Opposition on road to oblivion

Too green for me

Thanks to Malcolm Turnbull’s “I’m greener than you” policy on the ETS, the Opposition is now in the unenviable position of having a climate change policy at odds with much of the party room, and at odds with an ever growing sector of the electorate. No party, except the Nationals, is providing any kind of scrutiny for the government’s destructive ETS, since Turnbull just wants to wave it through. Paul Kelly analyses the Opposition’s fix:

The Nationals spiritual leader, Barnaby Joyce, recently told this column: “I can tell you the mood is changing. They hate this policy [the ETS]. They just hate it. A new tax on ironing, a new tax on watching television, a new tax on vacuuming. If you go to the supermarket Kevin will be in the shopping trolley with you.”

The full conservative ideological campaign, however, is unlikely to constitute a national majority against Rudd.

But how could Turnbull wage such a campaign with credibility? He believes in climate change, an ETS and early Australian action. In truth, Turnbull and Rudd are not far apart on the issue, with their disagreement being over details, not ideology.

The risk is that the difficulty of winning global agreement and the problems of designing an effective scheme become a false trail for the Coalition. Politics is about discerning the difference between tactics and strategy, knowing when to fight and when to pass. The more Coalition sceptics take heart and contemplate an ideological battle, the more they risk an historic blunder.

Rudd’s message is manifest: he will fight on climate change as an ideological issue. The Minchin wing of the Liberal Party and the Nationals will join this contest. But this is the stance of neither Turnbull nor Joe Hockey, who want the bill passed and removed from the agenda.

Actually, I think that an ideological campaign is the only option for the Opposition – it’s just that Turnbull can’t do it. Rudd has made this an ideological and moral issue so it has to be fought on those grounds. As has been said before, bring on the election, and fight it on climate change.

Read it here.

Related: Terry McCrann exposes the true cost of the ETS:

THE devastating consequences for Australia of Kevin Rudd’s climate change policy were exposed in an Institute of Public Affairs conference yesterday.

What was even more disturbing than the chilling evidence of the damage that would be done to Australia, was the fact that we had to rely on a private think tank to provide a forum for this sort of analysis of the economic consequences.

Surely Treasury should have, indeed would have done something exactly like this, as a matter of course?

Don’t bet on it.

Read it here.