Ministers' collective dummy spit on Senate

12 March, 2010 by

On the count of three, spit those dummies!

What a hilarious sight it was to see five Cabinet ministers (including Penny Wong holding the CPRS flag), solemnly arrayed before the media, bleating about how the nasty Coalition has blocked all their legislation. They claim that the current Senate is the most obstructionist in history, blocking 40-odd pieces of legislation and blaming it all on the Coalition.

As usual, the arrogance of the Rudd government in expecting its legislation to be just rubber stamped is breathtaking. But that’s just par for the course – and we have come to expect it. The real point is that Rudd himself is to blame – he has refused to negotiate with any of the opposition parties, be it Coalition or cross-bench. The Greens and Family first have said the same. And that refusal to negotiate has left them only one option: to block the legislation.

John Howard was in a similar position, lacking a majority in the Senate, but you didn’t see him humiliate himself by whining to the media. He negotiated, and got his policies through.

And if Rudd is really concerned about not being able to get legislation passed, then he has a solution: a double dissolution. But there’s no sign of that happening. For this is nothing more than a cheap attack on Abbott, and unfortunately for him, even the media aren’t stupid enough to fall for it.

As the saying goes, it’s time for Rudd and his cronies to STFU.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Climate change and ETS vanish from the media

8 March, 2010 by

Unfortunately, Kevin Rudd’s tactic of focussing on other issues, such as health, in order to divert attention from his climate policy, appears to be working. That, together with the Garrett insulation debacle, has ensured that the media this morning is almost bereft of any mention of climate change, or the ETS or Penny Wong. Which is a pleasant change.

But it does mean that the Coalition no longer has that huge ETS-shaped stick with which to beat the government. And that is a great pity. The Coalition should, however, continue to remind the electorate that climate change was, until a short time ago, “the greatest moral challenge of our generation” (or something), and that if Rudd had any principles (which he doesn’t), he would be focussing on getting his ETS through as soon as possible. But Rudd is political weathervane, twisting here and twisting there, helplessly following the winds of public opinion, because his only desire is to remain popular and, more importantly, remain in power. Now that the ETS is losing support, he abandons it.

However, Kevin Rudd has said that climate change will be at the “front and centre” of policy moving towards the Federal election, so it is only delaying the inevitable. The ETS will be back in the news in May as Rudd tries to force it through the Senate for the third time. And it will be back in the news in the election campaign later in the year.

Until then, it looks like climate change is off the Australian media agenda.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

More bad science from the IPCC

1 March, 2010 by

@ Compweather.com

Wrong again - click for full size

Another story on the global warming/hurricane non-link:

RESEARCH by hurricane scientists may force the UN climate panel to retract its claims that greenhouse gas emissions have caused an increase in the number of tropical storms.

The benchmark 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said an increase in cyclone-force storms since 1970 was probably caused by climate change.

It followed some of the most damaging tropical storms in history, such as Hurricane Katrina, which hit New Orleans, and Hurricane Dennis, which struck Cuba, both in 2005.

The IPCC added that the world could expect a big increase in such storms over the 21st century unless greenhouse gas emissions were controlled. The warning helped turn hurricanes — also known as cyclones or typhoons — into one of the most widely cited threats posed by global warming, with politicians including British Energy Secretary Ed Miliband and former Us vice-president Al Gore describing them as a growing threat to humanity.

The cover of some editions of Mr Gore’s latest book, Our Choice, even depicts a world beset by super-cyclones as a warning of what might happen if carbon emissions keep rising.

However, the latest research, just published in the Nature Geoscience journal, paints a very different picture.

It suggests the rise in cyclone frequency since 1995 was part of a natural cycle and that several similar previous increases have been recorded, each followed by a decline. (source)

And don’t worry, Tim Lambert’s smug-blog Deltoid will no doubt add this article to his catalogue of  “The Australian‘s War on Science”, because in Lambert’s book, the war on science is anything which doesn’t fit with his pre-conceived agenda of alarmism.

And also in the news is a worrying sign that Rudd (who is a walking moral and principle vacuum) may do a deal with the Greens to get some kind of carbon trading scheme in place:

KEVIN Rudd has raised the prospect of a deal on climate with the Greens, who want an interim carbon price to end the Senate deadlock over an emissions trading scheme.

But he is playing down the likelihood of using the impasse as a double dissolution election trigger in October, as talks continue between Climate Change Minister Penny Wong and the Greens’ Christine Milne.

“This bill of ours for the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme is in the Senate now. Penny Wong and others are working with the Greens to see what can be done,” Mr Rudd told ABC TV’s Insiders program. “This is not over yet. And we will see what action emerges from the Senate.”

To secure a Senate deal, the government would, together with the five Greens, need an additional two votes, such as independent Nick Xenophon and a Coalition senator crossing the floor.

And if any Coalition senator did so, and thereby handed the government an ETS or a carbon tax, they should be strung up with piano wire. And prize for the most blindingly obvious headline goes to the Courier Mail:

Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme could attract fraudsters

Now tell me something I didn’t know…

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , , , ,

Labor in denial as ETS fairyland fractures

24 February, 2010 by

Climate sense

Apologies for the lack of posts today – other commitments. But this one is a must read, from Paul Kelly in The Australian:

The Rudd government is stranded without any apparent game plan on its most important first-term policy (outside its response to the global financial crisis). It is rare for a national government to face this predicament in its first term. Labor seems unable to abandon its ETS yet unable to champion its ETS; it cannot tolerate the ignominy of policy retreat yet cannot declare it will take its beliefs to a double-dissolution election; it remains pledged to its ETS yet cannot fathom how to make its ETS the law of the land. Such uncertainties are understandable, yet they are dangerously debilitating for any government. In such a rapidly shifting policy and political climate, even fallback positions risk being rendered obsolete. As Ridout says, the way forward is not clear.

In the interim, Labor’s response is to launch a furious series of spins, diversions and alternatives. The list is long: it will make health the main election issue; it will be brave enough to seek a double dissolution on the private health insurance rebate; criticism of its $250 million tax break for the television networks was just a Murdoch media conspiracy; and Tony Abbott is off the planet whenever he attacks the government.

Beneath such drum beating is a government whose world view on climate change is in eclipse and whose domestic political assumptions about climate change have been broken.

Read it here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Rudd government censured on climate change

23 February, 2010 by

A gesture only, but a symbolic one none the less:

The federal government has been censured by the Senate for failing to adequately deliver climate change programs.

The coalition and all seven cross-bench senators teamed up on Tuesday to reprimand Labor over its mismanagement of the home insulation, green loans and solar rebate schemes.

In moving the censure motion, Australian Greens leader Bob Brown said there had also been “gross and systemic failure” in the government’s renewable remote power generation program and renewable energy target.

“The use of the censure, I can assure senators, is not taken by me – after 24 years parliamentary experience – lightly at all,” he told parliament.

“However we are, as a nation, witnessing one of the most gross episodes of mishandling of the public money and the public trust in recent governments history.”

One of the very rare occasions where I agree with Bob Brown. But why is Peter “Big baldy ball-bag” Garrett still in his job, after one of the worst displays of ministerial incompetence in living memory?

Read it here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

ETS bill "delayed until May"

23 February, 2010 by

So “the greatest moral challenge since the start of the universe” (© KRudd) suddenly isn’t so urgent after all. But hang on… just a couple of months ago, it was essential we passed the ETS before Copenhagen, wasn’t it? Or is it because Rudd has no principles whatsoever and his only political compass is popularity, which he slavishly follows, so that now the ETS is proving an electoral liability, he’s looking for ways to quietly abandon both it and his robotic minister, Penny Wong? Hmm.

THE future of the government’s emissions trading scheme was in disarray last night with claims that the Senate vote on the bill could be delayed until May.

The possible delay, the result of the opposition blocking a procedural vote in the Senate, has cast fresh doubt on the government’s ability to create an election trigger on its amended climate legislation.

Last night the government was seeking legal advice about whether it could force an earlier vote than the May sitting. Each side blamed the other for the delay, which resulted from the Senate’s blocking a motion yesterday to speed up the debate.

The government has already dropped the emissions trading scheme from the parliamentary schedule this week to give priority to establishing a double dissolution election trigger on its changes to the private health insurance means test.

Read it here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

OT: Rudd's own hockey stick

21 February, 2010 by

The graph actually shows the number of asylum seekers in immigration detention in Australia. The red spot shows the point where our glorious leader, Saint Kevin of Rudd, emasculated the previous Howard government’s policy. Boats are arriving on a daily basis. I wonder why? Is it because the word got out that Australia had overnight become a soft touch, and so you’re better off trying to get in there rather than anywhere else? At a time when global asylum seeker numbers are actually falling?

Global temperature… no, wait

Where’s the Medieval Warm Period again? Not even Phil Jones could fudge those figures (“hide the incline”)…

h/t: The Sheik

Filed Under: Aussie Politics Tagged With:

Vote on "greatest moral challenge of our time" delayed

19 February, 2010 by

"For my next trick, the backflip."

Because now there’s something more important – pushing through a vote on health reform that will give Krudd a double-dissolution trigger that’s not climate change. And he’ll pull it, I think, because his ratings are plummeting and if he leaves it until later in the year, he will be a dead duck. But there’s a risk with that – the people aren’t stupid, they’ll see he’s trying to sneak in under the wire, and hopefully they’ll give him the bloody nose at the polls that he so richly deserves. Could Rudd & Co be the worst government since…? When?

THE Rudd government will delay pushing ahead with its emissions trading scheme, prompting an accusation by Opposition Leader Tony Abbott that it is planning one of the “all-time great political backflips”.

In a surprise move, the long-expected reintroduction of the emissions trading legislation to Parliament next week has now been stalled. Instead, the government is shifting its priorities to force a vote on its proposed changes to the private health insurance means test, potentially creating a trigger for a double-dissolution election, as health looks set to be a key battleground in this year’s election.

It means it is almost certain that the next vote on the controversial emissions trading scheme will be pushed back until at least next month.

Mr Abbott yesterday seized on the release of a draft parliamentary order of business that did not list the emissions trading scheme, saying Prime Minister Kevin Rudd seemed to be “running away from his own legislation”.

“Let’s face it, this was just a few months ago not just an important political issue, it was the greatest moral issue of our time,” he said.

Read it here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

Someone please explain: why does Peter Garrett still have a job…?

18 February, 2010 by

Zero integrity

… when four are dead as a result of his bungled home insulation scheme? I am posting about this because it is basically a climate issue – encouraging householders to install insulation in order to reduce electricity and heating/cooling, and therefore reduce energy consumption and ultimately CO2 emissions.

I guess the answer is this – the Left don’t have the common decency to admit to their own failings and take the honourable course, resignation. Can you even begin to imagine the uproar in the media if this had been a minister in a Coalition government? The ABC and the left-wing press would have been a field day (although they probably wouldn’t have had the chance, since a Coalition minister would have the good sense and decency to fall on his own sword).

The only thing that matters to Rudd, Garrett and their cronies is staying in power at all costs.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Voters deserting Rudd and the ETS

16 February, 2010 by

Climate "front and centre"

Kevin Rudd, in one of his rare comments on the subject, recently said that climate change would be “front and centre” at the next election. And that’s good news – for the Coalition, that is – since voters are deserting Labor and its ETS in droves:

VOTERS have been turning off Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading scheme at a faster rate than they have stopped believing in the existence of climate change.

Although Australians overwhelmingly believe climate change exists and it is at least partly a result of human activity, there has been a sharp rise in the percentage of people who do not believe in climate change.

The shift follows the collapse of the UN’s climate change conference in Copenhagen in December and widespread publicity of false claims in the UN’s 2007 climate change report.

In the week when the Rudd government made its latest attempt to pass an ETS through parliament, public opposition to the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme jumped.

The Prime Minister remains committed to the ETS as a central part of the government’s election strategy and continues to attack Coalition opposition to the CPRS.

According to the latest Newspoll survey, taken exclusively for The Australian last weekend, support for the CPRS fell from 67 per cent two months before the Copenhagen summit and before Tony Abbott became Opposition Leader, to 57 per cent.

In October 2008, support for the CPRS was at 72 per cent.

Since Copenhagen and the release of climate change scientists’ emails casting doubt on their research and false claims being exposed in the UN’s 2007 climate report, opposition to an ETS jumped from 22 to 34 per cent.

Whilst the rest of the world has moved on, Kevin Rudd and his government are stuck firmly in the past.

Read it here.

Also read Terry McCrann’s excellent article in the Herald Sun here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,
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