Turnbull’s ETS deferral is only a distraction
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The ETS decision announced by Malcolm Turnbull this morning is a sort of Frankenstein’s monster, sewn together from bits of National Party hostility, conservative climate scepticism and moderate enthusiasm to actually do something about climate change. As a consequence, the Coalition is now backing the Government’s 5-25% emissions targets on exactly the conditions the Government has set, wants to “defer” consideration of the Government’s ETS bill until after Copenhagen and, in particular, the US ETS legislation is finalised. In the interim, the Coalition wants a voluntary emissions trading scheme. Beyond that, however, the details get a bit fuzzy. The more Warren Truss was questioned at his joint press conference with Malcolm Turnbull, the more opposed he seemed to any sort of emissions trading scheme. It’s clear that the Nationals are a long way from being in the tent and it’s hard to see Ron Boswell agreeing to any sort of 25% emissions target when he thinks the planet is getting colder. The Liberals’ position isn’t a great deal clearer. Turnbull, under sustained questioning, refused to say that the Coalition would even accept a copy of the American legislation, which is likely to ensure no trade-exposed US industry faces any carbon price of any kind. There is, it should be said, policy soundness to the Coalition’s position on timing. There is no actual reason for a vote on the ETS legislation now. It can wait until February next year, after Copenhagen. Business will have no more certainty with the bill passed or rejected now than it will in February. The Government is only rushing it to put the Coalition under pressure, although Malcolm Turnbull insisted, in a quite personal attack on Kevin Rudd, that it was entirely because of Kevin Rudd’s vanity. But the “deferral” is a distraction, not a solution. It amounts to a refusal to pass the bill, and semantics won’t help if the Government elects to use it as a double dissolution trigger. For a start, it will need an outright majority in the Senate to successfully defer the Bill. Steve Fielding has said he is agreeable to deferral. Nick Xenophon is being cagey, initially saying he wanted to bring the vote on and then suggesting he might be changing his mind — he knows how to keep himself in the picture. The Greens want to bring the vote on now, too, and kill the scheme. Assuming the Liberals do get a majority vote for deferral, it doesn’t matter anyway — a bill only has to “fail to pass” under s.57 of the Constitution to provide a double dissolution trigger if it is repeated in three months. There’s a good chance “deferral” for an extended period would constitute “failure to pass”. “The meaning of ‘fail to pass’ is unclear,” Senate Clerk Harry Evans told Crikey, “but remember the Prime Minister only has to convince the Governor-General about a double-dissolution trigger. It’s not justifiable at that stage, although it would be down the track once bills are passed in a joint sitting.” The broader problem for the Coalition is that “deferral”, perhaps as much as outright rejection, will play to the Government’s desire to paint the Coalition as holdouts who refused to do anything about climate change for twelve years in office and want to keep finding excuses to delay further. Rudd will make much of the fact that Turnbull has now set a new benchmark — the US legislation — as well as Copenhagen, before Australia does anything. “They’ll keep finding excuses to dither and delay,” Rudd will declare, and it will look a lot more plausible than some of the arguments he’s been offering lately. The voluntary trading scheme proposal is an effort to defend against this charge, but as the Government has discovered, once you propose the detail of a trading scheme, you leave yourself open to constant criticism. A likely weakness is that Turnbull indicated the voluntary scheme would provide permits that could be banked for later use, meaning firms could purchase cheap permits under the voluntary stage of the scheme for use when the price rises under the Government’s ETS two years later, nullifying the price signal effect. This stitched-together position, aimed at keeping a quite disparate collection of viewpoints together at least until early next year, is half-smart politics. It delays the fateful day when the Coalition’s tensions over emissions trading will be exposed, but also positions the Coalition where the Government wants them. At least if they rejected the bill outright, they could do so on the wholly correct basis that the ETS was so badly designed it wasn’t going to achieve any significant reductions in emissions, which is the Greens’ reason for rejecting it. As it stands, the issue will be kept alive until February, and it’s not an issue the Opposition can ever win on. Alternatively, Kevin Rudd may decide to cleave open the divisions in the Coalition and call an election on the back of this. |
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22 Comments
Nick Xenophon announced at a presser a short while ago that he wants a deferral of the bill until September, but won’t support any delay beyond that.
Fielding supports a deferral until after “Capenhogen”.
Turnbulls reference to the PM’s ‘vanity’ coincides with that idiot with the falsetto vocals, Pyne using the same line of attack on Sky News earlier this morning. Obviously this is a new line of insult, to play on the supposed macho Aussie males comfort zone. Pyne would be the last bar none, to question another males vanity. Frankly the sight and sound of him makes me want to revisit a previous meal in reverse. What a prat. Turnbull will wake up, one would imagine sooner rather than later, that Pyne is doing the Opposition no favours with his outragous forced performances both in and out of the House. Its only a matter of time before the Speaker loses all patience and does something about him. What a horrible little man.
So, the Senate will vote on when to vote on the legislation?; the Greens want to kill it now, but without Xenophon and Fielding, it’s dormant in the short term. Unless the Nats want to vote on it now? Can’t see that happening.
Why dont the Liberals forget about the UN and the bankers carbon tax and launch an incentive program for users and developers of clean energy and a penalty program for planet polluters ie carbon, plastics, toxic chemicals and gases and rainforest rapists. They can work out the details but reward and punishment combos are always the most effective motivators. Leave the UN to worry about all that other stuff and their bankers carbon tax system. Let’s get down to doing something about what is really destroying the planet.
Why don’t the Liberals forget about the UN and the bankers carbon tax and launch an incentive program for users and developers of clean energy and a penalty program for planet polluters i.e. carbon (soot), plastics, toxic chemical and gas polluters as well as rainforest rapists. They can work out the details but reward and punishment combos are always the most effective motivators.
Leave the UN to worry about all that other stuff and their banker’s carbon tax system. Let’s get down to doing something about what is really destroying the planet.
As forecast, Pyne was thrown out of the chamber for 24hrs. Turnbull looked embarrassed, uneasy and completely unimpressed with his front and back benchers, obviously he has no control at all. Someone is stirring the pot and you can be sure the name Minchin is there somewhere ,along with a smirk or two.
“Capenhogan” - what a wonderful place name. I wonder where it is though? Sounds like an Afrikaner town in Sowff Affreeka.
BernardKeane: Did the little dingbat really say Capenhogan? Oh well one doesn’t expect the Liberals to have any education, and it only marginally worse than Copenhargen.
I love this voluntary ETS business. It’s so Quixotic! I mean I would love a voluntary supply of endless money, but I ain’t gonna get it, am I? God alone knows how any government would deal with big business under that little scheme.
A reminder for The Greens. I do understand your reasons for not wanting this ETS scheme. However, perhaps you might remember during the Republic debate… Ultimately the Republic was killed when Republicans wanted it on their terms, or nothing. And nothing was exactly what the voter got.
A reminder for Malcolm Turnbull: re Chris Chris Christopher Pain, as so many Australians pronounce the word, Pyne. Get rid of the little f — -ker. He brings no credit to a Party which is foundering in the rough. Even less so to a man as ambitious as you.
Bernard Keane. I know, I know, horses founder, as do cattle. For some reason humans are said to flounder. I don’t know if the fish had any input.
I’m saying Christopher Pyne, as I didn’t realize there was something called Senator Fielding in the political scheme of things.
Venise, all your self-corrections are tedious and space-wasting. Don’t bother - nobody is combing through what you say.
David Sanderson I can speak for myself, thanks.
Certainly a DD does not depend only on the parliamentary “trigger”, or on the House (Reps) successful vote of No Confidence; it can be called by the GG, as it was 11/11/75. Gough had the trigger; but the Opposition Leader’s (Fraser’s) convinced the GG to do it for him. I’m sure that, sooner or later, that reality will seep through a few thick Senatorial skulls.
Fielding & the Liberals have most to lose. Greens (who have most to gain by a DD called for any other type of rejected bill) could lose 2nd preferences in the Senate election by alienating less radical greenies, both in groups like the ACF its associates, and from ALP & Liberal Wets (if that term’s still around).
BTW: Thanks for the “Rudd’s vanity” meme, bound to get more of an airing before weekend opinion polls.
“DAVID1
David Sanderson I can speak for myself, thanks.”
If you feel up to it DAVID1 then do it. I’m certainly not doing it for you.
I reckon Chris Pyne has scalped Bob Hawke and micro-attached the thing onto his own bonce. Next up, we hope, some form of personality transplant. I don’t think he should be fussy about potential donors.
David Sanderson: You are an ignorant man. Also a terminally stupid man. These so-called self-corrections were direct quotes- Apart from saying Australians pronounce the word pain like they pronounce the word Pyne. You disagree with my description of Oz English? Tough! Take it out on your old jousting partner JamesK.
It is the endless self-indulgence I object to Venise and your last post is yet more evidence of that.
True enough the National Party are funded big time by the mining industry and thus no longer named “Country Party” any more. They know how to sing the piper’s tune. They have nothing to say about saving the black soil farming country of the Liverpool Plains in northwest NSW from expanded coal mining.
True enough the Rudd Government and their NSW aparatchiks are ready to prosecute their wedge on the Libs & Nats. But the ALP is in power and they will have to front the world and the European bankers, and Obama administration etc on the island city of Copenhagen Denmark:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen
That is, the folks who write global reinsurance for SME economies like Australia. And why would they if we don’t pull our weight on the escalating insurance costs nationally and worldwide relating it seems to dangerous global warming?
The fact is the ALP Govt can’t deliver despite their selective duchessing of national interest groups, just like the ALP spin machine couldn’t keep safe 200 dead people in the Victorian megafire. What a metaphor, may they rest in peace.
You can blame the Greens or the Coalition, Fielding or Barnaby or the X-man but PM Rudd is the one who will wear it because the government, is the government, is the government. They have the job of delivering peace order and welfare, and they get paid to do it. No one else.
Keating learned to his everlasting chagrin in 1996, so did Carr in 1995 much to his surprise. Now we assume Rudd will get his medicine. To paraphrase Alan Ramsey who referred to a prissy self promoter for a PM - as if to balance up his laothing of The Toad - no one likes a smart *rse, especially one who can’t deliver.
Bring it on indeed.
The past two days of QT have been the most revealing and vibrant in over a decade. The decimation of the Conservatives via roll calls of their absent policies, mud maps on their failure to form ETS or climate change ideals as Malcolm sits like a mute through the verbal strafing captures a government going gang busters and an Opposition leaving the floor in anger, huff and droves – unable to cope. And there sits the MP for Higgins smirking about the mess he’s helped create. Steve Fielding as light relief cements the dire straits this parliament is in.
@Tom McLoughlin. To be fair The Nats and Greens have the only coherent policies on an ETS.
Furthermore the Nats represent country towns and their mineworkers a million times better than the ALP.
Going to Copenhagen unilaterally compromising the Oz economy is stupid not least because it would not help slow the rise in global CO2 atmospheric concentrations one iota.
And that, assumes a conviction that slowing or leveling the rise would make a positive difference and before that assuming a rise is actually ‘bad’ and that assumes believing in the IPCC hook, line and sinker even if you could allow the IPCC as a body of open-minded scientists and not politically infected quasi-scientific body.
Moreover it seems highly likely that there will be no global agreement after Copenhagen in the present circumstances which makes Rudd’s plan even more stupid if that were possible but unfortunately it seems it is………
Att Mr Turnbull,
Waiting for ETS, waiting much longer for more sensible language from you or your over-heated speech-writers.
I am a great lover of simple English, simple, un-affected English. I am also a rather detached observer of the Australian political scene. Recently I have developed a conviction that you can never achieve the office you seek because you don’t grasp the consequences, for yourself, of using lush and extreme language.
If you resort so frequently to the fervid language of penny dreadfuls, you will yourself in turn, be seen as somehow embodying the essence of penny-dreadfuls. Mud chucking will have a remarkable effect. It will come back to you. “…sacrifice on the altar of Mr Rudd’s vanity..” Oh dear! Isn’t that a trifle over-heated? It really does more to make you sound like a menopausal drama queen, than a credible alternative PM. It certainly suggests that you have little to offer other than cliches.
But you are not alone. Does Mr Hockey not realize that his serial belligerence simply portrays him as a would-be playground bully to anyone and everyone who loathes bluster, noise and grandstanding? Sound and fury signifying - well it seems to me - signifying only sound and fury, but nothing more substantial.
So many of your colleagues from the previous government failed to grasp that they were seen as blustering and arrogant. I find it truly sad that the lesson so clearly conveyed by the results of the last election has not yet been grasped.
If you really want us to believe that it might be sensible to wait for a better ETS, please give some thought to the notion that you will have to sound both sensible and credible, and perhaps even have some specific realistic policies in place.
Ransack the desks of your speech writers and purge all those with a secret stash of bodice-rippers, get a grip on plain English, and perhaps we might listen.
The quote from Harry Evans should have read:
“It’s not justiciable at that stage, although it would be down the track once bills are passed in a joint sitting.”
Either my spellchecker or Crikey HQ had changed justiciable to “justifiable”. Thanks to Harry for pointing that out.