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September 17, 2009
I'd always seen Brendan Nelson as a social liberal who became a conservative in his pursuit of political power. That was what was required during the Howard decade, if you wanted to be successful. Nelson, no doubt, would dispute this interpretation.
His farewell speech was wry, modest and personal. The witty references to earrings and haircuts (but not to motorbikes and Fender guitars) showed that he was more than a cut out cardboard politician with partisan instincts. He was an emotional human being who related to people and not a cog in a political machine.
The speech was very weak on policy. His justification for war with Iraq is this:
I supported the toppling of Saddam Hussein in the post September 11 world. He may not in hindsight have been an immediate threat, but he was an inevitable one.
That was it. Not much reflection there. How was Saddam Hussein an inevitable threat to Australia? What about all the lies and deceptions? The torture and renditions? Why George Bush was arguably the most misunderstood and misrepresented figure in recent history? Why the invasion of Afghanistan? Nelson says that our generation is engaged in an epic struggle against resurgent totalitarianism. That's cold war rhetoric.
Nelson does go on to say that there are five key challenges facing Australia. One of these is the environment:
It is time for our generation to live on environmental interest instead of the environmental capital that has sustained us since the industrial revolution. But on climate change, let us not be a nation of intellectual lemmings. Why introduce the biggest change to the economic architecture of this nation in my lifetime with a tax on everything, and massive churning of money through the economy as we emerge from the deepest economic downturn in eighty years, for no environmental gain? To legislate an Emissions Trading Scheme in a country responsible for 1.4% of global emissions before knowing what the three major emitters will do, defies not only logic, it violates the nation’s best interests. The dictum in medicine is Umbirima Fides – to always act in the utmost good faith.
In contrast to the rhetoric about living on environmental interest Nelson's view is that the nation’s best interests are economic, rather than in adapting to the inevitable consequences of global heating. Prosperity rules.
So Nelson is one of those Liberals opposing the scheme so that the Liberals would be "standing for something" as Liberals. Yet the policy the Coalition took to the last election promised that a re-elected Coalition government would "establish the world's most comprehensive emissions trading scheme in Australia, commencing no later than 2012.
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'He may not in hindsight have been an immediate threat, but he was an inevitable one.'
What a pathetic rationalisation for waging aggressive war. And what's with the crap about hindsight? These complacent creeps are incapable of admitting that plenty of people including their own professional advisers said pre-invasion that Saddam was not an immediate threat.
You can only conclude that the man is utterly incapable of understanding the human consequences of the tragedy we helped bring about in Iraq. Truly Howardesque and it completely destroys any lingering respect I had for him. Still I'm sure Rudd will find him a cushy job somewhere.