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June 23, 2009
So the political crisis that the Liberals promised to engineer in the OzCar affair has fizzled to little more than the standard Parliamentary squabbling and bile. Can Turnbull use his finely tuned barrister skills to turn things around, reignite the blowtorch, and turn it on The Treasurer? How wounded will Turnbull become from the Labor counterattack on his big character?
For the moment people will just switch off now as the fizz has gone and there is no blood flowing as the arrows have missed their target. Some will see the ongoing political spectacle as the politicians throwing the switch to avaudeville understanding of a blood sport. Should we sit back and have a good laugh at the clown's doing their resignation act? Will this act be pushed aside by another act about spooks or moles?
What has been lost sight of with the switch to vaudeville is the politically significant "debate" in the Senate about whether Australia should take a legislated position on carbon reduction to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen next December. Or whether, like the US, Australia should decide its emissions trading policy after Copenhagen. Australian policy on carbon reduction really matters because it has a direct impact on both jobs and exports and on the necessary shift to a low carbon economy.
How is the big "debate" going? On the one hand, there is a Coalition filibuster on in the Senate to avoid having a debate on cap and trade or the ETS scheme. Delay, delay, delay is their tactic. On the other hand, the Rudd Government has ended the funding for stand alone renewable energy in remote locations of Australia whilst saying that Australia needs infrastructure funding to help soften the recession. Yet another renewable energy programme bites the dust because it is too popular.
What is going on here with Labor? They have even linked the 20% target for renewable energy to the ETS scheme, which is dead in the water in its current form. All the talk from Wong is about pressuring Turnbull to pass the GPRS legislation, when it is clear that Turnbull will delay as long as he can. Putting pressure on Turnbull has been Wong's standard rhetoric for ages.
Neither side of politics seems to have much to fear from voters on this issue, despite the popularity about households making the shift to renewable energy through putting solar panels on their roofs. Consequently, the politicians can afford play their parliamentary games in the legislative tussle with each blaming the other for no action. Maybe our legislators prefer to do nothing at all---so they promise environmentalists they could promise really tough emissions trading reform while also reassuring business (Big Carbon) that no such law is going pass.
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Did you hear Michelle Grattan say on ABC National radio last Friday am that Malcolm asked the Business Council of Australia last Wednesday to write amendments to the CRS so that the Opposition could put the same forward in Parliament and then the BCA could publicly praise their and the Oppo's amendments?
In other words he volunteered to be a parliamentary sock puppet for big business.