Rudd the weathervane

Twisting in the wind...

The Australian’s Cut & Paste section exposes Rudd’s blatant hypocrisy by helpfully collecting together all of Kevin Rudd’s previous spin on climate change into one handy cut-out-and-keep guide for your wallet:

As Kevin Rudd once said, there are only two stark choices: action or inaction

Monday, November 4, 2006 on The 7:30 Report:

Kerry O’Brien: Kevin Rudd , what is the one thing more, than anything else, that will define your leadership?

Rudd : We’ll have a clear alternative on climate change.

Kevin Rudd and Climate Change Minister Penny Wong at the UN, New York, September 23 last year:

EVERY time a nation delays, every time a nation puts up its hand and says, “It’s all too hard”, it’s a further excuse to put off the measures we need to take to deal with the challenges for climate change for Australia.

The PM on November 6 last year, at the Lowy Institute in Sydney:

WHEN you strip away all the political rhetoric, all the political excuses, there are two stark choices: action or inaction. We choose action, and we do so because Australia’s fundamental economic and environmental interests lie in action. Action now. Not action delayed. Now the Liberals and Nationals have said wait for Copenhagen and for President [Barack] Obama’s scheme.What absolute political cowardice. What an absolute failure of leadership. What an absolute failure of logic.

The PM in Copenhagen on December 17 last year:

THE time has come for a grand bargain between the past and the future. Each and every one of us here will be judged as individuals. For what we say. For what we do. And for what we fail to do. Words without deeds are a dead letter. There have been millions of words spoken here, but as one of our colleagues said, it is time to stop talking and start working.

Rudd yesterday:

The rest of the world has been slow to act, or slower to act on appropriate action on international climate change. The real deadline facing us is the expiration of the current Kyoto commitment period, which concludes at the end of 2012.

Rudd is just a political weathervane, blowing this way and that, following the winds of public opinion, and all the time having no genuine policy convictions whatsoever. More spin than a launderette.

Read it here.