From Reuters Point Carbon:
Australia axes ministerial role for climate change
The new Australian Cabinet will be the first in six years to not have a ministerial role for climate change issues, merging instead global warming with the wider environment portfolio.
Announcing his Cabinet on Monday, incoming Prime Minister Tony Abbott appointed Greg Hunt, the Liberal-National Coalition’s spokesman on climate change issues since 2009, as the new Minister for the Environment.
“(Hunt) will have responsibility for the abolition of the carbon tax, implementation of the Coalition’s Direct Action plan, the establishment of the Green Army and the creation of a one-stop-shop for environmental approvals,” Abbott said in a statement.
Hunt, 47 and a member of parliament since 2001, has had the main responsibility of developing and promoting the Direct Action Plan, the Coalition policy to reach the national target of reducing Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions 5 percent below 2000 levels by 2020.
Under the plan, the new government will set up a fund to buy emission cuts from those companies that pledge to achieve them at the lowest cost.
“The change signals that as expected, the Abbott government will not give climate change the same weight as the previous government,” said Frank Jotzo, deputy director of Australia National University’s Climate Change Institute.
“The environment ministry traditionally holds less sway in cabinet than many others, and the integration of the climate policy bureaucracy into the Environment department will also tend to diminish its role,” he said by email.
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Read the full story here
In related news, I expect the laughable Tim Flannery will be out of a job, but I also expect he’ll land at some NGO like Greenpeace or WWF, since these organizations have money to burn and embrace high paid fools that have failed elsewhere.
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Captain Fish plants a communistic figment of fevered imagination…………The Coalition in Australia is very conservative much like the Republican Party. The National (Country) Party part of the LNP alliance grew out of the hard nosed farmers who have battled with our harsh Australian climate and know well what it means to survive droughts and floods, dust storms, and plant to seasonal changes and sell their products in capricious world markets. Very pragmatic and sensible people who don’t buy the left wing garbage that sometimes captures the urban environments of soft city dwellers seduced by the something for nothing social orders of high spending Labor governments, propped up by the regulators (Green Left wing) who would destroy industry rather than work with it to grow a vibrant economy.
The Liberal National coalition Party works with nature and with business and have pledged to grow the economy, remove the strangling red tape of petty regulation, stop stupid waste and excesses by providing good governance for the people of Australia.
The voters gave them a mandate to do this with a majority in the Legislative Assembly, though qualified in the upper house (traditional house of review) where they will need to work with a stronger more right wing elected majority in the Senate to ensure the job is done.
They don’t have the absolute majority in both houses to ram through any half baked “sounds like a good idea at the time” legislation, so need to work with voters to achieve, and that is not a bad thing by Australian standards.
“Direct Action Plan”? “Green Army”??? YIKES!
When do the ‘re-education camps’ open and the pogroms begin for those that fail to see the light??!!! This does NOT sound like a major policy shift away from the AGW agenda but I’ll leave it to the OZ residents to explain how this is ‘better’. For their sake and ours, I truly hope it is!
MtK
“The end is near down under! Australia dissolves their Climate Change Ministry”
No it isn’t. At least not in the way mentioned by the article.
The climate change hubris is only a small aspect of the Agenda currently under execution.
Just read UN Agenda 21 and http://green-agenda.com for details which includes the current banking crises, mass immigration (especially from islamic countries), peak oil hubris, centralized control over all our natural assets and population reduction, their final objective.
All the real damage has been done already. The West is living on borrowed time, there is no economic recovery and the execution of the Agenda will continue, with or without the climate hubris. Besides that am not at all sure Australia is going to make a 180 on the subject.
I have to see it before I believe it.
For those who are worried, don’t be about the ‘Green army’
Ignoring climate change for the moment, the idea is for a group of paid Aussies to go around planting trees, cleaning waterways, removing pest species etc. This will have REAL environmental outcomes for us….. something that is really really needed. It will benefit Aussies for decades.
It is in no way a ‘bad’ thing. 🙂
Green Army? I have just sent my socially-isolated 20 year old son off to join it! I know the girls on the left are much more fun, but even pulling shopping trolleys out of organic sludge for the Libs has got to be a bit of a laugh..
Tony Abbott’s direct action policy, among other things, rejects carbon taxes and cap-and-trade – both of which involve penalties to drive down emissions. Instead it gives credits as positive incentives for reduced emissions. This scheme is associated with Danny Price of Frontier Economics. Our big state New South Wales had such a scheme introduced by Bob Carr who was of the Labor Party. The scheme is claimed to have worked well there. In Abbott’s hands direct action can be seen as a precautionary measure framed to have the least undesirable side effects while deflecting Green critics claiming that his government is not doing anything or enough on CAGW.
The Greens (and the ‘greens’, no cap) are currently wetting themselves over the pre-ordained fact that Abbot will be dismantling the ‘green agenda’. Good riddance. Just a peek at the billion-dollar savings being forecast are enough to fill me with relief that my tax dollars will no longer be helping to fill the ‘green trough’.
The idea of the ‘Green Army’, where otherwise almost useless resources are used to actually do some benefit to our environment instead of destroying it with windmills, or destroying our economy all in the name of limiting trace gasses, is a breath of fresh air as well.
We have a long way to go pay off the excesses of the past few years of government, but it will be worth it.
Australia has not yet changed its commitments on climate change, and the new Minister for the Environment is a warmista believer. Incoming environment minister Greg Hunt says the new Coalition government is committed to clean energy targets despite its plan to scrap several government bodies set up to tackle climate change.
His website says: he Coalition’s Climate Action, Environment and Heritage policy rests on four pillars:
– Direct Action on Climate, including the Emissions Reduction Fund, One Million Solar Roofs and the planting of 20 million trees
– Clean Land Plan, including the establishment of a Green Army, Landcare Recovery and a One-Stop-Shop for environmental approvals
– Clean Water, including the Murray-Darling Plan, a Plan for Water Security and the Reef 2050 vision
– A National Heritage Plan encompassing community heritage and national heritage icons
Alan Jones and “Lord” Monkton are nuts. My angry Grandfather likes them… he’s a bit senile though so we excuse him 🙂
The New senate members don’t take over until July 1st 2014, but when they do the minor parties, will vote for the abolition of the carbon tax. The Green Army is a good idea and should please the Greens. As far as Tim Flannery is concerned, I think you will find he will find something, although he’s not as well qualified as some in the AGW factions. The fine line here is that sustainability is a prime motive for Oz. Our soils have been degraded in some areas and the PM has said soil science is a must. The use of super phosphate fertilizer has ruined some soils, as it kills microbiology, and is a quick fix for encouraging plants to grow. Also the idea that water holding properties in some soils must be adopted. Less deep tillage and turning the stubble into the earth. Cell grazing to stop worms killing stock. Free range animals and avoid factory farming. (It’s cruel if you have been to a pig farm? Or battery egg facility.) Enough to make you revise how the meat you eat is bred and kept alive until slaughter. The problem is we have so many climate regions in Australia. You go 50 miles from the coast and the precipitation levels change a lot depending on elevation. In New England we do get more rain high up, and sometimes snow, but nearly all areas 100 miles from the coast get hoar frost and low temps at night. But on the Northern Tablelands because of the soil types, we don’t grow crops, like wheat etc., but one hundred miles down towards Tamworth and the NW slopes, they do. We grow potatoes, stone fruits, tomatoes under glass domes, fine wool and fat lambs, pigs, and cattle. We do have a lot of solar panels, but a recent wind farm was declared not viable. The winds are too strong sometimes for them. But a blind belief that AGW is reality is going, and obviously we must pay attention to sustainability and pollution.
TG. Maybe your grandfather is a wise man, and you are the fool.
Sub tropical pockets anywhere, have to be maintained by stable temps, protected and good rain. Down in Cornwall and the Scilly Islands in S W England, there are lots of sub tropical pockets. Because of the Gulf Stream warming the region. But it is still temperate overall, even in the New England region near Dorrigo, the National Park there has sub tropical spots and temperate rain forests.
I have a palm tree growing in front of my house, a cotton palm, and fan palms grow here too. A warning to gardeners. A cotton palm I bought for a ten dollar pot plant was planted out 10 years ago as it wasn’t doing well inside and it is a monster now with barbed stems. “Who planted that dam thing there, is a good saying”
Australian taxpayers also ought to be thankful that Tony Abbott warned the Clean Energy Finance Corporation before the election not to make any commitments, because he would unwind them. This was a $10 billion boondoggle for uneconomic “renewable energy” projects which readers in the US and UK should be familiar with. It is on the list of agencies to be abolished.
Paranoid fears about the Green Army are unwarranted. There is plenty of genuine environmental work, such as weed and feral pest control, revegetation, and cleaning up degraded lakes and waterways, to keep them busy. CO2 emissions will not be a priority, and it will offer jobs to people (including Aboriginal people) outside the cities where unemployment is high.
I have no illusions that this government will deliver everything everyone wants. It is simply impossible for any government to do that. But, boy, we have turned onto a new page, and it is a great relief. The tacit and overt government support for every anti-everything greenie is no longer a given.
There is plenty of genuine environmental work, such as weed and feral pest control, revegetation, and cleaning up degraded lakes and waterways, to keep them busy.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
So there’s hope for Nick Stokes then ?
“The end is near down under?” If only. New Environment Minister, Greg Hunt, is a rusted on climate catastrophist. His “Direct Action” policy is as mad and bad as the doomed carbon tax. One stupidity follows another.
Graham are you sure? There is a senator who is a skeptic lined up to be science minister. To keep the Greens pacified, one doesn’t require to appear skeptical? However, I had a email from Julie Bishop last year about the CERN report, and they knew about it it seems, but said they were dedicated in controlling Greenhouse gases. I replied, ‘They are not your worry?, etc’ but anyway, I am sure many skeptical scientists will be advising the Environment minister. But their direct action does involve planting trees, which is great for wild life corridors, but until they reach some form of maturity they have to be cared for and watered. For example, a student friend of mine, sat her Diploma of Organic Agricultural production (not certified but sustainable farming). She was given a $40,000 grant, to build more dams, provided she planted 800 native trees, which she did willingly. But she said, I just hope the rabbits and kangeroos don’t get them before they mature. If they are not protected, cattle will eat the baby trees too. Hard one.
So it is slightly less of the same. And I thought Abbot had balls. Obviously not.
bushbunny @ur momisugly September 18, 2013 at 2:11 am
Thoughtful response, bushbunny. Yes, on the face of it at least, planting trees is a good idea at any time. But surely not in the name of the fallacy and farce of climate alarmism that borders on fraud. Instead, call it environmental sustainability, pure and simple. I’m sure your student friend would be happy with that.
Even so, there are problems. In addition to the ones that you nominate, there is the real prospect that the lure of tax dollars for planting trees will tempt farmers to sacrifice essential crops for less useful trees. Parallel schemes in Europe (and to a lesser extent here), where crops were swapped for solar and wind energy, have left farmers in the lurch when subsidies were cut because of exorbitant power costs.
There’s every reason to expect that trees for crops will suffer the same fate. Wine can hardly be classified as an essential crop, so the story in The Australian to-day is not the best example, but it does indicate what’s in store, notwithstanding Hunt’s reassurances. Down the track, when the federal budget is strained no less than now, he may well sing a different tune!
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/election-2013/tax-gone-but-hunt-for-carbon-cash-not-forgotten-minister-emissions/story-fn9qr68y-1226721300567
Maybe already linked but David Suzuki has a piece in todays SMH titled “Tony Abbott will doom future generations if he ditches carbon tax”
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/tony-abbott-will-doom-future-generations-if-he-ditches-carbon-tax-20130917-2tx0j.html
I’m sure the SMH will publish a piece from a climate skeptic in the name of balanced reporting….
Give Tony Abbott the Nobel Prize for Peace!!
IMMEDIATELY!!
philincalifornia says:
September 17, 2013 at 11:01 pm
So there’s hope for Nick Stokes then ?
—————————————————————-
No.
@Mike Haseler: We Are All Australians… Does this mean you are now an illegal alien where you are, and have to apply for landed immigrant status? (and make income tax filings in two places…)
Carbon targets are goofy. China et al will drive CO2 levels up, to the great benefit of agriculture worldwide. In fact, Australia’s coal exports will help considerably in this project.
The moving finger has written on the wall; you have been weighed in the scales and you have been found wanting.
Global Warmers & Co., tuck your head between your knees and kiss your ass goodbye.
Tim Flannery gone, looking forward to the press conference.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/abbott-shuts-down-climate-commission-20130919-2u185.html
Sorry to disappoint all of the doubters:
Coalition delivers on promise to axe Climate Commission http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/policy/coalition-delivers-on-promise-to-axe-climate-commission/story-e6frg6xf-1226722787406
At least you weren’t kept hanging long.