So how come an ETS was OK under John Howard? Ask the oldies
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What’s happening in the Liberal Party is an attempted right-wing putsch by people — politicians, party officials and party members — who strangely found an ETS much easier to live with when the Liberal Party was ruled by the conservative John Howard. Older people, who think the certainties of the Howard years can be magically restored. Several commentators have suggested Malcolm Turnbull has suffered the same fate as Meg Lees (albeit rather more quickly than the demise of the Senate Schoolma’am, which took months). But there’s one crucial difference. Turnbull is implementing the policy the Coalition took to the last election, the one to which John Howard committed his Coalition, not just his party, but his Coalition, and not via some sneaky process, but publicly, and in the joint partyroom, and through Cabinet. And Kevin Rudd’s CPRS, with its generous handouts to big polluters and its ineffectiveness in actually reducing carbon emissions, is as near as dammit to what John Howard would have lumbered us with. So where was the Liberal membership when all that was going on? Weren’t they paying attention when John Howard shook Peter Shergold’s hand and thanked him for his report, or when Howard eagerly declared at his debate with Kevin Rudd that he would be introducing “the world’s most comprehensive emissions trading scheme”? Why weren’t they whipped into a frenzy by Alan Jones three years ago? And where were Nick Minchin and Tony Abbott? Liberal Party members might have had an excuse for not paying attention, but Minchin and Abbott were right there in the Cabinet room. In fact, until about five minutes ago, Abbott was all for passing the CPRS. Perhaps Turnbull’s strategy is to wait a day or two, by which time Abbott will have changed his mind yet again and backed the CPRS deal. And for that matter, where were Minchin and Abbott on Wednesday, at 1pm, when Turnbull invited his party to vote on a leadership spill? Abbott said at his press conference yesterday, where he was more insipid and uninspiring than Kevin Andrews the day before, that he was “too shellshocked” by the week’s events to act earlier. ‘Shellshocked.’ Hell, Peter Costello never even used that excuse. What in fact happened was that the conservatives were so staggeringly inept that their plan to knock off their leader never got out of the starting blocks because Turnbull played the oldest trick in the book, bringing on the spill before they were ready. Now Tony Abbott is hoping that, with a few more days to get the numbers together, they can succeed where this week they so miserably failed. But this week they wouldn’t have faced Joe Hockey, who will almost certainly step up if Turnbull resigns next week. Sorry Tony, this week was your shot, mate, and, ‘shellshocked’ or not, you blew it. This is in two ways a generational battle for the Liberal Party. The Liberal base, as they say in Adland, ‘skews old;. Really old. The Liberal base is essentially small businessmen and woman and a blue-rinse tribe of over-50 — often over-60 — wealthy suburbanites and self-funded retirees. It’s no wonder that the conspiracy theories of Alan Jones, the Dan Brown of Australian radio, have sent many of them into a frenzy — it’s the same geriatric audience as the Liberal Party. They are the ones who have assailed Liberal Party phones, fax machines and email in-boxes this week. And they are people who don’t believe in climate change and won’t live to see its more substantial effects even if they do. They are necessary but not sufficient for the conservative side of politics to be competitive electorally. Nowhere near sufficient. An electoral strategy to appeal to the base will achieve just that — a base vote. It’s also a generational battle within Parliamentary ranks. Both sides have their older and younger members. Wilson Tuckey might be 74 but Petro Georgiou is 62. For every Simon Birmingham (35, disgustingly young) there’s a Matthias Cormann, 39. But the conservatives and denialists have an average age of 54, whereas the moderates and advocates of climate change action average just under 46. It’s a generational split that mirrors that of the community itself, in which climate change denialism tends to be the fetish of older people. The conservatives are also led by the Howard stalwarts, Abbott and Minchin and Abetz. The Liberals could have avoided this immensely damaging split, and relatively easily. John Howard read the electoral signs and began moving belatedly on climate change in his last term. If he had moved more quickly, and legislated an ETS using his personal dominance of the party to keep the denialists at bay, Australia would have an ETS much like the one it will end up with from Labor, without the Liberal Party having torn itself apart and consumed two leaders and counting over it. Howard was an enormously successful leader. He gave the party four terms in Government, a record only bettered by Menzies. But it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Liberals are now reaping what he sowed through all those years of refusing to accept climate change. |
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17 Comments
“Why weren’t they whipped into a frenzy by Alan Jones three years ago?” - Simple. Howard and Jones were “Bestest Friends” - you could never say that about Turnbull and Jones.
Howard, His legacy will last and his conservative luddites will be paying the price of their ignorance for many decades to come. Should be entertaining and great a research topic, (the end conservatism) natural selection, evolution in action.
Pleeeease get a sub to check the random inserted spaces in the text. They are particularly distracting.
In comparing the undermining of Malcolm Turnbull to that of Meg Lees, Bernard Keene got one thing wrong: there was not the crucial difference he is at pains to point out.
During the 1998 federal election, Meg Lees clearly stated to the National Press Club that the Democrats would work with whichever party was elected to make their taxation package better. The party’s balloted taxation policy, which was counted and the results thereof released during the election campaign clearly stated that “the indirect tax system shall be restructured to allow for tax to be levied on the provision of services as well as on the production of goods”. So Meg Lees was upholding party policy and keeping a promise.
So there is a direct comparison between the two.
Fair enough that some people do not like paying tax, but the history should not be reinvented.
Dear Sandra
So Meg Lees was upholding party policy and keeping a promise.
I’ve always been of the mind that by campaigning on we will never vote for a GST on books and then voting for a GST including books the Democrats broke a promise and ensured their downfall. I am not disputing outright as I cannot find anything form the Dems from that election. Nothing.
Sandra Kanck
You stated: ‘History should not be reinvented’ . But it should be taught at school. Then, Australians would know that prior to the WWI they did not have to pay taxes. The taxes were introduced just because of the war. It was 1% then.
The whole climate change issue should not be about taxes. It should be about implementing modern technologies and helping environment to sustain. How much taxes do you need for that?
At the moment, it’s all talks about ‘something big’, never mind the details.
Thankyou Bernard….finally someone has “stated the bleeding obvious”…which reveals the debate has little to do with policy….its about power….albeit within a self absorbed opposition.
There is a bit of unreality about this theoretical assertion - Howard like Bush was never committed to climate science. He was very good at getting his policy settings confusingly in place. Happy to support Kyoto but not ratify it domestically. Happy to attend international meetings on same but run interference. A cunning snake is how I would put it. Happy to engage on anything and then poison it.
I think his conservative voter base well understood his value set which was very much Exclusive Brethren over The Green party. Sacrificing irreplaceable ancient forest in a country mostly brown desert gives you the mark of the man. So any policy out of Shergold was surely a grudging vulnerable creature for window dressing.
My guess the Howardistas still in parliament well understood that gamesmanship by JH, and know Howard himself would wait till after Copenhagen, just as Rudd waited over a year himself, only to weave in another $7 billion in compo to polluters in a “clunky” regime full of “churn”.
Notice Greg Combet referred earlier this week in parliament to “green groups wanting this CPRS” but failing to name them? Because only that day or before, the Australian Conservation Foundation announced their outright rejection of the Govt package:
As per this Greens Media release, quote:
” Welcome back ACF
Senator Christine Milne - Wed, 25/11/2009 - 11:37
The Greens today warmly welcomed the Australian Conservation Foundation’s return to the mainstream of the environment movement in opposing the Rudd Government’s failure of an emissions trading scheme.
“Welcome back to a position of environmental credibility, ACF,” Australian Greens Deputy Leader, Senator Christine Milne said.
“The ACF was always in an extremely uncomfortable position supporting what its staff and members knew was a bill that would lock in climate failure.
“It is clear, as Don Henry has said today, that this bill, if passed in its current form, will hold back the vital and positive transformation to a clean economy.
“It is very heartening to see the ACF standing up for the position it knew all along was right, and returning to its place in the mainstream of the environment movement in Australia.”
The reason the rabid right won’t countenance a CPRS under Macom and would under Howard is simple. They know Malcom believes in climate change and the need to do something about it. He would actually create real change whereas they know that Howard didn’t believe a word of it and would do nothing.
They also hate Malcom because he is smarter than them and had an easy ride into the job.
Why? Because as Cory Bernardi (Lateline last night) and others have so succinctly put it, this is another chance for Rudd to shine again on the world stage, and they don’t like that - it must be stopped.
After the way Howard took them all so willingly to the moral abyss, the world could go to hell in hand-cart for all they care if it meant depriving a bloke with so much more popular support than they could ever dream, of a chance to do something constructive, to be known better, internationally, than for taking his people to an unsound, immoral war, appeasing an underachiever and waging an election on xenophobia.
“Liberals are now reaping what he sowed through all those years of refusing to accept climate change.” I would suggest that the Rodent’s theme was to reject ALL change, a society in aspic, to mimick his sepia tinted view of the 50s.
As with societies/systems/environments (colonialism/early advantage eg Viking long boats 300 years beyond their use-by date/euro landscapes -there isn’t a wild tree/blade of grass from Offa’s Dyke to the Danube) when natural change is halted by force majeur, when the overwhelming force/order is removed all the change comes arushing.
Good riddance.
Dr Harvey M Tarvydas
BK
You have identified ‘speed of demolition’ as the main difference between the ‘our leader-cide’ experience of Meg Lees and Malcolm Turnbull.
The nature of the ‘band’ explains this ‘speed’ factor.
The democrats were in general decent folk while maybe the liberals have human face masks disguising the jugular designed wolf dentition (maybe vampire).
Also I feel that the psychologists and psychiatrists of this land will be quite unable to explain the mental goings on in this crowd in denial of confronting a new condition ‘Howard methods’ induced mental illness of team members.
While we go on about pollies practicing ‘denial ‘psychology’ in the face of science that they can’t really understand beyond the ‘common sense’ of it, the medical profession practices ‘denial ‘psychology’ in the face of science that they are expected to really understand at the cost of lots and lots of lives and much human suffering. I won’t go into the details here but to know the details will induce serious disbelief in our community processes.
So normal human behaviour is a bizarre concept and it is easier to live in a world defined by convenient precepts than facing reality.
Our ‘psychology’ (which wrongly we believe we control) decides and controls these issues for us so a little bit of ‘pre-trained’ mental anomaly (illness) can have influence for a long time.
Robert Garnett comment explains some of this.
The Queen’s speech (this Morning Aus time) will have a dramatic effect on many liberals and may powerfully help republican Malcolm T.
The Queen of Australia said “global warming is not a new problem”.
I reminded Crikey that President JFKennedy brought it on in his 1961 inaugural presidential speech together with the moon for America inspiration.
Bernard, may I request, that you go easy on the senior citizens in future, please? I’m not ‘geriatric’ even though I’m of mature aged years, and i’m committed to the need to adopt strategies to combat further damage via climate change. I care very deeply for the world that I will leave for my grand kids - I’d like it to be an improvement on its state when I was born - near the end of WW2!
Everyone knew(who knew what Howard was like anyway) that his last minute ‘awareness’ was not genuine - he only wanted to win the next election. I’d go as far as to suggest, that with his core and non-core promises, it would’ve fallen into the ‘non-core’ after the election. It was rarely referred to as I recall - it was smoke and mirrors only - that’s why Jones & Co didn’t plug it! We’re not that stupid! Well, I’m not anyway! I can be conned once, even twice perhaps, but I’m not stupid or brain dead!
We all know what this is about. It’s an excuse for a struggle between the conservatives and others. They are beyond despicable, to use something as serious as this, to abandon the future of 21 million people, plus the rest of the world, for their selfish, insular and egotistical personal goals. They disgust me.
Turnbull has stated this afternoon, that Hockey is supporting him and the CPRS- so what happens now? Who will they put up? Abbott, Andrews or ???Peter Costello must be kicking himself(I have a laugh?) - I think, ‘serves you right’? Those who didn’t have the guts to tell Howard to go, even when their own polling was telling them they’d lose, won’t have the guts to break away and create a conservative party - they’re weak, greedy and a disgrace, with no loyalty to us or the country!
A global waste (call it emissions or garbage or nuclear waste) trading system makes no sense to my brain. “Cap and trade” gets bargained into a “cap in hand” system and surveillance turns into “fudge the numbers”. If we really don’t want waste, why do we want to make it valuable?
So when we say goodbye to the ETS, can we please do something positivel, less uncorruption-prone and more economically efficient - let consumers pay for waste they produce.
Presuming you anti ETS and AGW nuts are believers in capitalism, which translates into user pays. How do you propose a capitalist system introduce the cost of pollution and the damage to our environment? Our free ride on the finite fossil fuel systems of this tiny planet is ending. Why is it necessary for any positive change in human thinking needs to be preceded with human suffering. Just read a bit of our short human history if you don’t believe that. Why you are conservatives so dumb and need a snack on the back of the head with a 4 by 2 to change your ignorant thinking that change is bad. Why should so many people suffer needlessly because of the ignorant selfish greed of a minority?
As long as the people of the planet are unable to understand and debate issues, and the media continues to fuel that belief, no rational policy will ever get traction over politics of spin and personal attack.
@Ian, fine, I’m prepared to pay for waste I produce - when I can throw the cr*p packaging in the store before I go through the checkout…