Adani vs Finkel

14 June, 2017 by

Just ship it to India…

Compare and contrast the following two current news stories:

  1. Australia will ‘Finkel around the edges’ of a tiny emissions footprint in order to make Malcolm look like he’s a really sensitive, new Age, trendy-lefty guy who cares about the environment (but clearly not the pensioners who can’t heat their homes in winter, or cool them in summer);
  2. Adani will dig millions of tonnes of coal out of Queensland, ship it to India and burn it to provide cheap energy to Indians, and obliterating any possible difference Finkel will make to the climate hundreds (thousands?) of times over.

Here’s an idea – I know it sounds really, really, reeeeaaaally stupid – but why don’t we [whispers] burn the coal here and give Australians dirt cheap electricity?

Freaking MADNESS.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

It’s 2009 all over again

14 June, 2017 by

Déjà vu all over again

Australian Climate Madness is back – at least for now – as the Coalition seeks to tear itself apart once again on the issue of emissions reductions.

The Finkel report is trying to sneak through a low emissions target under the guise of energy security and lower prices – yes, you read that right: lower prices. They genuinely believe that imposing targets on low-emissions generation will actually reduce energy costs. Not sure what planet they are on, but it isn’t this one.

A three-hour party room meeting last night reopened all the old wounds in the Coalition with PM Turnbull on one side and ex-PM Abbott on the other.  Australians are already struggling to pay ever increasing electricity and gas bills, thanks to the insane policies of the Turnbull government, so why the government is allowing itself to be seen as going within a mile of emissions reductions ahead of affordability is a complete mystery. No wonder voters are deserting the Coalition in droves.

It’s all drearily familiar to anyone who has followed Australian politics for any length of time. Labor and Liberal wets on one side, and Conservatives on the other.

For those in a nostalgic mood, here are a few posts from late 2009 on the stoush between the Coalition factions on the doomed Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), or as it was wildly incorrectly known, the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme:

Maybe the result of all this will be the same…

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , , ,

Idiotic Comment of the Day: Malcolm Turnbull

22 July, 2011 by

Thinks we are stupid…

I long for the day when Malcolm Turnbull decides to stop talking nonsense about climate and abandons his hopeless quest to get his old job back. Let me make this clear: you will NEVER, EVER be leader of the Liberals again. Leader of Labor, very possibly, but not the Liberals.

We all know that Turnbull is desperate to cash in with his merchant banker pals on the carbon trading scam, so he plays the “per capita” trick last night to claim that Australia’s emissions were “higher” than China’s or India’s. And somehow expects people to believe it. Quote lady in shopping centre to Julia Gillard: “We’re not stupid, you know.”

He also rejected the view Australia should wait for China and India to act, saying Australia’s emissions were much higher per capita.

Mr Abbott said this week that Australia’s emissions reduction target, backed by both sides of politics, was “crazy” because it would be overwhelmed by pollution increases in China.

But Mr Turnbull said Chinese emissions per capita were one-fifth of Australia’s and India’s were less than one-tenth. (source)

The reason our emissions per capita are so high, Malc old mate, is because we have a thriving, highly productive, emissions-intensive economy with a tiny (approx 20 million), relatively wealthy population. China and India on the other hand have massive populations (both over 1 billion, and each more than 50 times greater than Australia’s) still barely able to crawl out of poverty. Divide a small number by a very small number you get a big number. Divide a big number by an even bigger number, you get a smaller number. It’s junior school maths.

An insult to our intelligence, Malcolm. Go away.

P.S. And while we are about it, when you urge us all to respect “the science” does that include “the science” published by Richard Lindzen, Roy Spencer, Bob Carter etc etc, or only “the science” which fits with your alarmist agenda?

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With:

Turnbull wants to destroy Abbott – and the Coalition

26 May, 2011 by

Revenge on his mind…

Malcolm Turnbull’s ego is bigger than the Coalition. Bigger than a victory over Labor at the next election. Bigger than putting Australia back on a path to prosperity after six years of Labor mismanagement at the next election in 2013. Oh yes, Turnbull’s lust for revenge goes way beyond those petty considerations.

He hates the fact that Tony Abbott is doing so well as Opposition leader. He hates the fact that he thinks Abbott is inferior to him (or so he believes) and he himself should still rightly be the leader of the Opposition. He hates the fact that he was defeated by Abbott by one vote in 2009. He hates the fact that his mindless climate policy was dumped at the eleventh hour, just before his party was due to vote with Labor to enact an ETS. He hates the fact that Abbott’s recent budget reply went down so well (as evidenced by his curt handshake and flouncing out of the chamber at the first possible opportunity).

So last week we had the Lateline debacle, where Turnbull made little attempt to conceal his disgust for his own party’s climate policy. The next day, the headlines were full of… Malcolm Turnbull. And today we have another distraction from the task at hand, his alleged failure to vote in divisions, followed by the leak of a stiff email in rebuke. And, again, tomorrow the headlines will all be full of… Malcolm Turnbull.

To my mind, the fact that Turnbull is in the headlines again is no accident. I strongly believe that Turnbull wants to torpedo Abbott and then ride to the Coalition’s rescue as their saviour, and have himself elected leader again. All the evidence points that way, and it seems that he is prepared to sacrifice anything and everything to achieve this end, including a Coalition victory at the next election, just so long as he can exact his bitter revenge on Abbott.

We should not be reading headlines about Malcolm Turnbull – we should be reading headlines about Gillard’s incompetence. We should not be reading headlines about “divisions within the Coalition” brought about by Turnbull speaking out of turn – we should be reading headlines about the effect of Labor’s disastrous carbon tax on our economy and prosperity. Whenever Turnbull is in the headlines, it distracts from the task at hand: holding this inept and arrogant government to account.

The more of this kind of distraction continues, and the more cracks that appear in the Coalition front, the more opportunities there are for Labor to attack, diverting attention from their own shortcomings, eroding away, tiny bit by tiny bit, the extraordinary lead that Abbott has delivered, until Labor are ahead once again, Abbott sinks into the role of a leader in crisis, on the way out, and is eventually, inevitably, replaced by…?

So the message to Tony Abbott is all too clear: sack Turnbull now, or he will destroy you, the Coalition, and any chance of victory at the next election – all in pursuit of his own selfish goals.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Wong pounces on Turnbull's comments

19 May, 2011 by

Traitor to the Coalition

Could this guy be any more of a quisling treacherous rat? Inevitably, after his criticisms of the Abbott climate policy (see earlier story), Labor has pounced, damaging Abbott and the Coalition in the process:

Finance Minister Penny Wong said Mr Turnbull was one of the few people in opposition truly committed to tackling global warming.

“What we saw last night is Malcolm really telling the truth about what the Liberal policy is,” she told Sky News.

“It’s very expensive and … it’s a con because those on his side of politics who we know really don’t want to do anything on this issue are able to roll it back and switch it off whenever they want.” (source)

Bravo Malc. Well done. Now, what else can you do to damage your own party? Just pack your bags and go and join Labor. Idiot.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , , ,

Dump Turnbull now

19 May, 2011 by

Time is up for Turnbull

Malcolm Turnbull has done enough to wreck the Coalition’s chances of government. Message to Tony Abbott, sack him now, before it’s too late:

FORMER Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull has attacked the Coalition’s direct action policy on climate change, declaring it cannot produce deep emissions cuts without putting a strain on the budget.

The opposition communications spokesman, who lost the Liberal Party leadership over his deal with Kevin Rudd to legislate a carbon pollution reduction scheme, told ABC’s Lateline last night the Coalition’s policy on climate change was a short-term one that could be easily stopped.

Mr Turnbull told the program that if a government was looking for a long-term solution to making deep cuts to carbon emissions, “a direct action policy where industry is able to freely pollute and the government is just spending more and more taxpayers’ money to offset it, that would become a very expensive charge on the budget.” (source)

I guess Turnbull wants to see an ETS so he can cash in on the billions to be made trading carbon (allegedly). Enough is enough.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Carbon tax is a disaster

10 March, 2011 by

Pointless and ineffective, and so is the tax

Another great read by Miranda Devine, who points out that it is Malcolm Turnbull, the only significant supporter of an ETS in the Coalition and “Labor’s best asset” who is secretly plotting with the independents to try and regain some relevance:

The Government has missed the point. Instead of slugging us for fossil fuels, it should provide green energy that is cheap to use.

IF you ever wondered who is advising Tony Windsor to support a carbon tax, well, now you know: moles within the Coalition, the kamikaze ever-shrinking pro-carbon tax faction, aka Team Turnbull.

Windsor is keeping their identities secret, but he says, “A lot of people within the Coalition would like to engage in that work (pricing carbon). They’ve been ruled out by the opportunism of Tony Abbott, but that doesn’t mean they can’t speak to others,” he told ABC radio yesterday.

Ah ha! So that’s why Malcolm Turnbull was having a deep and meaningful conversation over dinner in Canberra with that other ruminating country independent, Rob Oakeshott, last week.

Colleagues describe Turnbull as “Labor’s best asset”, sourly noting the flurry of meetings he has been conducting in an effort to revive his leadership prospects. They wonder whether he will again cross the floor to vote with Labor on its carbon tax.

Yet the self-destructing futility of his bid is laid bare in this week’s Newspoll, which shows Labor’s carbon plans are electoral poison, opposed by the majority of voters but most particularly by Coalition voters, whose aversion has grown to 72 per cent.

Windsor, whose conservative electorate is seething with anger over his role in bringing Labor to power and his apparent complicity in the carbon tax announcement, may have had his spine stiffened by Coalition rats.

But he still has been backpedalling at a million miles an hour since Labor recorded its lowest ever primary support in Newspoll, showing what a blunder the carbon tax is.

Now he’s trying to distance himself from Prime Minister Julia Gillard by saying she had “sort of jumped the gun” and should have given more “detail” about the tax before announcing it.

But it is not the missing detail that is the problem; it is the tax itself, as Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg points out. On Tuesday night, Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, outlined the flaws with the Government’s approach.

The least effective, most expensive solution to climate change is any sort of tax on carbon dioxide, he says. “For every dollar you spend, you save a couple of cents in climate damage.” And that money wasted today means you are less well placed to deal with any potential ill-effects of climate change in the future.

Read it here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

Liberal has-beens dump on Abbott

8 February, 2010 by

Astonishing disloyalty

Call me old fashioned, but I thought that one of the principles in Coalition politics would be supporting your leader in the common aim of getting rid of Rudd and his tawdry government. How wrong one can be. Instead of backing Tony Abbott all the way, as they should, political has-beens Malcolm Turnbull and John Hewson think that it is somehow beneficial to the cause to make pompous speeches in Parliament slagging off the new Coalition policy on climate change, or write articles for the ABC about how the Liberals are using scare tactics about the ETS. I mean, what freaking planet are these guys on? Clearly they put their own petty self interest way above the interests of the party (and the country).

Traitor Turnbull first:

Former Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull has vowed to cross the floor and vote for the Government’s emissions trading scheme (ETS), arguing the Opposition’s alternative plan will achieve “very little” except raise taxes.

Mr Turnbull lost the Liberal leadership to Tony Abbott late last year following a Liberal mutiny against his decision to support the ETS.

Mr Turnbull urged his colleagues to think beyond the next election and legislate for the long term and reminded them that until December last year there was bipartisan agreement to adopt an ETS.

Mr Turnbull says the ETS is the only credible way to meet the Government’s commitment to reduce emissions by 5 per cent of 2000 levels by 2020.

“These bills are as much the work of John Howard as of Kevin Rudd,” he said. [Times have changed, pal, in case you haven’t noticed – Ed]

“I will be voting in favour of this bill.

“All of us here are accountable not just to our constituency, but the generations that will come after them and after us,” he said.

Mr Turnbull said that climate change was a global problem and if Australia expected countries like China and India to act it must lead the way with an ETS. (source)

Yeah, mate, like China and India give a rats what Australia (1.5% of global emissions) does – idiot. We all know you’re just trying to secure all those dollars in future carbon trading, aren’t you? And now for Hewson:

Former Liberal leader John Hewson has taken aim at Opposition Leader Tony Abbott’s climate change policy, accusing him of using fear to win over voters.

In an opinion piece for the ABC’s The Drum which denounces both sides of politics for “squibbing” action on climate change, Dr Hewson has also criticised the media for focusing on the colour of the political debate rather than the substance of the science.

Dr Hewson has urged both Mr Abbott and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to show leadership on the issue instead of “wallowing in the colour and movement of grossly irresponsible politicking”.

“I am particularly disturbed by the way our current ‘debate’ on the challenge of climate change is unfolding,” he writes.

Dr Hewson’s comments come as today’s Nielsen poll in the Fairfax media shows voters prefer the Coalition’s policy over Mr Rudd’s emissions trading scheme. (source)

See how out of touch you are with reality? Even the polls show the complete opposite.

Advice to Tony Abbott: dump these traitors from the party, along with any other turncoat that dares vote with the government on the ETS.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

Mad Malcolm loses it completely

7 December, 2009 by

Mad Malcolm and the Monk

Mad Malcolm and the Monk

How the Liberals ever thought that Turnbull could be Prime Minister. Now he’s showing his true colours, ranting and raving like a Latham clone, and threatening to vote with the government on the next ETS vote:

Former Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull has unleashed an attack on his successor Tony Abbott, describing his climate change position as “bullshit”.

In a strongly-worded blog entry posted this morning, Mr Turnbull personally attacks Mr Abbott for putting the party’s integrity on the line, saying Coalition climate change policy has descended into “farce”, because it does not have a policy.

He vows to cross the floor and vote for the Government’s emissions trading scheme and urges his colleagues to follow him.

…

“So any suggestion that you can dramatically cut emissions without any cost is, to use a favourite term of Mr Abbott, ‘bullshit.’ Moreover he knows it.

“It is not possible to criticise the new Coalition policy on climate change because it does not exist.”

Mr Turnbull goes on to describe those who backed Mr Abbott’s leadership as climate change sceptics. [Yes, and your point is? – Ed]

“As we are being blunt, the fact is that Tony and the people who put him in his job do not want to do anything about climate change. They do not believe in human caused global warming.

“As Tony observed on one occasion ‘climate change is crap’, or if you consider his mentor, Senator Minchin, the world is not warming, it’s cooling and the climate change issue is part of a vast left wing conspiracy to deindustrialise the world.

It must be obvious to the public and the media by now that Turnbull is a dangerous megalomaniac who cannot bear the fact that Abbott’s policy on climate is actually more popular with the core Australian voter than his own. Tony Abbott, you have an enemy in your midst who will have to be neutralised in whatever way possible. If you’re trying to destroy the Liberal party and ensure they remain in opposition for a generation, Malc, you are going the right way about it.

VISIT TURNBULL’S BLOG POST AND LEAVE A COMMENT HERE. [Link dead – Web Archive HERE]

Read it here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Turnbull backs Rudd on climate

4 December, 2009 by

Not worth reading

Not worth reading

“Which Side Are You On” Alert, as Malcolm Turnbull backs Kevin Rudd’s attack on Tony Abbott’s climate policies:

KEVIN Rudd has launched his campaign to demolish Tony Abbott, warning that the new Opposition Leader wants to dot the nation with nuclear reactors and reinstate John Howard’s industrial relations laws.

The Prime Minister has also accused Mr Abbott of espousing “magic pudding politics” by claiming Australia could tackle climate change without the market-based solution of putting a price on carbon.

And Malcolm Turnbull, ousted by Mr Abbott as Liberal leader on Tuesday, has reignited party tension by endorsing Mr Rudd’s argument on the issue. (source)

Here is the extract from Turnbull’s newsletter, from which I have now unsubcribed with great haste:

And I regret that the party room changed its policy on climate change from one of supporting the emissions trading scheme legislation, as amended at our request, to opposing it.

…

Many people have asked me whether it is possible to cut emissions without an ETS, a carbon tax or raising electricity prices. The short answer is “No”.

If I never hear Malcolm Turnbull’s name again, it will be too soon. A disgrace to his party, and as Andrew Bolt puts it, “Liberal’s Latham.”

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,
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