OK, so they kissed.
Photographers snapped it, headline writers revelled in it (“Sealed With A …”) and rival broadcasters collectively howled at the parliamentary feed as it cut away from Kevin Rudd and Prime Minister Julia Gillard embracing over the successful passage of the carbon tax through the House of Representatives to instead capture footage of Christopher Pyne hyperventilating from glee at the spectacle of said kiss.
Yes, in the context of their relationship, that embrace is quite momentous, considering the two can’t usually manage to look each other in the eye.
But not quite as momentous as, say, passage of the actual Clean Energy legislation.
We are staring down the barrel of a price on carbon in this country.
It’s a done deal in the Senate, all of which means that after years of political dithering too tiresome to repeat here, a minority government has delivered on a carbon price — a plan once floated to the public (albeit in a desperate attempt to reclaim office once again) by one John Winston Howard.
His self-declared love child has promised to repeal the carbon tax in government … made a “pledge in blood” in fact.
This is an unqualified victory for the Greens. After being locked out of negotiations the first time around, and slammed by both sides of politics in the process, after enduring all manner of public insults from the government they’re working hand-in-hand with while privately securing important new initiatives such as the independent Climate Change Authority and after watching a government claim all the glory despite their previous efforts at cocking it up, the Greens are now entitled to crow a little.
So take a moment, people.
And look up. The sky has not yet fallen in.
“” The sky has not yet fallen in.””
Exactly.
So now you are having another go at telling us how wonderful the Greens are? Well, get it right! Without the agreement and hard work from the LABOR government, today would not have happened. Why? Because if the Greens had not supported the Labor party in forming a government last year, two things would probably have eventuated: 1) The Greens would have got absolutely nothing from the Coalition on climate change, and 2) If the Greens had backed Abbott, they would have faced an immediate election and probably lost what little representation they had just won.
What you and others seem unable to grasp is that Labor has paid a very heavy price (if the polls are correct) for their decision to go ahead with carbon pricing, which they have had as their policy for many years. For the Greens to say now that it is all their own work is positively insulting. They have paid no price for attaching themselves to the coat-tails of Labor, which is grossly unfair. If anything, I believe that Labor and the Independents have modified the demands of the Greens so that this legislation has a chance of being accepted by the electorate further down the track. Their extreme demands were never going anywhere.
I congratulate the Labor government and the Independents who supported them, and am happy to concede that the Greens seem in the end to have come to their collective senses during the long negotiations over the carbon pricing deal.
Meantime, Abbott continues to pour out his endless bile, all through Question Time. Sadly, a significant number of like-minded bullies in the public galleries mouthed-off, brought proceedings to a halt on at least three occasions and had to be removed by the ushers.
A poisonous environment engendered by a man without a policy, Tony Abbott.
A good day … bit ugly getting there … probably not as good as it will have to be … but a good day for all of that.
Now we just need something similar about refugees and Labor might start winning back some support.
Oddly, the Caterwauling Catamite wasn’t at its mike this morning, was it down in Canberra inciting the incontinents that make up the majority of its audience (aka god’s waiting room – those funeral plans & incontinence pants don’t sell themselves)?
What is it with the Right and intolerance of Democracy? Just can’t get its tiny born-to-rule mentality around the fact that we had an election and the party controlling the floor of the House of Reps IS the government. Interesting that they rail at the concept of a coalition government of non-tories when the rightards are officially known as the Coaltion – how many times in the last couple ofd decades has the rump Nats tail wagged the tory dog – Black Jack McEwen anyone with long memories? No Free Trade when he was around.