The Liberals’ position on an emissions trading policy – and climate change – is so obscure that the results of their meeting the other day can be reported in some papers as a defeat for Nelson, and in others as a quixotic victory. Tempers are running so high that the Shadow Cabinet recommendation wasn’t put in writing – lest it leak – and the meeting did policy by whiteboard. But the proceedings leaked anyway. Here are some highlights from Louise Dodson’s story in yesterday’s Fin Review.
It took five hours, a lot of fierce debate and a deal workshopped on a whiteboard, but the coalition party room finally agreed to support Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson on climate change.
…
The party meeting started with the words “climate change is real” being written on the whiteboard. But even this statement could not produce agreement. Backbencher Dennis Jensen said he could not sign up to that statement and it was then removed and replaced by “we give the planet the benefit of the doubt and support action on climate change”.
…
Sources at the meeting said almost all Coalition MPs spoke during the meeting, with one-fifth of them sceptical that there was human-induced climate change, three-fifths of the view that the opposition needed to sort out the position and move on for political reasons and one-fifth arguing against a commitment to an emissions trading scheme specifically by 2012.
Huh. Back in the day Ros Kelly had to resign because she did policy by whiteboard.
I’m reminded of a joke from the 1990s.
Riddle: What is the difference between Jurassic Park and the Liberal Party?
Answer: One is a movie, the other is a theme park full of dinosaurs.
Yes Liam! Comedy abounds, but it’s black comedy.
“We give the planet the benefit of the doubt” forsooth. What Olympian gods they be: they will deign to give the planet the benefit of their doubt.
Don’t they know that they – and we – are but fly-specks on a large and fertile globe, spinning and orbiting a large and warmish star. They – and we – are here on the surface of the planet after who knows what sequence of primordial events. Having found it habitable, the least any of us can do is to try to keep it habitable.
“Benefit of the doubt”??? Pshaw!
Can a materials science faculty somewhere in Australia do the country a favour and offer Dennis Jensen a professorship?
At least there he’d only be infuriating a few colleagues and possibly some undergraduates not smart enough to avoid his units.
We have set aside our millions-year-old feud to unite in protesting Paul Norton’s gratuitous slander of our respective species.
Hilarious. The Coalition has now officially adopted the “benefit of the doubt” slogan coined by media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Tom Switzer from The Australian is advising Dr Nelson on how to spin his latest incoherent climate change policy, and Andrew Bolt from the Herald Sun is orchestrating the backbench denialists. So who needs an Opposition when we have News Ltd? The Australian will have Costello drafted into the leadership by October and all the pieces will be in place for victory at the next election. The only fly in News Ltd’s ointment appears to be Malcolm Turnbull.
ummm, grace, there’s another fly: well, actually {cough} several million of them,…
they’re called “voters”
I’m sure it’s just coincidence but to illustrate Nelson’s declaration that he is here to stay, the ABC is carrying a picture of Nelson brandishing a fossil of a creature that has been extinct for around 250 million years.
Well I don’t give the Liberals the benefit of the doubt.
So there’s not going to be a primary source record of this historically significant party meeting? I’ve always suspected this current crop of Liberals playing fast and loose about what they leave behind for the historical record. Now my suspicions have enough evidence to make them a certainty.
Or did they all know, deep down, they were just being very stupid, and would be judged as such in the future?
Assuming there’s going to be anybody left alive to write history. If the world’s pollies and economists and industrialists keep going the way they are, we’ll go the way of the dinosaurs.
I enjoyed the anon quote in the OO yeaterday: a Liberal MP complaining that Federal Liberals had all followed the Admiral’s instruction NOT to comment publicly on climate change policy, nonetheless good Lord Nelson had meanwhile been “running around like a madman” spouting forth.
Of course this quote fitted their current deep desire to have $weetie drafted to sup of the Chalice, ASAP. John Hewson on TV last night: “Costello has never had the balls to challenge!”