The Coalition are continuing their marathon climate change/leadership party room meeting after question time today. Clearly, agreement couldn’t be reached within the scheduled four hours. That’s significant in itself.
In developments so far, Andrew Robb has jumped ship, reports Bernard Keane at The Stump.
The government has made its offer on the Coalition amendments. Peter Martin has the text of Rudd’s press release. Writing in New Matilda, Ben Eltham characterises the deal thus:
Billions more taxpayer dollars will be sacrificed on the altar of making the emissions trading scheme palatable for big polluters.
It’s impossible to see this ‘bipartisan’ deal as anything other than a huge transfer from the household sector to the polluters, and one which, at least in the short term, will do nothing much to reduce emissions. The argument in favour is that it should be supported to lock in business and parts of the Coalition, in the hope that it can be improved over time. The argument against ‘pass now, improve later’ is put by Senator Christine Milne at GreensBlog.
In today’s Crikey, Bernard Keane described the CPRS as the worst ever policy process this country has seen. It’s a textbook example, as well, of how politics can completely derail the ostensible intent of a piece of legislation, except insofar as it continues to provide the government with a talking point or two on the actual issue (and that’s not much of an exception!)… So all eyes in the commentariat will now doubt be on the implications for the Liberal leadership. Ludicrous outcomes such as a Kevin Andrews ascension are probably outside the realms of likelihood, but then who knows with this mob?
The issue has certainly crystallised almost all the ructions within the Liberals and between the Nats and moderate Liberals. Continued resentment of defeat, the counter-productive relationship with the media, the tendency to tear down any leader who won’t play the right wing game in all its purity and nuttiness, self-delusion about electoral politics. It’s all there. And none of it is remotely rational in a political sense, or any other.
More to come later…
UPDATE [Ben Eltham]: Sky News is reporting that Wilson Tuckey has moved a leadership spill motion …
Update [Mark]: Tuckey’s leadership spill suggestion failed. Perhaps he shouldn’t rely on The Australian for an assessment of numbers within the Liberal party room.
Update [Mark]: The farce continues, as Coalition members get angsty over whether the meeting should adjourn for a dinner break.
Update [Mark]: I suspect what’s going on now is they’re trying to work out what spin to put on an outcome which is completely chaotic, because both sides disagree as to what happened. If Turnbull, as leader, says that the meeting has decided to accept the deal, it seems to me that all they can do if they don’t agree is to take up Kevin Andrews’ kind offer and make him leader. Or Andrew Robb. Or Tony Abbott or someone. But all the blather about legitimacy surely is just hot air, unless they’re prepared to actually dispense with Turnbull.
Update: Turnbull is giving a press conference, pointing to his strong leadership, and claiming that he’s saved jobs. The Twitter buzz might be as good as place as any to follow what’s going on.
Update: SBS makes about as much sense as anyone could out of the result of the meeting.
Update: What Turnbull should do now.
Shock! Horror! Political journosphere shocked by the ALP playing politics!
Ben Eltham has a wrap up of the week in politics at New Matilda. It’s certainly fair to say that it certainly didn’t go all the Coalition’s way. What surprises me about the commentary we’ve seen in the lead up to and after the resumption of Parliament is some sort of default assumption that Tony Abbott would release his climate change policy, and happily elope with the voters, and that’s the last we’d hear of politics in an election year. Dennis Shanahan is, as always, indicative:
There’s some sort of bizarre alternate reality here, where the Opposition is constantly at the centre of events, and any sort of response which doesn’t play to the ‘media narrative’ from the Government is somehow electoral poison.
It’s just nuts. I suspect, in part, it derives from a belief that if the Liberals could unite behind one leader, all would be plain sailing from there on in. In fact, as one week of Barnaby-isms demonstrates, even without leadership speculation, they’re still shambolic. I think there’s still some sort of weird assumption that the Liberals are the natural party of government, and that the electorate are finally waking up to the mistake made in 2007; hence Labor is represented as being panic stricken after a single poll where their two party preferred vote is 52-48. (John Howard’s first term government, by contrast, spent a large part of the time behind in the polls.)
So we also get a bizarre perception that Labor is some sort of immovable object, locked in behind last year’s politics, and unable to shape the political landscape. This is reinforced by constant generalisation on the basis of anecdote – “voters are concerned by debt and deficit”, “Rudd is untrustworthy”, “climate change skepticism is on the increase”, very little of which has much support in any relevant polling. And the descent of Rudd’s own approval rating from its stellar heights is seen as an avatar of doom, without any particular attempt to correlate it with the party vote.
All very odd.
Like I said early in the week, watch the political narrative change.