was actually no need to take this approach. And it continues with the increasingly delay is denial meme which has now gone 360 degrees to a point where I too must question the Greens approach here.
Myria74: I was saying I was wrong about the Greens’ position being academic. Unlike Greens, who tend to be a tad on the sanctimonious side, I’m willing always to say I was wrong/surprised about something – especially over such a trivial point.
I’m sure there’s a website detailing the Greens’ preslection rules. But the point is, why do I have to go to their website? I’m sure most people here know plenty about the ALP’s or Libs’ internal processes without ever looking at its rules – you only have to pick up a newspaper. Who here doesn’t about an N40 preselection? The question is, why aren’t the Greens subject to similar scrutiny?
We might see that the Greens don’t live entirely by Gandhian principles and aren’t always motivated by the kind of pure goodness denied the rest of us mortals – that in fact they are human too.
And Fran Barlow’s argument is that the Greens are wonderfully pure and principled because….well, because they are. Hard to argue with that.
Paul Norton: that coverage has been unusual – still an encouraging, if overdue, sign. If you were to do a study of the proportion of the stories about the Greens that included preselections, faction fights, arguments over strategy, fallings-out, acts of bastardry, close inspection of policy and compared them to similar stories about the major parties, you’d have to conclude the Greens get off scot-free.
Tim @ 67
Last week DPM Gillard said that “delay is denial”. If this is true then the ALP are now denialists by not calling an election immediately.
Or, is delay by conservatives denial while delay by the ALP a good thing all round?
I meant who doesn’t know about an N40 preselection.
No Andrew. Im not saying its unconstitutional. Im saying that creating rights and then acquiring them leads to compo under the constitution.
However, (and this is of necessity speculative, as we’d need a High Court judgment) if you created a statutory limitation on emissions *before* creating property rights in those remaining emissions through a permit system, the Commonwealth may not not be liable to pay compo until that limit was exceeded. Good reason to go higher up front.
I watched Gillard and Wong at their press conference rant about the extremists and deniers in the opposition. It got a bit repetitive after a while.
What really struck me was the changing urgency of passing the ETS.
In the election campaign it was urgent that the legislation come into force by July 2010 because of the threat of planetary catastrophe.
It was also going to be good for the economy too as huge numbers of jobs would be created in emerging renewable energy industries.
Along came the GFC and suddenly the urgency disappeared and its introduction could be delayed a year while the threats of catastrophe by AGW advocates magnified. If the jobs line was true it should have been fast tracked so I suppose there was some contradiction there which I can’t quite put my finger on.
It then becomes urgent to pass the bill so that Copenhagen can get a lead from Australia. The opposition will negotiate.
The government accept the opposition negotiations and leaves the offer on the table only to the end of last week because it is urgent that it be passed. The opposition has second thoughts about all this and the urgency is no longer quite so urgent and the government leaves the offer open.
The vote is taken and the bill fails to pass leaving the government with a DD trigger to get its original bill passed.
Well now its no longer that ugent after all and the government will introduce a new bill with the rejected negotiated amendments in February. This bill will then have to wait till May to be part of a DD trigger if it is rejected. Does anyone get the feeling that the government doesn’t really think this is urgent at all?
I think by February the government will want to forget about it altogether. The Opposition grew a spine with the emergence of the CRU leaked data which the government and the AGW adherents regard as irrevelant at the moment.
It is so irrelevant that the head of the CRU has stepped aside pending an investigation into its activities and Michael Mann (Mr Hockey Stick) is under investigation in the US. These 2 are lead authors of the IPCC reports promoting AGW. By the time February comes around there may well be a Royal Commission into their activities and the jig will be really up.
Now you are all saying that amortiser is a nut and extremist with such speculation. The problem for the Hockey Team is that they are the custodians of the base data that purports to show that the earth has experienced unprecedented warming since the 1970s. They have now admitted that that base data no longer exists following numerous FOI requests. So what, you say. Well their problem here is that there is no way that any of their findings can be replicated in the absence of that data. There is no science to support their claims just assertion.
By the time Rudd and Wong bring this legislation to the Parliament again it will be a dead duck. My conclusions are based on confirmed information and logical inference from that information. Wong’s bill is based on the “consensus science” derived from data that no longer exists. She is on an embarrassing loser.
I dunno. Why don’t you ask Tony “it’s crap” Abbott, Nick “communist plot” Minchin, Cory “cooling” Bernardi or Barnaby “it’s not round, it’s flat” Joyce? (OK I made up that last one).
What delay? More disingenouous nonsense.
Due to spaminator my comment at 41 would have gone by without note. I wonder what those who think themselves progressive make of the Barry York letter I attempted to bring to your attention?
Myria74: I was saying I was wrong about the Greens’ position being academic. Unlike Greens, who tend to be a tad on the sanctimonious side, I’m willing always to say I was wrong/surprised about something – especially over such a trivial point.
uh trivial? That aside my apologies Ginja, I misread you.
As for our preselection processes, all I can tell you is that I’d be completely fine with the media paying more attention & scrutiny, but that they don’t is not because the Greens have ever stopped them. Personally I think such scrutiny is essential to keep any political party as transparent & accountable as possible.
It may shock you to know that we don’t have factions- as I joked at a recent meeting, we don’t have factions, we’re all so opinionated we just fight – factions of one perhaps. ;-) As to the other stuff, the ‘pure greens’ is a strawman regularly re-stuffed before any stoush.
btw I’ll give you a buck for any ordinary Australian who can explain Lib or ALP preselection process other than some vague answer about factions and stuff.
Lefty,
I don’t think we’re at risk of convincing each other on this point (But I reckon it’s only fair if you want to have one more try.)
My last effort is that a possible high court challenge on a possible interpretation of a possible property right that might possibly be successful, and possibly with a greater exposure than if a higher target was set, is a very small figleaf for Bob Brown and his merry crew to justify voting down with Minchin, Abetz et al what EVERYONE on the side of action acknowledges can only be the first step in what will be the major public policy issue for the rest of our lives.
Cheers.
Sorry 31
“I wonder what those who think themselves progressive make of the Barry York letter I attempted to bring to your attention?”
Seemed to be predicated on the first step towards climate action being a global revolution where IP and other property rights are overturned, and the Government has no role but to throw money at scientists in the hope that some of it will end up saving our arses, somehow.
A pile of ridiculous crap, in other words.
But thanks for bringing it to my attention.
amortiser: “The problem for the Hockey Team is that they are the custodians of the base data that purports to show that the earth has experienced unprecedented warming since the 1970s. They have now admitted that that base data no longer exists following numerous FOI requests.”
“Climate auditors” have wanted to know a number of things: original data, methods and history of data adjustment, source code if possible. You should go to one of the serious skeptical blogs and ask someone who really knows the subject exactly what information they have been unable to obtain, and exactly what information has actually been destroyed – because the version you are giving here is a sort of exaggerated myth: the Hockey Team had all the world’s temperature data, and now they admit they destroyed it all, and can’t tell us how they justified their doomsday claims! The data came from around the world, including national weather services and national science programs not controlled by the UK. The CRU head who has stepped down, Phil Jones, says they deleted 5% of station data on one occasion years ago. Five percent! Go to an informed source (and I mean an informed climate skeptic) and find out the actual extent of the alleged deletion, rather than just promoting a myth.
Patrickm, the letter is misguided.
Investment in clean energy R&D is certainly desirable, and research into geoengineering is ongoing, as it appears increasingly likely that emissions reduction alone will not do enough in the timeframe required.
But R&D alone will do nothing in the short-to-medium term to reduce emissions, or even stop their increase, so is completely inadequate on its own. Some form of emissions reduction policy is required.
The R&D effort also needs to be directed at technologies that are likely to be effective within a reasonable timeframe and in which Australia is likely to have a competitive advantage. Fusion research is already very well funded at an international level, but even its supporters are pessimistic about the likelihood that it will be a viable form of electricity generation in the next 50 years, if ever.
No FDB it’s not. Should is the word.
‘Intellectual Property rights should be suspended as part of this radical approach as private ownership of science and technology only hinders our contribution to the common world effort to ‘do something’.’
Naturally takeup will be most rapid with this method and presumably thats what is wanted by progressives seriously conserned with the problem and not wanting to lower standards of living but otherwise it would just be slower as aopears to be your want.
‘How about (seriously) proposing that they should offer an “alternative” of Australia spending as much on science and R&D towards cheaper base load primary energy as other countries do on restricting carbon emissions, with no IP rights as that would only hinder our contribution to the common world effort to “do something” but we would prefer to do something “actually useful”. Spin-offs to Australia instead of IP are a generally higher tech workforce like the spin-off to US from military and (related) space programs.’
So without ownership of the IP fruits of their labour, what incentive will there be for scientists to do the R&D? Just cash, is that right?
@amortiser
What absolute tosh.
First off, well over 95% of the CRU base data and modelling of that base data is already freely available, and has been for many years. The people originating the FOI requests are well aware of this, and if they have not told you this, perhaps you should think about why they would omit such an important fact in their communications to the concerned public such as yourself.
The remainder of the base data that has not been made freely available still exists in the records of the originators of that data, which would be the separate National Meteorological services of upwards of thirty different nations. Since they are the ones who own that data, and who are government-mandated to generate income from license fees for its use by other organisations, and whose licensing rules prevent the CRU from passing that base data on to anybody else, then if your lot wants access to the data then you will have to apply to those National Meterological Offices and pay your own license fees and then you will have your very own copies.
The data exists. Just pay for it yourselves. Don’t demand that other organisations break a legally binding contract for you.
Mitchell Porter @70: “Unconditional 5% reduction; it’s premature to discuss anything deeper; and meanwhile reviving the nuclear debate. The next step is to say how they propose to achieve their targets, if not by an ETS.”
I do believe you just gave us the new LNP position on climate change!
As Abbott said, they will have a strong position on climate change, they do intend to reduce emissions, they won’t be introducing an ETS and they won’t be introducing a new tax.
So today they are reviving the nuclear debate! So that is their new strong position, then?
Well I’m glad that’s all sorted, then. Aussies can all go back to sleep on the climate change problem.
We’ll be somehow building enough nuke plants to reduce emissions by significant amounts within 10 years? And the entire world will go fully nuclear, to generate the emissions reductions required? And the developing countries can all afford to buy uranium at peak prices from our good selves; pricing caused by massive demand to meet such an overwhelming market?
BHPBilliton and RioTinto to make squillions from dominating the uranium market…future campaign funding for LNP guaranteed indefinately. No lobbying for said scenario in Abbott’s shell-pink ears of course. Purely derived from a LNP position on the urgent matter of climate change.
Sheesh. I should give up blogging and offer to be Abbott’s strategist.
Defend the Greens as much as you want. They have effectively handed the debate over to the deniers, skeptics and the hardline religious right. Save The Planet, my arse they want to. Fools, bloody fools the lot of them
Interesting what Robert Merkel wrote here regarding the Greens making it a bit hard to deal with over the ETS.
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/07/11/bob-brown-on-the-ets/
Bob Brown dealt himself out of negotiations in early 2008 by being more pure than the driven snow. If ever there was an issue they should have had input in, this was it. Go Greentards.
You haven’t seen the blogs on The Daily Telegraph relevant news. They are running hot with hysterical lemmings. I’ve haven’t seen anything like it since Pauline Hanson phenomenon and the 1996 election. It’s quite depressing. It seems that all Tony Abbott needs to do is stir up a bit of panic and hysteria about a tax on battlers, ride the wave of rabble-rousing adulation for the short honeymoon period that any new leader gets, fight the early double dissolution election and hey presto! Tony Abbott will be in the lodge.
Brendon, Brown only “dealt himself out” if you consider what the Greens wanted (ideally, as you’ve laid out above) to be the minimum they’d have settled for after negotiation.
Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. Bit hard to tell if the ALP won’t fucking negotiate.
Surely negotiating with the Greens is useless, since the Government needs both Xenophon and Fielding to pass legislation that would definitely be opposed by the Opposition.
Fielding believes there is no such thing as anthropogenic global warming, therefore there is no point negotiating with the Greens on an ETS, as only the Opposition can ensure its passage through the Senate.
Sorry if someone else covered this earlier.
It might well be “narrow” on it own, Andrew mcK, but its not the only reason the Greens didnt support it. Here’s a full list, if you’re interested: http://greensmps.org.au/content/whats-wrong-with-cprs-and-how-can-it-be-fixed
It’s just the one I happen to be talking about in this thread.
I suspect Bob Brown is playing a realpolitic game here. He knows what the ALP will not cop and he has put the Greens’ agreement just out of reach. The ALP understands this and that is why it has not put the thumbscrews on the Greens but Turnbull’s Libs. The ALP knows what the Greens really want: a DD, because it will most likely deliver them balance of power in the Senate. This would be anathema to the ALP, as it would rather deal with loonies and oddballs such as Nick X and Fielding because they are buyable over a single issue, like Brian Harradine was. That is the main reason why the ALP is not overly enthusiastic for a DD. Certainly, the ALP does not want to strengthen the Greens in any way because they are both competing for the left-of-centre-vote.The ALP wants that territory plus a bit of the Lib territory. In other wrods, the Big Middle.
There is also a ‘one nation’ type undercurrent of climate change denial in QLD that I suspect Abbott will be tapping into with traditional xenophobic force on other issues.
Two Liberals could cross the floor but the @#$* so-called Greens couldn’t vote for it? Are they so deluded that Labor would sit with them and devise a new, stronger ETS with them? Probably, going by their stupid action blocking the Bill.
Some here called Penny Wong overrated. Like fuck! Hercules would have blanched at the task of getting this ETS this far, but the slight woman Penny Wong did it.
I followed the debate as much as I could and my admiration for Penny has grown. She stood there and answered all the dumb, repetitive questions from the troglodytes without once raising her voice or swearing. Me, I would have brought an Uzzi submachine gun in by the third day and let fly a couple of bursts!
“We cannot be the first” was one frequent comment that set my teeth on edge! We are one of those countries scrambling to keep up! “We have to protect our exports” was another dumb, repetitive statement from the fossils. I was climbing the wall “You @#$%head, when the others set in place their carbon reduction scheme our exports will be hit with carbon tariffs”
A Herculean effort by Wong frustrated by 5 so-called “green” senators! It could have passed! I will be voting below the line from now on just to put the Greens (ptah!) L A S T !
Perhaps Sir Henry, but a Greens BOP is also by far the most likely outcome of a normal half-senate election as well – which goes to the attribution of motive.
I suspect the Greens just found the Lib-Lab CPRS was plain unsupportable, and even a net negative in key respects re: compo rights. I agree, as will most of their supporters.
The ALP had a strategy to neg with the Libs, they deliberately cut out the cross benches, it didnt pay off. No point blaming the cross benches now.
FDB I think this demanding the retention of IP attitude of yours demonstrates that your not serious about the worry of global warming due to carbon output at all (and that your not at all familiar with the debate that’s been demonstrated in issues like the Manhattan Project, as but the first example that pops to mind.
You are prepared to lower standards of living for everyone other than ‘property owners’, presumably until the electorate revolts and reverses your tax laws, (and at some point they will) rather than go to what would amount to an appropriate war time footing to do the research and apply it as rapidly as possible globally.
You know that a globally applied solution is the only thing that makes any sense at all yet you can’t think past individual rights to maximise their part of any IP and moral demonstrations imposed on the Australian ‘carbon pigs’. That sounds very like the Microsoft approach to holding back development to me and is just the sort of beginning to an appropriate inquiry and debate that we require!
You can advocate your position while I advocate mine in opposition to the current proposal to lower standards of living with a price hike. We can then raise the same issues with regard to Aids medicines books music film and so on and see in the process if history really has ended and the capitalist system really has proven to be the end of history!
Abstracting one par from the Greens doc cited by Lefty E above:
“Just as the over-allocation of water in the Murray Darling has made a fix almost unimaginably difficult, the over-allocation of free permits in the early years would lock in a weak trajectory and make it almost impossible to strengthen the scheme without massive additional compensation to polluters or cost to taxpayers through purchasing imported permits.”
I’ve commented elsewhere on LP – if you haven’t kept pace with the state of the Murray-Darling then you have missed the most significant failure of market based social solutions in our history.
Lefty E, you really think Rudd and Wong will now (after the next election) and negotiate a new ETS with the Greens, even if they do hold the BoP after the next election?
If so, there is a bridge, been in my family for generations. . .
JM – Yes I do. Unless:
a. the Libs have a new “moderate” leader by then, or
b. Rudd has a joint sitting after a DD.
Neither of which are very likely. Because they wont have any choice – the international pressure will be too great after Copenhagen.
a) No. Anything they say will be unconvincing.
b) It won’t. “Ha! We always knew you Australians were uncouth and remote from what is really going on!”.
c) Yes, but it will have dissipated by polling day. I can still remember when Hewson was 20 points up on Keating in late ’92 after Fightback! was released.
d) Less than even. Rudd will want the full term and why have Abbott discredited, when you want him dead and flyblown.
Reading Antony Green closely it would seem that the Greens could be up to two senate seats better off in a DD than in a half-senate election, Leftster, and it would be the Greens who’d be taking a seat off the Coalition. Labor would most probably take Fielding’s but that is all. So my imputation of Greens’ motive remains, in mho, unimpeached. This is assuming that we suddenly do not find out that Lord Nick Stern has been on the take from Danish windmill manufacturers.
I would think that is still an unlikely outcome, but the events of this week have certainly increased its probability.
For the Greens to hold on to a slim chance of getting a better outcome rather than accept a situation that they had zero input into and would get zero credit for is sensible politics.
Or are we to believe that the ALP would really have been generous in sharing credit with the Greens. Letters in the mailbox telling us all how responsible they were, stuff like that?
Well, Ill inspect the numbers more closely later this evening, Sir H – but my understanding was that the return of the 3rd ALP seats in QLD and VIC (lost in 2004) would do it, without the Greens doing anything but retain their currents. If the Greens won the former, same result.
FDB, @95
I’m more trhan willing to change my mind if you show where Brown openly said the issue was negotiable and the ALP ignored that.
The fact is that the Greens voted with the dingbats and everyone in Australia knows that means no progress on AGW and that the coalition are ready to go to an election without a climate change policy. As pointed out above weeks of negotiation with the only group able to pass any action resulted in a lesser bill so why do the Greens insist that they could have negotiated a much tougher[more effective] bill and have it pass the Senate. If on the other hand all they really wanted is a DD as soon as possible then they’re just playing politics and stuff Australia’s need for action.
That should read ETS [not climate change]
This would be the dingbats that the ALP was perfectly happy to cut a deal with?
Both the ALP and the Greens have been playing political games in order to maximise their policy goals. It is in both cases a mixture of pragmatics and sincerity called politics. Criticism of one party fr doing this can just as easily be levelled at the other.
Shhh, Sir Henry @106!
You can now take it as read that we will suddenly find out that Lord Nick Stern has been on the take from Danish windmill manufacturers.
Whatever credibility the alarmists have left after it has been totally destroyed already several times already will be totally destroyed.
No, Lefty E, Labor will never negotiate a scheme that will see them bundled out of office.
Get real.
We could get close to a 25% reduction of current emissions by simply replacing all coal fired power with a clean alternative, by converting all coal fired power to gas or combining one or both of these alternatives with some other low cost action to improve efficiencies. So it is ridiculous to say that CPRS has to be part of any realistic plan to meet proposed 2020 targets. If anything, CPRS would make it harder because it is going to take so long to have any real effect and the number of Koala Bear industries the government has agreed to do deals with.
We should stop talking general theories and do a real comparison of the alternatives for reaching 2020 targets.
Right now the crucial thing is that world and Australian emissions start reducing as soon as possible. We can then consider more challenging targets once people can see that emissions really can be reduced without the world as we know it falling apart. We should be particularly wary of systems that will be difficult to accelerate or hard to draw out of if someone comes up with a better idea.
I guess we’ll see about that Jovial Monk!
Put it this way: *something* will have to happen post-Copenhagen, and it will have to pass the Senate. And if the Libs don’t pass it, and Rudd doesn’t call a DD/ joint sitting – well …. there’s only one going to be one option left :)
Deluded!
Brendon
I’m more trhan willing to change my mind if you show where Brown openly said the issue was negotiable and the ALP ignored that.
You mean like this?
or the letters we wrote earlier in the year? Unfortunately the green mps website is being updated tonight or I’d get you links to them as well, but that link above pretty much lays out what’s happened.
As Andrew Bartlett has pointed out, whether it’s a DD or a normal election the outcome for the Greens in the Senate is likely to be the same.
It amazes me that people can’t grasp that perhaps the Greens won’t vote for what has been comprehensively shown to be a truly awful piece of public policy that would actually stymie GHG emission reductions in Australia out to 2034 – that’s according to the treasury’s own modelling – when all the key CC scientists are telling us serious emission reductions must happen in the next decade. And pay out more and more to polluters. And encourage investment in coal. And undermine not support the green economy. And commits Australia to aiming for a 450ppm reduction which locks in globally 50-90% catastrophic climate change, and therefore helps comprehensively weaken any deal at Copenhagen. The problems with this legislation were overwhelming.
It’s pretty simple. If the ALP’s CPRS had had any merit in moving this country forward it would have attracted green support. What has actually happened, as Bob Brown rather neatly summed it up, is that the ALP stole the Green’s rhetoric and the Lib’s useless CPRS policy, and it seems many people have fallen for it. It’s beyond hypocritical for Wong & Rudd to solemnly lecture the parliament on how ‘the planet can’t wait’ while putting up a scheme that transfers over $120 billion from the Australian public to the most intensive polluting major industries in return for pretty much exactly SFA and actively undermining any serious global commitment at Copenhagen. But you’ve got to give them credit for managing the message so well. Look how many believe them.
Frightened!
You think THIS ramshackle lot of Libs, with THIS level of popular support for CC action, are really going to hurl you out of office because you HAD NO CHOICE but to to pass a scheme via the Greens – cos THEY went all denialist, when you thought you had a deal?
Are you kidding? Its like the ALP has absolutely no balls.
“BOB BROWN: The Government has said to us in just the last few days that they want to continue to negotiate and we will be looking to negotiate with them in good faith. Now their target is five per cent, one of the world’s lowest, to 25 per cent. Ours is in direct accord with scientists 25 per cent to 40 per cent. ”
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2009/s2711040.htm
The above was in response to BRendon@110. Hit return too soon, sorry
d
Well said Myriad.
I agree with that.
I disagree with the implied premise that “any deal made with the Greens will be one that sees Labor bundled out of office”.
Correct me if I’m wrong here, but isn’t Greens policy close to the Garnaut recommendations, the report by the known economic vandal commissioned by the radical extremist ALP?
Can someone explain to me how one person can make this quotes and be called an ideologue?
“The argument [on climate change] is absolute crap. However, the politics of this are tough for us. Eighty per cent of people believe climate change is a real and present danger.”
http://www.theage.com.au/national/turnbull-takes-on-rebel-libs-20091002-ggl4.html
“The point I made about an emissions trading scheme is that I don’t like it one little bit. I think it’s economically suspect and I think the science behind the policy is contentious to say the least.”
http://www.australianclimatemadness.com/?p=752
“OK. Watch this space, Kerry. We will have a strong and effective climate change policy..”
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2009/s2759022.htm
The madmonk have dragged the Libs to the right. Kevin737 is centralish but still not enough for the progressive libs. Greens are way out on the left flank. Only leaves the Australian Democrats to give a home to the moderates. Watch the Higgins by-election… they’re running a candidate there. David Collyer- good bloke, strong on environment both natural and manmade. Very sensible.
It is Martin – the greens want targets aimed at 350ppm rather than Garnauts 450ppm – but on ALL the issues regarding permits, trading, CO2 price etc (ie the actual ETS scheme) the Greens were far closer to the report of the economic expert appointed by the Rudd government – than the Rudd govt was. Even before the Lib amendments.
Just caught Barnaby Joyce on Lateline
Always good for a laugh, Narnaby asserted that he’d ‘never thought the science was settled’. He then continued: if Copernicus had thought the science was settled, he’d be dead
TJ didn’t twig, or maybe he just wasn’t interested but Barnaby after a pause of about a seconds corrrected himself Copernicus is dead … he’d have been killed
Hilarious. Actually, Copernicus’s heliocentrism was supported while he was alive. Maybe Barnaby was put off by the name of the province where he lived with his uncle Lucas, the the local Bishop: Warmia.
Later, Gallileo was imprisoned but not killed, for his reliance on heliocentrism.
Mitchell Porter says the reports of loss of raw data are an exaggerated myth. Here is the original statement of Phil Jones from the CRU regarding the availability of the raw temperature data:
“Since the 1980s, we have merged the data we have received into existing series or begun new ones, so it is impossible to say if all stations within a particular country or if all of an individual record should be freely available. Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites, only the station series after adjustment for homogeneity issues. We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (i.e., quality controlled and homogenized) data.”
Now they are backtracking. What must be remembered is that Jones et al used every trick they could muster to deny access to the raw data and any progrms and routines used to “adjust” that data.
If the data is available after all then that is great and what sceptics have been seeking all along so that they can replicate the findings of the CRU. Have a look at the emails dealing with FOI requests and you will see the lengths that these scientists went to to deny access to the data.
With the release of this data from the CRU, Jones and his team has lost control and inevitably they will have to cough up all their data, code and routines used in producing their findings. They will then have independent review of their findings and finally determine whether there is any scientific basis for their assertions. This will be real peer review and not that sham that was been dished up to us year after year to stifle any debate.
Intellectual Property arguments won’t wash. These guys are taxpayer funded and putting research out into the scientific community. To be scientific it has to be contestible not secretive. So that bird won’t fly. If they tke steps now in full public view to prevent access the public will draw their own conclusions regarding the veracity of their research.
Does anyone here have any objection to this happening?
I reckon the ALP has shelved this political debate, as per la Gillard’s statement, in order to allow the Coalition to come apart at the seams. Its position is untenable because Abs now says they agree to the 5% but won’t impose any tax or tax-like method of achieving it.
So how will the Opposition achieve the 5% target? Abs won’t get into “specificities” at this stage. So, collegially, Julia has given him a couple of months to come up with something.
Minister-in-waiting Barney Joyce appeared on Lateline tonight. This chap is not a good look. It is not just his teeth but his inability to maintain a logical train of thought for longer than a minute. It was hard to work out whether he is a denier or a believer, and one came away with the impression that he is both, simultaneously. There was a little bit of human involvement in global warming, which was a genuine phenomenon, he conceded to Tony Jones, while also admitting to promoting radical denialist Bob Carter – the undersea oil exploration expert and latter-day weather expert.
Joyce too, was unable to suggest a way of achieving the 5% target, which his new boss is subscribing to.
Above all, Barn is just rampantly tumescent with excitement at the prospect of a premature election. He is buoyed by the avalanche of letters and emails supporting his position, he confided.
Watching clips of him in the senate today I would say that if he wants to live until February he better get himself onto some ACE inhibitors.
Sir Henry Casingbroke- to delay is to deny of course. The current Rudd government has the political capital to put in a tax on beer in every workers club un the nation right now but.. it fears this reform. I wouldn’t be playing that game
And I have my doubts on this protectionist argument line. I am far from convinced that a boogey boogey campaign on carbon tariffs will win support on bringing anyone across to action on climate change. Quite the opposite. Again, would have been a reasonable approach for ALP and Greens to take the agenda forward leaving the asylum Liberals behind. This PM has the luxury to do that with his level of support.
They’ll achieve the target by going nuclear. And that’s probably why Troeth got a pat on the back from Minchin too.
Mackerra predicts Green boilover in Higgins.
Now, that would make my YEAR. :)
Sir Henry @ 131, I think Joyce and Carter are as one in thinking that human activities have some influence on the climate, but the human signal is lost in the noise of natural variation. They admit sudden and significant (natural) climate change but they are surprisingly certain that the planet won’t warm.
Brendon @ 111, myriad74 @ 120 and others, I found this on the Greens’ site with a bit of lucky googling. I’ve heard them say several times they are willing to bargain in good faith, but Wong has put a pre-condition they’d never accept. Nor should they. You’d have to think that Wong/Rudd are keen to do as little as possible.
amortiser @ 80, have a look at this one and then go here and follow the links.
Rather than plonk a long comment here I’ve started a new thread.
amortiser @130:
Gavin Schmidt of NASA GISS (here):
In answer to the question, “Given that all of your climate-modeling source-code has been available for public scrutiny for quite a long time, and given that anyone can download and test it out, how many times have climate-model critics have actually submitted patches to improve your modeling code, fix bugs, etc? Have you gotten *any* constructive suggestions from the skeptic camp?” Gavin replies (here):
@amortiser
Correct. CRU holds only the value added data for some weather stations, having complied with the license conditions of using the original raw data that required them to delete the raw data for those weather stations once they had incorporated the calibrated figures into their dataset. The various national Met/Weather services still hold their original raw data for those weather stations.
They mustered every trick they could muster to find new ways to convey the information that between 2-5% of the raw data belonged to other organisations, yes. Yet no matter how many ways they attempted to convey that simple crucial fact, the FOI-seekers just kept on filing vexatious request after vexatious request to CRU instead of filing FOI requests to the various national Met/Weather services who are holding the data.
You’ll have to take that up with the various national Met/Weather services who are the ones asserting their IP rights over their own raw data.
It would be a step forward, I think, if the various national Met/Weather services released some of this data that they are holding onto. However, their own governments will have to release them from their government-mandated responsibility to use that data to generate revenue streams. So the sooner you get onto FOIing the various governments whose rules mean that their the national Met/Weather services are unable to release the raw data to just anybody, the better. For some of those countries you might need to lobby their government to pass an FOI act first, of course.
Keeping on asking CRU to give you something that isn’t theirs to give just looks like propaganda though. Of course, this whole framing of the HADCRU data as if it is the Holy Grail of AGW instead of just one of many datasets providing supporting data also looks like just a propaganda exercise.
P.S. to amortiser,
since HADCRUT didn’t generate their own raw data, but collated it from weather station data all over the world, why would you want the CRU copies of that raw data in order to replicate their results anyway? If they’re all involved in some conspiracy to massage the data, how could you trust that their copies of the raw data haven’t been fudged before they gave them to you? Wouldn’t you be better off getting certified copies of the raw data from all those weather stations for yourselves, so that you could trust its provenance properly?
Brian, re youre comment @137, Bob Carter does not agree there is global warming, period. He is of the view that there is global COOLING and therefore a “tax” on carbon dioxide is absurd and “squandering of money”. His views are summarised in an article he wrote for The Australian of Jan 20, 2009 the link to which is here:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/facts-debunk-global-warming-alarmism/story-e6frg746-1111118607086
Your precis accords with what Joyce is now suggesting, and has expounded on last night’s Lateline, but then he has said lots of different things over time some of it mutually exclusive.
Sir Henry 108, as a knight of the realm you of all people should know that the correct form is Lord Stern, not Lord Nick Stern. (And of course the correct form when he signs his name is Stern, not Lord Stern, let alone Lord Nick Stern.)
tigtog:
The reason that the CRU held raw data is required is because it is the basis for all its findings. The CRU has receivd data from many organisations and merged it into a dataset which has been “quality adjusted and homogonised”.
It should not be difficult to see the importance of the disclosure of that dataset. This is the data set and only this data set that can be used to replicate their findings. The CRU, as you have admitted collated, the data from multiple sources and used this as the basis for its analysis. They have consistently refused to release it. They have stated in emails that they would rather delete it than release it under FOI.
myriad74, @120
but that is surely well after the ALP started its negotiations with the libs. Merkel’s point back in mid 2008 was that the Greens – when they had a window of opportunity to involve themselves directly in negotiations – were talking 40% and not offering an actual political/logistical possible option for 40%, so the ALP went elswhere. The link you gave me is only weeks old. As proven by lib senators crossing the floor, the Greens lack of numbers were was not a deal killer, either.
Brendon @ 145, it is likely that Labor preferred to negotiate with the Libs because their position as taken to the last election was closer to Labor’s. Also they couldn’t realistically negotiate with the Greens and a couple of likely Libs.
The Greens by themselves had no leverage.
Labor has to take responsibility for the direction they took.
Sir Henry @ 142, thanks for the Carter link. It explains why he is so sure that the world won’t warm. My account was based on what he said in Rockhampton in October, where he was less complete. There he emphasised solar cycles and said a Younger Dryas type frezze-over was more likely than warming.
@amortiser,
Make your mind up. Do you want to test the already available calibrated dataset collated by CRU, or do you want to test the raw data that was generated by other organisations?
The adjusted data tables are already available. The raw data used is available too, just not available from CRU because it doesn’t belong to them, and the people who do own it want people to pay for it. So go pay for the raw data from the people it does belong to and then you can test the CRU adjustments to your heart’s content.
Seeing as the only evidence for this claim is an email talking about deleting emails on a particular topic, an email that was not in fact actually deleted even though it was on that particular topic itself, perhaps the statement therein is more closely related to that form of communication known as sarcasm rather than the form of communication known as a statement of intent.
Brian @146,
What options did the ALP have then? You are right that the Greens don’t have the numbers themselves for the government then they have to go to the libs. But anyway, any chance of the Greens being involved with both the libs and labour in negotiations were made difficult back then because the Greens weren’t budging on 40%, but not offering how it would be done, AFAIK.
Or were the Greens excluded for another reason.
Considering compromises that would have left the Greens in a credible position it seems to me that the Greens could have agreed:
1. All permits auctioned, no freebies,
2. All sectors in, agriculture subject to study and to enter by 2013
3. Cap at baseline 25% reductions on 1990 by 2020; review up on the basis of OECD average post Copenhagen; review adequacy of target, feasibility of a lower local cap in 2015
Fran, there is a huge problem in there between Labor and the Greens over what Milne calls “stranded assets”, the problem I’ve been going on about relating to existing dirty power generators. The Greens have been consistently saying “stiff cheddar”. Wong ended up chucking another $3 billion (making 7) their way, with Wong saying it was necessary to ensure continuity of supply.
I think Labor, who were calling the shots, would have seen the Coalition as far closer to their own approach. And it seems Wong was never going to move on targets, which was unacceptable to the Greens.
“I think Labor, who were calling the shots, would have seen the Coalition as far closer to their own approach. And it seems Wong was never going to move on targets, which was unacceptable to the Greens.”
Then Wong should reconsider her position. Won’t take much to lobby for change in that portfolio. Really this is now the weakest point o the Government’s argument. I hope they don’t intend to go down this road again. On any ETS the Greens must be negotiating with the ALP. Leave the circus to the Liberals.
Brian@150
re: stranded assets
Frankly, I don’t see this as a problem. Everyone ought to have known from about 1997 onwards at the very latest that the days of coal burning were numbered. It’s scarcely the fault of any government if investors have gone CD on this.
I might be talked into the idea that if there are assets commissioned prior to 1997 and which are less than 40 years old (reasonable for sunk cost) and held by superannuation funds, then losses in the value of the equity could be compensated on a one-off basis pro-rata, based on the difference between the age of the asset and decommissioning at 40 years. I might also agree that where assets were under 40 years old, and it was proposed to decommision them immediately, that a sum representing the proportionate residual sunk cost (based on 40 years of use) could be made to the equitable holders of the asset, and a loan of equal value at, say, the OCA + 1% could be made to commission new assets having a CO2 intensity not greater than a Brayton Cycle gas plant.
Much of the coal fired capacity of the country is over 30 years old and even more of it will be 40 years old by the time it is decommissioned, even if that turns out to be as early as 2020.
And on the question of negotiation and deal broking — if one’s aim were to cut a deal that would stick would you regard it as easier or harder to deal with five Greens + Xenophon + one Liberal (Troeth, Boyce, Humphreys) or the Liberals as a whole?
Which group will demand a higher cost?
Of course, the point was to wedge the Liberals not get a deal. That 7 billion extra was the price the ALP was willing to pay to get what we have seen this week.
Sam, I’d hate to owe you money. You’d be on my case day and night. But you are right. Baron Stern of Brentford or Sir Nicholas or Lord Stern are all properly formal titles. But now and again us peers understand that occasionally, for the benefit of the peasantry, we allow for nomenclatural shortcuts. Take for instance “Dr Karl” whose real name apprently is Sven Woytek Sas Konkovitch Matthew Kruszelnicki.
Steve @ 151, I agree.
Fran what you and I think about stranded assets is irrelevant, with due respect. It’s what Wong and the greens think about it that determines the prospects for a deal.
As to negotiating with sundry sympathetic Libs, I don’t think it would ever happen. A Lib might cross the floor in response to what’s on offer in the Senate, but I don’t think freedom of conscience would allow them to negotiate with the enemy as individuals beforehand. Is there a case where this has ever happened?
Brendon @145
Sorry for not being able to give a more lengthy reply (and thanks to Brian for looking for links), but wanted to briefly say – the Greens offered to negotiate, in writing, as early as back in Feb IIRC ( I wasn’t working here then & not paying as close attention). While our target on the table was 40% at that time, our communications that were made public with Wong made it extremely clear that we would negotiate in good faith on all aspects. We never put a deal breaker clause in it.
Then in the meantime we kept offering to negotiate – in writing & in public – and put out our own suite of bills and 22 amendments.
I’d point out that the Libs in contrast didn’t do any such real work, and put in open ‘deal breakers’ like excluding agriculture, and still got a seat and lots of warm & fuzzies etc. So I think that contrast and the government’s actions make it pretty clear that their preference was always to ‘brown’ the CPRS down, not seriously try for middle ground with the Greens +X and then see if they could carve a sane lib like Troeth off.
I’ll say again that it would be silly to suggest that this was a sure-fire strategy or even necessarily the only one; but to say that the ALP couldn’t negotiate with all parties and still be able to talk to the Libs is nonsense and flies in the face of what happens in the Senate daily; and the ALP never once in the early days even countenanced seriously talking to the Greens, as has become very clear. People might also want to have a look at Xenophon’s reaction to all this as well.
I personally believe the ALP is more interested in destroying the libs than putting up good policy, and I can’t pretend to understand the electoral strategy as we’ve seen from analysis here that stronger action on CC was never a threat to their electoral viability. I’ll take that as a personal failing. I will say that the ALP has done a fantastic job of convincing the electorate that ‘something is better than nothing’ while putting up a policy that is actually worse than nothing, hence the green position on the vote this week.
I really hope they will reconsider now as they can clearly get the best of both worlds (lib implosion + better CC policy that will hugely increase their cred both globallly & at home), but I’m afraid I think all this ‘one last chance’ is just yet more posturing to allow the libs to implode further & I really can’t say I have any personal insight into what they will do now in terms of the CPRS – no doubt we’ll get clues anon.
gotta go but cheers for the reasonable exchange
usual disclaimer – I work for Christine Milne in her electorate office. My opinions are my own yadda yadda
Fran, all the stuff about Labor doing a deal with the Greens and a couple of disgruntled Libs is just fantasising. The change of getting a deal that would satisfy the Greens and the likes of Judith Troeth was, and is, nil. As far as I can tell Troeth only crossed the floor so she could chastise the Government for ingoring nuclear power anyway. Judging by the approval she got from Nick Minchin, it’s difficult to see it as genuine dissent from the party line.
Frankly, I don’t understand the point of all this argumwent about whether Labor and the Greens were right or wrong not to negotiate with each other. It seems pretty simple to me: the Greens don’t have the numbers. That simple fact explains the stance of both parties perfectly adequately.
If the Greens do get the BoP after the next election, no doubt the situation will change.
Brian said
Given that I share the Green view on this, you’re really saying that it’s what Wong thinks that is key. I suspect that Wong could have been coaxed out of her view if the kind of cover I suggested above were offered. If someone could guarantee that by 2020 no more than 40% of our stationary energy was based on burning coal and none by 2030 (except perhaps as emergency back up), I’d be pretty happy with that.
Myriad74 #156:
And as early as back in February, powerful factional and union interests in the ALP were lobbying for the Government not to deal with the Greens and to deal with the Coalition.
Excellent article by Brian Toohey on the probs with CPRS and alternatives: http://inside.org.au/an-exotic-answer-to-a-real-world-problem/
I think that’s far from clear, Tim Macknay@157. What we do know is that it wasn’t considered, and if it had been, instead of the stupid chase after the support of the Liberals as a whole, then the Liberals as a whole may have gone to water and instead have come as supplicants. Troeth might have liked to chalk up a personal success before retiring.
Given the fear and loathing there now, come February and now, it seems possible, Bradfield going to preferences and Higgins perhaps being lost (if you believe MacKerras) it isn’t far-fetched at all.
Further to my comment #159, here is what Marn Ferson has to say about the AWU’s influence on Federal Government policy on the CPRS, also as far back as February:
If MacKerras is right, that will be an interesting development indeed.
MacKerras has got his hand on it, again.
MacKerras, will be right….or so close it doesn’t matter.
I said it before: DD
For more than one reason. But mainly to see the raving mad right in the liberal party burnt to a crisp.
If Abbott coulkd manage to lose his seat….that would be so cool. Whats an 8.8 percent swing anyway.
Thanks Paul N – had forgotten all that.
There does seem to be increasing signs of unions lobbying the other way, but no breath holding here in terms of efficacy.
Myriad74: I’ll take your word for it that the Greens don’t have factions. But if and when the federal caucus grows above five members, trust me, factions will form. This is my whole issue: the idea that there is some amazing species, Homo Greenicus, above all normal human behaviour.
And you’re right that most people wouldn’t know about internal party processes. But most people at LP know about the ALP’s rules without ever combing through the party’s rules book. The constant media attention on these kinds of issues percolates throughout the whole community, creating cynicism about the major parties but none for the Greens.
Ginja
I’m under no illusions that the Greens as we grow will face the same ethical dilemmas, ideological differences etc. that face all major political parties and must be addressed.
My hope as a Green is that as we’ll maintain sufficient checks and balances to avoid many of the pitfalls, and we’ll remember why we formed in the first place.
The flip-side of the scrutiny/cynicism you speak of aimed at the ALP / Libs is that the same and the MSM frequently convince themselves that the Greens are irrelevant which = no media coverage etc. So it’s swings and roundabouts. As I said, I’d personally welcome more attention and scrutiny, both (of course) to increase our profile and reach to voters, and to ensure we face serious fourth estate investigation as a major tool towards mitigating / avoiding potential straying from the path of integrity.
I too think it’s likely that if and when the Greens’ support base and political presence grows to something like the same order of magnitude as Labor, the Greens’ politic practice and internal organisational practices will become rather like those of Labor. To say what myriad74 sayd in his second par, but in a different way, I hope that “rather like” doesn’t become “exactly like” and that, if we are foredoomed to the rise of a Green Bob Hawke one day, we can nonetheless be spared the emergence of a Green Joe Tripodi.
yup Paul. And btw I’m a she :-)
India to reduce CO2 intensity 25% by 2020. http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/12/04/2761558.htm
Myriad74 #170, my apologies for the involuntary gender reassignment. I really should have known better.
no worries Paul – at least time I didn’t think you were trying to out me in some way. ;-)