Presiding as he has been over the Nationals-isation of the Liberal Party, Tony Abbott might pause to consider one of Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s bon mots:
You can’t straddle both sides of a barbed-wire fence.
The first stage of selling the Coalition’s climate change policy hasn’t gone well. Barnaby Joyce was positively incoherent on Lateline, and wanted to talk about anything but the policy itself. Significantly, perhaps, when asked about his new role, his response was something along the lines of “I’m not exactly fascinated”. Really. Maybe for both him and his boss, being an oppositionalist ‘retail politician’ and mouthing off about anything and everything is a more comfortable space than having to defend a policy position.
That certainly appeared to be the case for Tony Abbott on the 7.30 Report tonight.
His inability to justify the lie about the cost of the CPRS to taxpayers aside, Abbott found out that it’s very hard to straddle the denialist constituency *and* maintain the fiction that he wants to do something to abate carbon emissions. And it’s not going to get any easier for him.
What might have appeared over summer to the Abbotariat to be a tactical master stroke is now meeting political reality. And on the first day that Kevin Rudd found a way of concisely explaining the ETS.*
*Even, if, unfortunately, it doesn’t really punish polluters as much as it should.*
Agree Mark – today will be marked as the start of a almighty train wreck. Its all very Joh – keeping the lights on etc! I must admit Ive not boned up on QLD federal seats in play this year – but surely any up for grabs that aren’t the sort to fall for this folksy hucksterism. They’d already be in NP or Katterite hands.
One things for sure – the “great big nude tax” line is dead on arrival. Every journo in the nation will have noted Kerry questions.
Heh, I liked Bananaby’s outline of it as ‘a bucket of money on the table’ that will trigger the ‘greed factor’ which will impell polluters to cut emissions so they can dip into the goodies. Reminded me of Hansonomics.
@1 – Yep, Lefty E.
The surprise is that the journosphere didn’t cotton on to the fact that Abbott and Joyce actually just don’t have what it takes to be perceived as a potential PM and Finance Minister – no gravitas, no substance. Like I said yesterday, the game changes when they actually have to get out there and defend their own policy instead of carrying on like porkchops.
Tell you what, I reckon Brendan Nelson was probably more convincing.
@2, standard National Party practice! Fund, tick. Boondoggle potential, tick. Something in it for the farmers, tick. Oh yeah, it’s an environment policy.
So, just a load of hot air?
I saw Abbott on the 7:30 Report also. An amazingly weak effort, for someone that people say is smart.
All he did was parrot talking points. He didn’t explain himself well at all. And he was all over the map with comments about trying to reduce emissions, and there appears to be evidence for climate change, but carbon emissions aren’t pollution, and carbon dioxide is a beneficial gas, etc.
The regression line through all his random points would be…???
Maybe Abbott spends too much time on looking after the body beautiful, and keeping an eye on girls (including his Deputy “girl”) and their use of bodily parts, and not enough time on thinking through the issues?
Barnaby’s effort was comedy gold! I particularly love these three moments:
This will go down well at catallaxy (“taxed till we die!”) but it’s tired in the electorate and incomprehensible to boot – does anyone really believe that if KRudd were serious about reducing emissions he would “import people by the truck loads”? Even reasonable racists will be a little put off by someone who can’t keep their anti-immigration sentiment out of any topic, and incoherently to boot.
Then we have this pearler:
nothing says “I care” like claiming that money spent on school halls has been “squandered”. Can’t you just feeeeel the love?
And finally:
It’s not fucking gollum you moron!. It’s Bilbo who had the ring in his pocket. Upwards of 50% of the population have seen that movie and you misquoted the damn thing on national television. Although Tolkien would probably agree with a lot of Barnaby’s opinions, he’d be thoroughly disappointed by this! And doesn’t it just go to show that Barnaby really did his homework before he came on TV…
and this guy is the Finance spokesman? Scary stuff…
“Upwards of 50% of the population have seen that movie and you misquoted the damn thing on national television. ”
Yes SG, nothing tells the general populace a pollie’s not fit to rule like totally fucking up a massive pop culture reference. Ar least Barnaby didn’t try to quote contemporary pop lyrics. “Mr Rudd has his Chocker Fa-Fa-Fa Face on again. Smells Like Teen Bollocks. Chill hop you cool cats.”
One of the golden rules of political spin. Never use contemporary pop culture tropes and memes as a metaphor for your message. As a joke/icebreaker fine. But employing pop culture to make serious point always backfires – usually through the handlers just not grasping how the reference is currently being mashed up and mocked around the web.
Oh sg, given the blogosphere’s notorious inability to transmit irony or nuance without the package rupturing in transit, I just wanna say I am actually well in agreement with most of the points you advanced @7..
I’m also shitfaced right now so don’t take it the bank, “I have no recollection of that arms transaction Senator,”
“This will go down well at catallaxy”
Oh look, anything goes down well there that stirs the loins of withered old crabby bastards looking for a bit of hatey polemic to get their last juices flowing. Did I say flowing? My bad. Even oozing is probably too giddy a tempo for them.
Barnaby as alternative Finance Minister? Really? Is anybody awake at Coalition HQ?
*shudders*
If we vote for that we deserve to be a banana republic.
Could they not at least put Minchin in the shadow Finance portfolio? At least he looks like he’s got a calculator shoved up his butt, which counts as gravitas for a lot of voters.
Barnaby always reveals his craziness during interviews, much like this:
Barnaby babbled his way through Lateline. Leigh Sales had me in fits of laughter the way she kept asking straightforward questions only to get lines like “buckets of cash” out of Joyce. Greedy polluters.
Take the blinkers off. The big risk is that business gets behind Abbott. Alan Kohler’s comment:
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Abbotts-great-big-axe-pd20100203-2AR5B?opendocument&src=rss
Yes . Business does like the Abbott policy – licence to pollute. Money for polluters, etc, etc. So business likes it. So fucking what? I would have thought that would have made most ordinary punters highly suspicious of Coalition Climate Change Policy. To summarise – under Abbott we have to pay.
Under Rudd business has to pay. Which is why Abbott and Hunt and probably others I haven’t seen yet have been lying their faces off about Labor’s compensation package.
Note to Tony Abbott and his business supporters. Don’t take us for mugs.
The number of swinging voters likely to be influenced by anything on Lateline or the 7.30 report is approximately 12, I would have thought. And the majority will probably sympathise with Joyce because they resent smartarse ABC interviewers who think they know everything.
Ah how we used to laugh at Joh! Honestly, some of the things he said were so incoherently imbecilic the tears would run down your face.
He was premier for 19 years.
Yes I know … the chances of Rudd and Swan losing to Abbott and Joyce are about as risible as the chances of Wayne Goss losing to Rob Borbidge. Oh wait …
I suspect climate change is not going to be a major issue in this election. There seems to be a gathering global mood that it was all a bit of a false alarm, which is quite understandable crowd psychology. I expect Labor to get re-elected but people who think rational discussions about the merits of the competing climate change policies will be a factor are going to be disappointed I think.
With their holidays behind them the government is now back in the game. The pressure will mount on Abbott as he is forced (for a change) to compete for media attention.
The honeymoon will end as he backflips all over the place, attempting to explain how he can advocate a “climate change” policy while he and the Coalition leadership believe climate change is “absolute crap”.
He’ll have to outline costings, which he’s not done fully – and where the money would come from.
Meanwhile, Turnbull, who lost the leadership ballot by just one vote, will be breathing down his neck, goading him to trip up.
The pressure will mount to such an extent that it will make Abbott’s role in the campaign of 2007 look like a walk in the park by comparison.
We all remember how the stresses of ’07 led to him making the infamous “foot in mouth” clangers that showed him as completely unsuitable. Multiply the effect of that scenario by a factor of two or three, and we get a glimpse of the trainwreck that lies ahead for the Mad Monk and his band of hypocrites.
9 months ago: Turnbull’s effort – The Pearce Review
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2009/05/06/the-pearce-review-the-liberals-cprs-report/
Boy, nitpicking about spelling and data sources looks quite indulgent now…
You’re too harsh Paul Burns.
The Australian Coal Association and the Minerals Council like it and even ACCI, and that’s all that really matters, right?
Sheesh, you lot are as bad as Catallaxy for groupthink. Listen, I don’t like Abbott, Joyce, Minchin and co. But their messing up on Lateline, or even the 7.30 report, does them little harm – swinging voters don’t watch those shows. And those that do will mainly remember the body language and tone of voice rather than the policy flaws, and they may not have messed that up nearly so much as your personal hostility to them leads you to think.
What matters is that the Coalition have hit on an approach which is indeed pure crap as policy, but which translates far more easily into soundbites on Channel 10 news or sycophantic headlines in the Australian than an ETS. Of course that’s precisely because its internal contradictions lets it be all things to all men – there’s a present there for everyone and the cost of those presents is obscured. Don’t underestimate these guys.
I have to stop watching Lateline just before going to bed. I woke in fright in the early hours. Had I been dreaming that there had been an election and Barnaby Joyce was in London at a meeting of G20 Finance Ministers?
“I’m not exactly fascinated”, sad Tony. After yesterdays performance, neither are we, though amazed might be a better description. The Question Time speech was deadfull.
The problem is that the old JBP ‘feed the chooks’ worked for a long time. Tony and his Army are well trained in the black arts of the shock jocks and pork barrell brigade.
Dont underestimate the appeal out there in voter land of the new kid sounding like a nervous new kid – “That Kerry O’Brien/other journo is a real bully – Tony’s trying really hard , give him a go, etc”. Aw, shucks.
Kevin has some long work days ahead.
Perhaps. But you have to remember that this will be taken to an election with every environment group in the land screaming that the policy is crap, and in an environment where much of the frontbench is on the record of not believing it, and in an environment where Turnbull is making clear he thinks the policy’s crap.
DD #20, I think you’re onto something. Emissions trading schemes in general are the most difficult of all environmental policy instruments to explain to the general public (I should know – I give lectures about them), and the CPRS has been made even more difficult to explain thanks to all the exemptions, concessions, etc., than if it had been a “pure” market-creating mechanism. See also Shaun Carney on Rudd’s lack of resolution as a policy commmunicator.
I don’t think any of think the 7:30/Lateline stumbles have an impact on swinging voters. What they do show is that the Coalition can’t message their simple, porkbarrel scheme without getting tangled up in their political objectives and on the policy front they’re scarce on detail – these open them up to the government skewering them year-long on this issue the way Howard did with Medicare Gold.
These aren’t just weak policies because the coalition haven’t been able to fill in the details yet, they’re weak because the people pushing them aren’t convinced by them either.
Robert #23, the complicating factor is that most of the environmental groups are also currently saying that the Government’s policy is crap, and can be expected to go on saying that unless some fairly substantial concessions are made to the Greens over the CPRS legislation.
@25 – http://larvatusprodeo.net/2010/02/03/the-politics-of-direct-action-on-climate-change/
I’m with Ken at @16. What’s the bet that as this election thing kicks on the conversation will depart from climate change and hinge on, I dunno, interest rates, koalas in the southern suburbs, private health insurance, global catastrophe x, or banning lol cats because they hurt the children.
This is just round one and they have only just stepped out of the corners. I suspect that Mark is right and as this thing goes on Abbott is going to look less and less convincing and all of his budgie-smuggler pic tricks aren’t going to endear him to voters but rather make him look like a bit of a dope. Possum’s comparison with Latham is pretty apt.
Good insight from the Carney article comments:
Matt C@14: Alan Kohler and Greg Hunt are talking sense. It will not take a lot of converting from coal to gas to meet the proposed target (or much higher targets for that matter.) Direct action to clean up power generation is going to be a lot more cost effective and provide more certainty re the rate of change than ETS or the existing MRET scheme. (Which is also failing to attract investors due to falling credit prices.)
My only comment on this topic is that it may be more cost effective (in terms of cost/tonne emission reduction) to convert some of the more modern power stations in NSW and Qld instead of trying to convert the old Vic stations as Greg Hunt suggests. My assumption here is that the reserves of coal seam gas a re larger and it is much simpler to change pulverized coal burners to gas than converting alternate boiler designs.
In addition, it may be possible to convert newer power stations by ducting the exhaust from the new gas turbines to the existing boilers. The attraction here is the lower emissions from the resulting combined cycle PLUS a significant increase in power station output.
can I just correct one thing – Bilbo and gollum had their ‘riddle in the dark’ in The Hobbit. The movie of this has not been made yet, it is due out next year.
As to the policy and its salesmen, oh my what a joke.
All this confusion might have been avoided if Bilbo had told me the truth the first time…
My recollection from the movies was that Gollum wasn’t wearing anything that had pockets!
Do not anger the Ents.
true wilful, but as I recall there’s a flashback to the scene where Bilbo gets the ring in one of the movies. You also see Gollum kill his brother. So Barnaby can’t claim to be mistaken in his interpretation of an obscure subsidiary text that no-one’s read, since it was in the movie…
sg #35, I don’t wish to seem pedantic but it was actually his cousin Deagol that Smeagol/Gollum killed. I went to quite a lot of trouble and took a great many risks wandering all over Middle Earth to find out this information, so I’d appreciate it if you Seventh Age whippersnappers could get it right.
Here’s the thing. Abbott and Joyce didn’t do well last night. But who watched it? Maybe a dozen or so people?
All the mass media have to do is talk aobut how well Abbott and Joyce made their points on the hostile ABC and most people will believe it.
get over yourself Gandalf, your time has passed. It’s the time of Men now, and if we want to change your legacy slightly for the mass media, that’s our business. Don’t you have elf-maidens to tend to over in the undying lands or something? Sheesh, even Paul Keating knew when his time was done…
Everyone interested in this debate should read this . Here we have solar power stations in Spain up and running (in nine months not 10 years for anything else) providing base load power with molten salt using Australian technology. Meanwhile in China………… And yet today I hear the coal industry person bleating on about how we need coal for base load as nothing else works. Y are our journalists so supine?
http://www.smh.com.au/business/handicapped-by-19thcentury-technology-20100202-nb3t.html
The Coalition are saying they can’t cost their scheme until the govt releases the Henry review. The govt won’t release the Henry review as they are still considering it. How about this for a compromise. Let Abbot and Joyce have access to the Henry review in a locked room, on condition they can’t come out until they show that they understand what is being proposed by Henry. That should keep them tied up for at least a couple of weeks. Abbott and Joyce can then go away and do their costings.
I can’t see what the Henry Review has to do with costing their policy. Budget forward projections are already in the public domain. Barnaby FAIL.
Don’t underestimate these guys.
Don’t underestimate the public, DD.
Turnbull saying it is a crap policy isn’t a bug – it’s a feature.
Slightly off-topic, but Melbourne folks might be interested in a free public seminar (well, it’s billed as a “lecture” but there’s more than one speaker!) on “The Future of Carbon Trading in Australia”, hosted by the Melbourne Energy Institute on 17 February. Speakers include Ross Garnaut.
http://energy.unimelb.edu.au/uploads/Media/Future%20of%20Carbon%20Trading%20in%20Australia%20Program.pdf
derrida derida @20: “And those that do will mainly remember the body language and tone of voice rather than the policy flaws”
In the case of Barnaby, his body language and his actual words converge at being uncommitted to the Finance portfolio. That is not a good start.
If the great unwashed get to also thinking that he may have flawed policy, and tends to get easily confused, then there may be a synergistic reinforcement of his unsuitability for the role?
Actually, it would be interesting to see a breakdown of the demographics of the swinging voters. Are they ABC1 types, or not?
Elise@ 45 I noticed that Joyce looked rather more kempt today. Someone seems to have had a word.
I am dubious about it not getting out there that Barnaby and Tony are duds, because of the soundbite system somehow working easily in their favour. One thing you can’t hide is when you’re crippled inside.
Patricia WA, I wasn’t referring to his “kemptness”, but to his facial expressions.
It is easy to see when someone’s face shows disengagement, when asked how they are finding their new portfolio. And his words indeed backed up that impression.