Tony Abbott on Four Corners last night:

TONY ABBOTT (at press conference): As leader, I am not frightened of an election, and I am not frightened on an election on this issue.

MARIAN WILKINSON: Tony Abbott believed scientists on the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC were, ‘alarmist’ and tapped into headline grabbing attacks on the climate science in the media.

But despite those attacks the scientific consensus on climate change remains firm, says Kurt Lambeck, the outgoing President of Australia’s Academy of Science. This afternoon, the Academy released a new report written by some of Australia’s top climate scientists, backing the key findings of the UN’s IPCC.

DR MICHAEL RAUPACH, PRESIDENT, AUST. ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 2006-2010: One is that global warming is occurring, ah, that’s the temperatures in the last century or so have been going up. I think there is no ah, debate about that point anymore. The role of um, CO2 in that is also widely accepted and the fact that the ah, human input of CO2 into the atmosphere is a major contributor of that is a well accepted fact by the committees.

MARIAN WILKINSON: Co-chair of the report is Dr Michael Raupach, a senior CSIRO scientist.

DR MICHAEL RAUPACH: One way of posing a challenge is that if we continue business as usual emissions, then it’s very likely that the world by the end of this century ah, will be somewhere between three and five degrees warmer than it is now.

MARIAN WILKINSON: Tony Abbott brought his party together on climate change by promising he would act, but without putting a price on carbon. He says he will match the government’s commitment to cut Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by 5 per cent of 2000 levels by 2020. But he remains fundamentally sceptical that human activities are largely responsible for climate change.

TONY ABBOTT: I accept that climate change is real. I think government needs to do, ah to take meaningful measures ah, to combat it and that’s…

MARIAN WILKINSON: You’re dispute is the role of man’s intervention is that correct?

TONY ABBOTT: Sure, but, but that’s not really relevant at the moment. Ah, we have agreed ah to get a 5 per cent emissions reduction target. That’s, that’s a bipartisan position. Ah, I think we can get it, ah, by the direct action measures that I’ve outlined and the interesting thing is that the only major political party with a credible policy in this area is the Coalition. Um, the government says that climate change is ah, the greatest moral challenge of our time, but they don’t have serious policy to deal with it.

MARIAN WILKINSON: Do you still believe that the views of the IPCC scientists are alarmist?

TONY ABBOTT: Um, I, I certainly think that there is a credible scientific counterpoint, but in the end, um, I’m not going to win ah, ah, an argument over the science, I’ll leave that to the scientists.

MARIAN WILKINSON: One last question on that because ah, you have said very publicly ah, before this that you believe the earth is cooling not warming and you have cited the work of ah, Professor Ian Plimer on this. Do you still think there is a credible case for that?

TONY ABBOTT: Um, I, I have pointed out in the past, ah that ah, there was that high year um, a few years ago, ah, and the warming ah, if you believe the various measuring ah, organisations, ah, hasn’t increased, but again ah, the the point is not um, um, the science, ah the point is how should government respond and we have a a credible response that will achieve a 5 per cent reduction by 2020 and the government doesn’t.

It’s astonishing to me that these remarks didn’t make a splash in today’s media, and surely a marker for how far backwards we’ve moved in the political debate over climate change. No doubt part of the reason Abbott’s comments slipped through to the keeper was Labor’s own weakness in this area.

A story that reveals how an apparently well meaning attempt by government to protect children from video nasties on the net turned into a policy that critics say promotes censorship and reduces personal freedom.

Q&A – 9:35pm AEST: this program is also examining the net filter policy.

Joining Tony Jones will be
* Brendan O’Connor – Minister for Home Affairs
* Sophie Mirabella – Shadow Minister for Innovation
* Kaiser Kuo – Beijing-based internet consultant
* Brett Solomon – Internet activist
* Helen Razer – broadcaster and commentator

So, watch and discuss! It would help if, just this once for this topic, we could keep the outrage down to a dull roar in terms of imputing motivations to other commentors on the basis of a perceived affiliation (remember that this is explicitly against our comments policy), but be as robustly vigorous in the opinions you express regarding the various viewpoints proposed on air as you like.

However, in terms of substance against the government, the evidence rested on the statements of an anonymous whistleblower in the department who suggested that the risks of the scheme were known at least within the department:

WENDY CARLISLE: The letter arrived too late to save Matthew Fuller, but Four Corners can reveal there were people in the environment department trying to warn their superiors of the risks of electrocution and fires.

Four Corners spoke to a department insider who says these warnings were made to senior bureaucrats.

We cannot reveal the insider’s identity.

INSIDER: In fact we were told that safety was of less importance than job creation.

WENDY CARLISLE (to Insider): You were told that?

INSIDER: Yes.

WENDY CARLISLE (to Insider): Specifically? Can you tell…

INSIDER: Job creation was the most important thing. That was mentioned on many occasions, we were told many times by senior management that the technical and safety issues were of less importance than getting this programme up and running and creating jobs.

WENDY CARLISLE (to Insider): Did you advise your superiors that without, um, proper training for installers, um, that there could be deaths?

INSIDER: Yes.

The report also spent a good deal of time on house fires, with an interview with a couple whose house burned down, and somebody from the MFB who reported a huge rise in house fires:

WENDY CARLISLE: Not only have there been four deaths, but there has now been more than 120 house fires as result of the home insulation program.

The fear is that with winter coming, there will be more fires.

Here in Melbourne the threat appears to be the worst.

COMMANDER IAN HUNTER, MELBOURNE METROPOLITAN FIRE BRIGADE: The first half of 2009 there were seven fires in ceilings involving insulation. The second half there were 31.

All well and good, but in both cases we’re only getting half of the story.

While I suppose it’s too much to ask for a journo to acknowledge a grubby blogger by name, would it have hurt to consider the key point of Possum’s well-linked analysis: that insulation fires are nothing new, such fires mostly occur in new installations, and it’s possible that the insulation installs done under the government program actually resulted in a lower rate of fires than installations done earlier?

As for the haste with which the program was set up, isn’t it at least worth devoting a teeny bit of program time as to why the government thought it so important? There was a little something called the global financial crisis going on, you might remember.

Why no consideration of the role of state governments (who police workplace safety, remember?)

And, for heaven’s sake, how can you do a news report on the insulation scheme, and not even mention the Hawke Review? It’s not even listed in the resources section of the 4 Corners’ story’s web page. I have to wonder whether Wendy Carlisle and her producers bothered to read it.

Carlisle might have been peeved – and rightly so – that nobody from the government was prepared to go on camera for the story. But that doesn’t excuse a lack of crucial information that contradicts the thesis that the scheme was a complete disaster put together by a government with no rhyme or reason behind the in hindsight ill-judged parts of it.

However, they’re also promising some kind of meta-analysis of public polling on climate change, that purportedly makes clear “…that concern amongst voters about climate change has “softened” over the past eighteen months.”

I’ll be interested to see what the poll bloggers make of it…

Malcolm Turnbull needs to give up on placating all those who still long for the departed Howard’s firm hand. The Liberal Party needs to eschew stunts and populism and restore its tattered economic credibility (which was actually junked by Howard and Costello themselves – that was obvious enough in last year’s election but now it’s plain as day). It also needs to move with the times and take a responsible position on an ETS and trim its sails to fit the socially liberal winds that have been blowing – unsniffed as they were by the Tony Abbotts and Nick Minchins of the world.

But Turnbull is completely capable of squibbing all this. He may mistake the need to placate the diehard Liberal Right and “defend the legacy” as necessary pragmatism. If he does, he might be safer at the despatch box, but he will be repeating the same mistakes that brought Nelson down. Though without the jam and baked beans.

Turnbull’s selection of a Shadow Cabinet will give us a big clue as to how he’s going to shape the Opposition. Shadow Treasurer and Shadow Climate Change Minister in particular. And make no mistake, he has to shape the Opposition, not try to keep all its factions happy. A very difficult balancing act indeed, because the structural faults in both the party and in its electoral position haven’t been magicked away.

Elsewhere: Some more analysis from Sam Clifford at Public Polity. Update: And more from Pavlov’s Cat.

Blogosphere roundup: More commentary from Possum, Politically homeless, Andrew Bartlett, Corporate Engagement, Musings of an inappropriate woman, Road to Surfdom and Woolly Days.

Another one for the blog roundup: what it feels like for a boi.

Wait, there’s more!: Joanne Jacobs, The Poll Bludger and John Quiggin.

In a profile on the shadow treasurer to air on the ABC’s Four Corners tonight, Mr Turnbull is identified as the insider who passed on secret notes indicating Mr Packer would publicly stick to the law but would privately exercise editorial control over Fairfax.

Timely because it comes slap bang in the middle of the run up to Peter The Ditherers biography launch and important questions about Liberal Party leadership issues and tensions arising from that event.

Fun prime time viewing for the whole family. Bring the popcorn and consider this an open thread if you’re watching tonight.