Guest essay by Eric Worrall
With the growing likelihood of an open party revolt and a leadership challenge, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has been forced into a humiliating backdown over his efforts to enshrine Australia’s Paris Agreement pledges into legislation.
Turnbull backflips on emissions as Dutton challenge emerges
by Malcolm Farr and Charis Chang
18th Aug 2018 4:43 AMAN INTERNAL coalition uprising has forced Malcolm Turnbull to dump plans to legislate cuts in carbon emissions.
The Prime Minister is now planning to control emissions by regulation instead – an option he condemned only days ago.A 26 per cent reduction target was established by the 2015 Paris Agreement and settled when Tony Abbott was Prime Mimister. It is an integral part of Mr Turnbull’s National Energy Guarantee.
Mr Turnbull now looks to be dumping the target from his energy policy as he faces the prospect of a rebellion in the House of Representatives and running battles in the Senate.
…
“Labor wants to have it done by regulation so that the Parliament would not have a voice,” Mr Turnbull said on Tuesday. “Now, we believe in democracy.
“We believe the Parliament should have a say in this and so if we legislate that, then a subsequent government – whether it’s of our side of politics or the other – would have to persuade both houses of parliament to make any change to it, and that is a great security.”
Senior ministers Friday rallied to support Mr Turnbull’s leadership after suggestion former Prime Minister was supporting a challenge.
“Anyone who listens to Tony Abbott has rocks in his head,” said one minister.
However, the NEG policy, strongly supported by business and industry, was looking like a victim of the unrest.
Leadership rumours swirled on Friday with 2GB Ray Hadley saying there will “100 per cent” be a move against the PM in the next two weeks.
…
Malcolm Turnbull’s “Dog Pooh Yoghurt” green energy policy, which attempts to enshrine the position of renewables in Australia’s energy mix, has gone down like a lead balloon with the right wing of the Liberal Party (Australian Conservatives). Turnbull’s position has not been helped by a long string of news polls indicating his government will lose when he calls an election.
We don’t know if we shall get Tony Abbott back – but at least we shall get rid of Malcolm Turnbull, either in the next few weeks, or after he loses the next election.
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The sooner fake egoist Turnbull is gone, the better for Australia.
The climate system is easier to understand than aussie politics.
Replace the word politics with pantomime and you will have a better understanding.
I do hope Australia brings back Abbott. It will bring back the ” great” in my eyes for Australia .
It matters not what the LNP do and who they chose as leader, the LNP are history. The coming federal election will see the an ALP and Green coalition that will finally ruin Australia.
Even after this disaster week for the Libs the best polls still say 35% Labour, Greens 13% which isn’t going to give them anywhere near enough control of the senate. Then there is the crossover with the existing senate.
The government whoever forms it will be working with the cross bench same as the current one and they won’t be able to get anything to radical passed.
Thanks. That’s the only summary that made any sense in any of these comments.
One thing about polls you can rely on is that they are usually wrong. Australians vote Govn’t out. So in this term of Govn’t we have had Turnbull oust Abbott and now Dutton challenged, and failed, to oust Turnbull. It’s a joke!
Ah ..but the polls are then turned into a ‘two party shootout’ because of the preference voting. Labour plus its allies give a consistent lead over Liberals and their allies.
Everyone is making a killing (except the consumer).
Consultants, brokers, retailers, wholesalers . . .
The electricity industry is awash with money in Australia and Victoria in particular.
From lowly clerk to CEO they’re all on big money and opportunism is rampant particularly in electricity broking and renewables.
It’s the benchmark of commercial disasters squarely the fault of Government (State & Federal).
An industry legislated from Government monopoly into ‘commercial oligarchy’.
The soft corruption, greed and stupidity knows no bounds.
Our factory in Alabama pays US 4c/kW.h and in Australia AU 23c/kW.h.
We know in ten years and likely twenty the electricity market will not have changed much.
The vested interests are now so powerful that Australia is locked into expensive electricity for the foreseeable future.
Electricity intensive manufacturing in Australia is no longer viable.
.
update:
Malcolm Turnbull shelves emissions reduction target as leadership speculation mounts
https://theconversation.com/malcolm-turnbull-shelves-emissions-reduction-target-as-leadership-speculation-mounts-101811
Welcome breaking news!
Prices will stabilise but won’t drop to commercially realistic levels until there’s a revolt against the burgeoning UN-driven socialist takeover of our nation.
Old nuclear generators in the USA and old coal generators in Australia produce electricity for about 1c/kW.h. In the best regions of the USA, nuclear electricity is marked up an average of 300% to retail and in Australia coal electricity is marked up (margins and levies) an average of 2,000% to retail with large segments of the market an astounding 3,500%.
Such mark-ups are prima facie criminal and may constitute profiteering; however, in many cases there is middleman after middleman involved.
The general public don’t know the truth!
The Australian media are going ballistic with Turnbull dropping emissions targets. It’s the only thing he has done right in his term as PM. Australia is doomed to get another ALP/Green coalition.
Australia’s ACCC recently released the ultimate YES MINISTER inquiry into electricity.
The inquiry looks into all secondary aspects but deliberately avoids the main issue . . .
Turnbull Gov to ACC – –
1. Don’t investigate or disclose the cost of generation by renewables.
2. Don’t investigate or disclose the cost of generation by long established coal.
3. Under no circumstances compare the two fiscally.
The ACCC Retail Electricity Pricing Inquiry (Final Report, June 2018) is a farce beyond farces and will do nothing to reduce prices.
But the industry already knew that.
Consumers lied to again and again!
Turnbull did a similar thing in 2009
Resigned as leader, putting his Climate dogma first
“Mr Turnbull lost the Liberal Party leadership in late 2009 over his decision to support the Rudd government’s carbon pricing scheme”
He then made a big climate speech
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-07-22/turnbull-climate-speech/2805536
Best wishes for a successful restoration.
New Zealand is in desperate need of the same.
You have to already be famous (Arnold) or have a long track record of flaky ideas (Jerry) to play the game of climate chaos. Lesser political figures need to know the limits of climate scare as a safe topic.
Australia seems to have the same Deep State problem the USA has. When it cannot get policies properly debated and created by duly elected representatives of the people (well supposedly anyway), they let the tyranny of the technocrats take charge.
Having worked with elected officials much of my professional career I was always amazed when they continually deferred to the technocrats, not just for advice on a technical issue, but deferring actually policy making details to the technocrats. Usually our state technocrats would listen to the federal technocrats more than they listened to the wishes of our elected officials.
The political pantomime in Australia continues. I wonder when these people are going to do the jobs we pay them to do?
I suggest every supporter of Tony Abbott and his climate sceptic cohort read this. It is a very good analysis of why he is wrong and Turnbull right.
Not a chance of the dunce Abbott getting back into power. He was a complete disaster: http://mankindsdegradationofplanetearth.com/2018/08/21/why-not-wreck-the-planet-it-might-get-you-elected-cnn/
Given a choice, people will not vote for climate mitigation policies. Witness Trump vs Hillary, Orban in Hungary, Abbott vs Rudd in 2013. Abbott would have won in 2010, but technically there was no choice: Gillard promised there’d be no carbon tax under her govt.
Democracy works, and doesn’t give a rat’s for panic-stricken climate alarmists.
Ivan it may not have come to your notice that CO2 doesn’t cause global warming. Tony Abbott as Foreign Minister will tell world leaders the same and Dutton will pull us out of Paris.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-21/peter-dutton-7-votes-short-of-being-prime-minister/10139108
Abbott was a disaster? And Turnbull hasn’t been?