As I observed in an earlier post, the instant response from Australian industry and business groups to the Copenhagen schemozzle was to call for a delay of the CPRS or yet more handouts in the guise of compensation. They’re unlikely – one hopes, at least – to get what they want, as (unfortunately) are The Greens with their call for negotiation over Australia’s climate change response.*
Rather, the Rudd government will continue on its course.
That course now appears if its settings were too clever by half. The Copenhagen deadline for negotiations with the Liberals succeeded in widening the ambit of the government’s scheme, but also had the probably unintended outcome of installing Tony Abbott as Liberal leader. It won’t be so easy now for the government to make hay with the Coalition’s divisions on climate change, as the moderates seem to have fallen into line behind the right in exchange for a few symbolic prizes, and Malcolm Turnbull looks a very isolated figure.
Having said that, I’m not too sure at all that Abbott will get all that much traction with his “great big new tax on everything” line. Even if a supine commentariat don’t get around to calling it what it is, it’s still a lie, and one that won’t be too difficult to rebut.
In today’s Crikey, Bernard Keane concluded a useful review of the path ahead for the domestic politics of climate change thus:
Where to from here for the government? It is committed to the reintroduction of the Rudd-Turnbull version of the CPRS as soon as Parliament returns. There’s a summer break to go before we get to that point. “Living on the Earth’s driest and hottest continent, we are already seeing the harsh impact of climate change with devastating droughts, heat waves and bush fires,” Malcolm Turnbull wrote in the pages of one of his old employers, The Times, on Saturday.
The perspective on climate change might look very different six long, hot weeks from now.
It’s certainly already a different political game, whichever way it’s played out in 2010.
* Any amendments negotiated with The Greens would still fail to pass the Senate, but a bill embodying them could be presented twice, and still give the government the scope for a double dissolution at its preferred time of late next year. If Labor subsequently won the election, it would be almost impossible for such a bill not to pass in a joint sitting of both Houses.
From today’s 
In the wake of 
Breaking the CPRS deadlock
Almost two weeks ago, I suggested that something positive might come of The Greens’ suggestion that Ross Garnaut’s interim measure on carbon emissions should be the circuit breaker for the CPRS impasse.
In the intervening period, I’ve been surprised that so little attention has been paid to the negotiations between Senator Penny Wong and Senator Christine Milne on behalf of The Greens, which began last week. I’ve sought to emphasise that there are possibilities of Senate passage via a Liberal floor crosser (perhaps Judith Troeth, who is retiring) and Nick Xenophon. In any event, I’ve argued that there are political benefits for Labor in staking out a new position which could demonstrate the desire for immediate action, and perhaps take a different bill to a double dissolution.
Perhaps it’s inevitable that the media would ignore these developments, but I’ve also been surprised at the attitude of a number of commenters on several threads, which seems to assume that Labor’s posture is somehow frozen in stone.
So, in light of all this, I was very interested indeed to hear Bob Brown give a very articulate and well argued interview to Tony Jones on Lateline tonight where he discussed these negotiations, and revealed that he had also been talking to other non-Government Senators.