|
November 10, 2009
I wasn't planning to watch the last Four Corners programme entitled Malcolm and the Malcontents attributed to Sarah Ferguson. Not another account of Liberal Party disunity I thought. We know that the conservative and liberal wings are at war. But I was persuaded by the flow of interesting comments on Twitter.
The Coalition sure is a rabble over climate change despite an ETS scheme being their policy. The Nationals are totally opposed and conducting a fear and loathing campaign in regional NSW and Queensland. It's a no vote, absolutely. They reckon they'd win a double dissolution election on opposing an ETS.
The conservative populist rhetoric is that an ETS is "socialist chardonnay rubbish", a left-wing “conspiracy”. There is no global warming, just natural cycles and the appeal to justify this is to 'sense' and 'impression' and pre-existing sentiment (common sense) of the hard done battler. The Nationals have drawn a line in the sand and put their bodies on the line to fight green fanaticism that is taking over Australia. They look such a rag tag bunch, as does their white populist base. They all looked like the One Nation party of the1990s, sadly haunted by the decay of their wizened provincialism. Death beckons.
In the Liberal Party Minchin, Abbott, Jensen, Kormann, McGauran and Bernardi, climate deniers one and all, were openly opposed to an ETS, quite willing to oppose their leader publicly, and to do so on the lefty ABC. Minchin, in particular, was claiming that a majority of the party did not back Mr Turnbull's acceptance of the science behind climate change, and openly encouraging the backbench to defy their leader on this issue.
All this is at a time when the Coalitions' party room has authorized Ian McFarlane to conduct good faith negotiations with Minister Wong to work through the Liberal Party's proposed amendments to the Government’s CPRS legislation now in the Senate.
McFarlane was the only Liberal who came through with any political nous. He was using political reason to think the issue through---he “is no longer sceptical about humans causing global warming but he is now sceptical about carbon capture and storage”--- and to see the Coalition through a very difficult patch. In the meantime the climate change deniers, one and all, have rejected the scientific enlightenment and, just like the Republicans in the US, fully embraced the contemporary form of the counter Enlightenment tradition.
Update
Minchin knows that the failure to get the Liberal Party on side on an ETS will almost certainly end Turnbull's leadership, and he is nakedly acting to make that happen. But for what goal? The disunity strategy is a pathway to many a long year in opposition. That would provide him with an opportunity to continue with the factional politics within the Liberal Party--to clean out the liberals (wets) and replace them with conservatives so that the Liberal Party is liberal in name only? That has been his strategy with the SA Liberal Party. Is this his game plan?
|
Minchin was unbelievable on the ABC's Four Corners last night. He said:
Nothing about science at all. It's all faith in a green religion. Nothing about renewable energy either. How does renewable energy de-industrialise the western world? Isn't it modernizing industrial Australia by shifting to a lower carbon economy?