Brendan Nelson is having the week off, meaning Malcolm Turnbull and Greg Hunt will be able to prepare the Coalition’s response to Wednesday’s emissions trading scheme Green Paper undistracted by the sort of gymnastic display put on by their leader last week.
We should really have seen Friday’s final backflip coming. After spending the week at odds with his own leadership team and happily making the Coalition’s position on climate change the issue, the only way Nelson could’ve topped that was by somersaulting back to where he started from a week before. Which he promptly did. So now the official position is an ETS by no later than 2012, unconditional on anyone else doing anything. Despite Nelson’s own column in The Australian on Friday morning arguing quite the opposite.
That Turnbull-Hunt-Nelson phone call on Friday morning must’ve been a ripper.
This is inexplicable, ludicrous stuff, the most extraordinary effort from an Opposition Leader on a major issue for years. And the amazing part, the part that you have to keep repeating to yourself because it’s so absurd, is that it was all entirely self-inflicted. Labor didn’t do it. Malcolm Turnbull didn’t do it. Brendan Nelson did it. It was bad enough that Nelson wanted to retreat on climate change – but at least that’s totally defensible from a point of view of sheer political bloodymindedness, and because that’s where Nelson’s strength in the partyroom lies. But to not even have the courage to stick to that position makes him look weak. Not just politically weak, but intellectually weak.
Not a single one of Nelson’s colleagues will be less than deeply unhappy with his effort last week. Moderates will suspect Nelson’s a climate change denier or at least willing to play populist politics with the most important issue facing the planet. Conservatives will be unhappy that, having flirted with their more sceptical position, he abruptly and publicly retreated. Those who just want a competent leader will be shaking their heads in disbelief.
Nelson’s flirtation with a retreat on an ETS appears to have been orchestrated at least part by the climate change holdouts at Concept Economics. Concept is run by Henry Ergas and Brian Fisher, and senior Howard Government staffers Peter Conran and John Kunkel are also there. According to Lenore Taylor, Nelson met Warwick McKibbin, who is urging Australia go it alone with a special McKibbin trading model, with Conran and Kunkel last week. Fisher, previously the greenhouse mafia’s go-to bureaucrat when head of ABARE, last week attacked the Garnaut Report and said we should wait a decade for an international agreement on addressing climate said. Ergas has previously and again today argued a hardline “let the planet cook” approach that favours adaptation to climate change over mitigation.
With Nelson out of the equation for this week, Hunt and Turnbull can get on with putting a more moderate position on an ETS which is similar to the Government’s, but has sufficient points of difference to enable the Opposition to exploit issues such as petrol prices. And they will be able to shift attention back to where it should be – on the Government’s proposal. That might put some more pressure on Penny Wong, who so far has been a poor salesperson for emissions trading.
The best thing that Nelson can do from here on is stay on holiday. He has lost credibility on this issue and looks politically incompetent We’re back to days earlier this year when he was so amateurish he was damaging the Liberal brand. It’s time for Turnbull to step up.
I thought they called it ‘Gardening Leave’ . . .
It’s a good thing you’re objective about Brendan Nelson and climate change or you could be mistaken for a religous hysterical ranter. How do you deal with things you don’t agree with? You shouldn’t hold back the way you do – come on, we all really want to know what you think rather than reporting both sides of the climate change debate the way you do, oh .. sorry, you don’t. So it’s just your personal thoughts here and any gossip you can dream up ..?
You must be innumerate and economically illiterate not to understand the merit of Henry Ergas’s arguments put in at least two articles in The Australian, the latest (14/7) cogent in its criticisms of the Garnaut reports weaknesses and omissions.
By the way, if you can see why it might be important that infra red absorption could be logarithmic rather than linear, have a look at http://brneurosci.org/co2.html and search for “logarithmic”. Consider the possibility that any more CO2 in the atmosphere mightn’t absorb much more heat. Not that it is part of Henry Ergas’s arguments, which don’t depend in any way on the CO2 threat not being as serious as the IPCC and Garnaut represent it. (Ergas points out however that Garnaut’s figures for the damage done to our economy if not ETS was set up wouldn’t be very great and don’t justify any great sacrifices now).
Politicians talk, reporters report the talk and add alot of their own, including me. Personally I think the whole thing is OVER and the government can’t do anything to stop the train wreck. Now they want to be SEEN taking action. Especially politicians who have spent their whole working lives promoting the 20C endless growth economy and taking all those juicy donations along the way. I mean who do these folks think they are kidding? Talk about credibility gap. It’s all a bit rich if you ask me. I’ve been working on a case involving a water bottling company Coca Cola who have been given an increase from 26ML/YR to 66ML/YR extraction of groundwater in 2005 at Peats Ridge while farmers nearby making much smaller applications for water to grow food near the city (less greenhouse emissions) are knocked back. The difference? About $2M in political donations to the Carr-Iemma Govt.
Bernard – your comments are spot on about Brendan Nelson’s past week but what was with the ABC’s so called Political Reporter Chris Uhlmann yesterday. When asked on Insiders about Nelson’s performance he asked ‘to pass’ on commenting!! What do you make of that.
I’m not averse to Penny Wong’s performance so far. I like her measured, non-frightening style of speaking. I want a very measured, calm person in control of this stuff and not the ramrod approach of Christine Milne.