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: , , ,

Labor denies carbon tax ad blitz

12 May, 2011 by

Carbon tax advertising

Which means we can expect it to start next week.

THE federal government has rejected Coalition claims it ”squirrelled away” $13.7 million in the budget to fund an advertising campaign to promote its proposed carbon tax.

The budget papers make clear that Labor set aside money for a ”climate change foundation campaign” in this financial year and 2011-12.

But the Finance Minister, Penny Wong, told Parliament yesterday the $13.7 million was not new but rather a ”transfer of already announced funds between years”.

The money was only to be used to increase understanding of climate change, she said. [Let’s hope Penny isn’t writing it – Ed]

”It does not include, on my advice, paid advertising. No decision has been taken by the government on any climate change advertising campaign.”

The Climate Change Minister, Greg Combet, said yesterday the money for 2011-12 would be used for activities such as website development and the printing of information brochures. [That’s OK then – Ed]

The opposition climate action spokesman, Greg Hunt, said the government was preparing to begin a multimillion-dollar advertising blitz. ”It will mean taxpayers paying for carbon tax ads on the TV, radio and newspapers.” (source)

Given Labor’s track record with telling the truth, I think we’d all better be prepared for a bombardment of climate nonsense to prop up the ailing the carbon tax.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Penny Wong: sceptics are flat-earthers

22 February, 2011 by

My ignorance is this big.

This nonsensical comment utterly incensed me. She hasn’t moved on one inch in her understanding of the climate debate. Her robotic response to any challenge to her “faith” in the global warming consensus is the same as it always was.

In an exchange in the Senate estimates hearing, Queensland Senator Ian Macdonald challenged Tim Flannery’s ludicrously expensive appointment as pointless “High Executioner, Archbishop of Titipu and Grand Pooh-bah for climate” (or something):

IAN MACDONALD: Is it true that he’s getting $180,000 salary?

NAOMI WOODLEY: Harinder Sidhu from the Climate Change Department confirmed that’s roughly what professor Flannery will be paid for working three days a week.

HARINDER SIDHU: That’s about equivalent to, for example, what professor Garnaut is being paid for his services. [that makes it OK, I guess? – Ed]

IAN MACDONALD: So it’s much more than anyone sitting at this table is getting paid for a seven day a week job.

Then Macdonald skewered the bias inherent in the climate commission, and Penny just couldn’t handle it:

IAN MACDONALD: But you’re providing money to educate the public on their view of climate science and I assume from that in fairness you’ll be providing professor [Bob] Carter and his literally thousands of professional colleagues with similar funding so that they can educate the public on their view on the science.

PENNY WONG: Well Senator there are also people who believe the world is flat and the Government doesn’t fund that. (source)

And that, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is the considered response of the former climate change minister. Is there any more to be said? I don’t think so: res ipsa loquitur.

UPDATE: Andrew Bolt posts on this here: Wong slimes experts who’d wipe the floor with her own

UPDATE 2: Cardinal Pell gets an earful from BoM chief in Senate estimates for daring to express sceptical views. Once again, Ian Macdonald goes to his defence.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Farewell Penny?

10 September, 2010 by

"I've had it up to here!"

How will I survive without Penny, whose mechanical delivery earned her the moniker “the Wong-bot” in these pages? She’s provided so much material for this blog since October 2008… But she’s had enough:

PRIME Minister Julia Gillard is expected to bring high-flyer Greg Combet into cabinet to be climate minister, as Labor tries to rebuild credibility on an issue that helped sow the seeds of its poor performance at the federal election last month.

Mr Combet, the former ACTU chief who assisted in the climate portfolio during his first term in Parliament, is seen as one of the government’s best trouble shooters, most recently in his handling of the mop-up after the home insulation debacle.

His big challenge as climate minister would be to help win acceptance for a carbon price after Labor’s failed efforts to get an emissions trading scheme passed through Parliament during its first term.

Penny Wong, the minister who oversaw the ETS process and then had the difficult task of selling Ms Gillard’s unpopular plan for a citizens assembly on climate change, is believed to want a change of portfolio. (source)

OK, Com-bot – it’s your turn next!

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With:

Abbott: no price on carbon [dioxide]

19 July, 2010 by

No ETS or carbon (dioxide) tax

Tony Abbott has confirmed that a Coalition government will not set a price on carbon [dioxide].

TONY Abbott has vowed any government he leads would never introduce a carbon price.

The Opposition Leader has hardened the Coalition position, preparing a campaign strategy to target Labor on the basis that it would drive up electricity prices.

He said that, even if the international community agreed on a carbon price, a government led by him would not necessarily back it. “I do not support the government going out there and making consumers pay a price on carbon,”Mr Abbott said.

Even if there was an international consensus position on a carbon price, a Coalition government would not necessarily fall into line, he said.

“Let’s cross that bridge . . . look, it’s not going to happen in the foreseeable future,” Mr Abbott said.

“One thing is for sure, if this government is re-elected there will be a carbon price.

“It will be a high one and it will impact on everyone’s standard of living.”

And then a Labor own goal from Penny Wong [who she?]:

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong said without putting a price and a limit on pollution, Mr Abbott had no way to meet the emissions reductions targets that he had signed up to.

“He should be upfront with the Australian people and admit that his policy is a con that will not do anything to reduce emissions,” Senator Wong said yesterday.

But unfortunately, that’s the Labor policy too, and Julia Gillard believes in man-made climate change.

Read it here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , , ,

Wong: Gillard wants carbon trading

29 June, 2010 by

Get back in the cave

Penny Wong has crawled out from the cave she’s been in since December to tell a climate conference that Julia Gillard wants a carbon trading scheme.

Some of the world’s leading climate change scientists have gathered on the Gold Coast to discuss how the world can best adapt to a warming world.

Climate Change Minister Senator Penny Wong welcomed almost 1000 delegates to the event, stressing the importance of the science behind the debate. [Ha, ha – my aching sides]

Senator Wong said the government would listen carefully to what the conference had to say.

“Julia Gillard has made clear her commitment to this issue, and her views about the need for a price on carbon,” she told reporters.

“The reason we don’t have a price on carbon is Tony Abbott tore down a leader (Malcolm Turnbull) and installed himself on the basis that he doesn’t believe climate change is real, and the Australian Greens voted with Mr Abbott. [You mean like faceless factional bosses tore down Kevin Rudd and installed Julia Gillard? The irony is clearly lost on Penny]

“All of us who understand the risks climate change poses to Australia and its future have a responsibility to work and build a consensus, which Tony Abbott torpedoed.”

Ahh, how I’ve missed Penny (not).

Read it here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

Wong "misled Senate" on ETS dumping

7 June, 2010 by

Responsibility? Me?

The Australian reports that Penny Wong may have misled the Senate about the precise details of the dumping of the ETS:

CLIMATE Change Minister Penny Wong has been accused of deliberately misleading the Senate over the dumping of the government’s centrepiece emissions trading scheme after she said cabinet had decided on shelving the plan.

The opposition attacked Senator Wong yesterday over her evidence to the Senate estimates committee after Environment Minister and cabinet colleague Peter Garrett admitted he had not been consulted about the government’s decision and had learned about it by reading a newspaper. (see here)

Mr Garrett revealed the decision was taken by Kevin Rudd’s four-person kitchen cabinet as part of the budget process.

He said it was disappointing that the decision had been leaked and he revealed that the first he had known about it was when he had read a newspaper report on April 27.

“That was an announcement and a decision that was leaked and I found out about it when it was leaked,” Mr Garrett told Sky News’s Saturday Agenda.

But under cross-examination in Senate estimates last month, Senator Wong said the entire cabinet had made the decision.

“Yes, it was a cabinet decision, and I have said the decision was made shortly before announcement, and that is as far as I propose to go in relation to cabinet processes and deliberations,” she said.

But don’t forget – this is Labor, so there’s always a way to spin it so that no-one ever has to accept responsibility for anything. In this case, the paper thin excuse is that the term “cabinet” includes any committee of cabinet, and the entirely unofficial assembly of the gang of four counts as a cabinet committee, despite the fact that it doesn’t even have a name, less still a documented role (other than Kevin Rudd’s personal claque).

Phew, that’s OK then.

Read it here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

AFL = All For Labor

6 June, 2010 by

Wong-bot runs the "play footy" app

We reported back in March how the AFL wanted to get involved in climate change campaigning. Well now we discover (thanks to Andrew Bolt) that the AFL and its moonbat boss Andrew Demetriou, are the latest to embrace politically correct environmentalism by spruiking Labor’s climate change policies through a Green Clubs program, which also includes targeting children with climate propaganda:

THE AUSTRALIAN Football League has this week launched a new online training module called Green Clubs for community football clubs and the broader Australian football industry.

One of the biggest challenges facing Australian football is the impact of climate change on community football grounds. [Like what, exactly?  It’s not as if clubs are being forced to save electricity by abandoning massive floodlights for night matches…]

Green Clubs aims to educate clubs about ways they can reduce their impact on the environment, while ensuring the sustainability of sporting grounds.  The module includes strategies for saving water, reducing energy use and the amount of waste sent to landfill.

The Green Clubs module is one component of a partnership established last year with the Australian Government’s Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency.

In addition to the introduction of the module, an interactive climate change awareness program for families and children involved in junior football programs has also been developed.

…

Speaking at the Carlton Football Club today, the Minister for Climate Change, Energy Efficiency and Water, Senator Penny Wong, [who she?] commended the AFL and Carlton Football Club for helping to raise awareness of climate change amongst football clubs and their fans.

“We know Australians want to do their fair share in tackling climate change [don’t include me in that, by the way], and now the AFL is helping Australians to do that while they are at the football,” Senator Wong said.

Funny – because I thought that sport was something for all of us, a rare place where politics doesn’t intrude. Not any more it appears. I don’t know how many Coalition voters watch AFL, but I sincerely hope it will drop pretty dramatically after this.

AFL = All For Labor.

Read it here.

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: , ,

Rudd government still wasting money on climate change

6 May, 2010 by

Now wash your hands (of responsibility)

Despite the ditching of the ETS, the Rudd government is still spending truckloads of money on the empty shell of its climate change policy. As The Daily Telegraph reported last week, a bloated government department is still being run for the purpose of administering a non-existent CPRS:

TAXPAYERS will fork out $90 million a year to keep more than 400 public servants employed within the federal Climate Change Department – despite most now having nothing to do until 2013.

More than 60 of them are classified as senior executive staff on salaries between $168,000 and $298,000 a year. Their salary bill alone will cost an estimated $12 million every year.

A further $8 million will also be paid in rent for plush offices at Canberra’s Constitution Place until 2012, where it is believed 500 new computers will be delivered this week.

It can be revealed that despite Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s decision on Tuesday to suspend the failed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme until at least 2013, the department has ruled out plans to cut back staff.

A formal response by department secretary Martin Parkinson to a Senate estimates hearing on Tuesday – the same day as the scheme’s suspension – claimed the department would not offer redundancies. (source)

Not only that, but thousands of (your taxpayer) dollars are still being wasted on pointless “climate change” reports, like this one reported on the ABC this morning:

A new report has found the health of Indigenous Australians living in coastal areas such as the Torres Strait could be at risk due to climate change.

The report commissioned by the Federal Government found climate change will elevate existing health risks for Indigenous people and create a whole new set of health problems.

They include respiratory illness and increasing incidence of heat stress and dehydration.

The loss of livelihoods and population displacement will also have a serious impact on the health and nutrition of those living in remote island communities.

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong [who she? – Ed] delivered the report while touring the Torres Strait. (source)

Now aren’t you glad that your hard earned money is being spent so wisely?

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,

Garrett demoted, but not sacked

26 February, 2010 by

Kevin Rudd has barely acknowledged his environment minister’s total and utter incompetence by stripping him of responsibility for energy efficiency. But he still has a job, despite 4 deaths, numerous house fires and potentially thousands more homes with live roofs that will all need to be inspected.

The dubious pleasure of administering “energy efficiency” goes to Wongbot Version 3.5 – oh joy. Insert a fresh memory card. And the hospital pass, namely clearing up Garrett’s insulation cock-up, goes to Gullible Mug-in-Chief, Greg Combet (couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke). Good luck with that, pal.

Read it here.

Dennis Shanahan thinks it makes Rudd’s position worse. Oh dear. How sad. Never mind.

Abbott: ‘Rudd can’t even sack a minister properly!’

Filed Under: Climate Tagged With: ,
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