Tony Abbott’s resignation must surely mark the end for Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership and therefore, in all probability, for the deal with Labor over the ETS.
Ultra-optimistic scenario: Turnbull quits and Abbott is installed, the deal is cancelled and Rudd calls a double dissolution based on the original bill, winning easily. Since the original bill clearly needs amendment he doesn’t use the joint sitting mechanism but instead makes an agreement with the Greens who now have the balance of power.
Rudd’s preferred scenario: Turnbull holds on long enough to deliver seven senate votes tomorrow and pass the watered-down ETS. He is promptly rolled and the Liberal party splits. Abbott as new leader, starts with a commitment to repeal the scheme, but abandons it because this is the last thing big business wants. Labor reduces the divided opposition to rump status at the next election, and ends up dealing with three or four different parties in the Senate, needing only one to get its legislation through. This is probably more plausible than mine, but the timing will be very tight tomorrow. The decision is to be made at 3:45pm, apparently.
John Quiggin 
Fran
Equity is the key issue. If your feedback system was possible then I would agree.
When the Right was in power recently they corrupted the feedback system so rich schools (eg Kings) got similar Commonwealth funding as poor schools (Mt Druitt).
The trick was called “geo-coding”. In simple terms schools got funds according to the “home postcodes of students” not the school’s “actual resources”.
So in the long-run we get better equity through a progressive income tax and quality services you mentioned, can still be implemented.
Chris Warren@#47
Yes that explains why the Cultural Right so enthusiastically supports Economic Right wing policies, such as the liberalisation of laws relating to porn, drugs and mass immigration.
Oh wait a minute, that only happens in Bizzaro-land. Back in the real world the Cultural Right is actually at odds with the Economic Right on these and many other issues. Which is why the paelo-cons split from the econo-cons and neo-cons in the US.
The Cultural Right are interested in conserving traditional identity, as received by those individuals established in high-status positions. The Economic Right are interested in getting the economically successful established in their high status positions. The two branches are frequently at odds, as witnessed by their uneasy bedfellowship in the Coalition.
Chris Warren said:
Your historical memory is selective.
The ALP still has a nationalisation clause in its platform, which it took very seriously up until 1949.
Closed Shop unionism was widespread and widely supported right up until the 1970s. Thats why we had an Accord.
Whitlam recognised the Soviet takeover of the Baltic States, to the enthusiastic applause of commie-symps right through out Left-land.
The Broad Left has never criticised hard-core multiculturalism on the disreputable grounds of pas d’ennemis a gauche. Thats bad enough.
Your distillation of history is little better than rank apologetics.
The trouble is Chris, that we still have radical differences in privilege under that system. The poroblem you specify at Kings wouldn’t be technically hard to fix. It would simply take a different political perspective — one that didn’t entail giving grants to private schools.
If people want to send their kids to a private school, let them pay with their own money and raise their own funds. Problem solved. Then you establish a service requirement within the schoolsystem covering class sizes, teacher load, teacher training and support, welfare, physical resources per student etc and see that it is met no matter what.
@Jack Strocchi
Jack – now I think you atre stretching it – nationalisation did not mean nationalise everything ever. And whats wrong with nationalisation where its needed?. It did us just fine for quite a few decades until the denationalise everything lot denationalised everything.
What is this “national tell lies about the left / right day.”
Pr Q said:
On Turnbull, FWIW I have been mightily impressed with his grace under pressure in the current political crisis. Whatever one might think of the defects and disagreements about the ETS he was handed it as a program to get through Parliament with majority consent.
He rose to the occasion and gave his all and showed a side of his personality that most were unaware of, patriotism mixed with passionate reason. Whether he succeeds or not no one can claim he did anything less than his best.
If he fails then the fault lies with his colleagues and their ideological associates who have behaved abominably.
And if this ETS bill does fail and he resigns or loses the leadership then the LP can kiss goodbye to office until 2016 minimum.
Jack Stocci
Good to see how rightwingers misrepresent issues.
ALP nationalisation is NOT of the entire economy (which was your claim)
Closed-shop unioinism was never across the board (which was your claim)
Whitlam’s recognition Baltic states was not appeasement (which was your claim)
Your invocation of hard-core multiculturalism is weird, meaningless and a misrepresentation.
If you want to discuss issues – address the issue, not your own misrepresentation.
While I understand that this is important to some people, I don’t find this going back over old ideological struggles either interesting or helpful in understanding the current ETS policy debate. Most of the professionals I work with were born after Whitlam left office 34 years ago. The same applies even more so to some of the other issues dredged up. They are irrrelevant.
The important point is, we are seeing the Liberals turn their back on science accepted by Margaret Thatcher 20 years ago. IMO it is electoral suicide. There were so many smarter ways they could have played it. They could have attacked the over generous industry compensation, or the leaving out of farming, or the lack of any accompanying detailed planning for transition strategies for various related infrastructure. But no, they chose a spoiling tactic instead, coming out as a bunch of anti-scientific old men. Even if their policies were credible, they are so disorganised and disunited I don’t see how they could form a government. I find this very dissappointing.
I don’t find their economics much better than their science. References to our debt, which is still quite low, and to job losses without mentioning the job gains, is not credible. They even referred to debt with China, when we have one of our largest trade surpluses with China. Garnaut already identified the impact of an ETS, and this one is far milder than the one he proposed.
Once the bill is defeated or formally deferred Rudd gets his ETS trigger, and he can then use it any time next year. I hope the Liberals use the chance to get some new blood into parliament. If not, we will continue to have a very poor opposition, which in the long term is a recipe for bad government too.
@Jack Strocchi
jack says “On Turnbull, FWIW I have been mightily impressed with his grace under pressure in the current political crisis. Whatever one might think of the defects and disagreements about the ETS he was handed it as a program to get through Parliament with majority consent.”
Thats exactly what I think and its exactly what other people are going to think and I suspect if the party tips him it will do the LP more harm in the electorates eyes than good. They are in the desert and Abbott led them there.
@Alice
Same here. Malcolm Turnbull has articulated his position with regards to why he believes the Liberal party must a) have a policy towards dealing with AGW or ACC, take your pick of favourite acronym; b) must abide by their agreement to accept the final amended form of the ETS; c) why the recent foment by Nick Minchin, Tony “The Rabbit” Abbot, et al has been self-serving rather than either to the long-term benefit of the Liberal party; d) accept that he is the leader and that he is operating at all times for the benefit of the Liberal party (and in Turnbull’s mind, by extension for the benefit of Australians), and is applying long-held Liberal processes to obtain these goals.
In fact, I’d go so far as to say that we’ve been given some insight into how a good politician operates, as opposed to the Macchiavellian self-appointed owners of Australia and the Liberal party; that is, the standard bearers for the “Lying Rodent” neo-conservative sect. Perhaps given their repugnant repossession of the Liberal party and the repetititon of the dirty brown politics of the Lying Rodent, these Macchiavellian Mice should be called repo-neo-cons or re-neo-cons. Plenty of guts but no honour – just repeating – like a bad burger – every time they get the chance to kick someone to the ground and to clean their boots on their face.
Whew! Guess I’m a tad unhappy with these nefarious numbskulls! And the Uber-schemer is from my state, more’s the pity.
@Donald Oats
Don – And the uber schemer is from my locality even worse…he has a reputation in his local surf club (which he thinks he should be running autocratically) and its not a good name. I see him occasionally loudmouthing in some cafe. It isnt pretty. Kind of puts you off your cuppacino.
and you say “as opposed to the Macchiavellian self-appointed owners of Australia and the Liberal party; that is, the standard bearers for the “Lying Rodent” neo-conservative sect.”
Exactly. They are not getting it at all. They now have Abbott and the wilderness.
Its goodbye Mr Abbott after this. Ive been waiting such a long time…
At this stage our Mad Monk is drooling at the prospect of knifing Turnbull.
Hockey may block him, but I want a blood stained Abbott at the head of the Liberals plus an quick double dissolution.
Abbott and Menchin heading a Liberal Federal election campaign will be a fantastic farce and will send thousands of swinging voters towards the ALP, Greens and independents.
Swinging voters need to really experience the uglies in the Liberal party. Up until now they have been hiding behind Turnbull.
Turnbull may yet survive as most reasonable Liberals realise he is marketable to swinging voters, Abbott and Hockey are sitting targets.
Australian governments are not chosen by party faithfuls.
Ha so Michin just slipped up on Kerry show on the ABC…with “Tony and I considered these matters and Tony and I”
ahhhh sooooo..the penny drops… it was the Tony and Nick show was it? and Nick convinces Tony he can be the King for longer…as if. He was only King for a day.
If Turnbull survives this he should root out Minchin first and Abbott second in short order and squash both of them. They are yesterdays men.
Very much looking forward to “The Turnbull Diaries”
Pr Q said:
Turnbull has to resign before Hockey will mount a challenge. I dont think that Turnbull is ready to fall on his sword to humor the delusionists. The Australian reports on “Malcom’s Last Stand”:
Hockey will have to back-track on his loyalty oath to the Leader. At this stage I am not prepared to rule this out, but really, what next – the Spanish Inquisition?
That means that Abbott will throw his hat in the ring against Turnbull. I ask you, who would you like to run the nations largest company: Malcolm or Tony?
If the LP vote Abbot it is committing conscious and premeditated electoral suicide. Just like the ALP of old!
I had time for Abbott until recently. Not any more.
Webmaster
could you please close the italic html tags on the Australian quote?
thanks
over the weekend, cold light of day and all that, Abbott won’t look so pretty
@nanks
Abbot is just a nasty arrogant narcissist, easily flattered. The real puppet master in this plot was Minchin.
JQ was right – Minchin isnt stupid at all but he is a denialist fruit loop just the same.
Now the plot thickens as Hockey “considers his options” in preparation to renege on his agreement to support Turnbull.
The rats are squabbling over who will captain the sinking ship.
Put another way: if the LP dumps Turnbull for a climate change denialist or delayer then the LP will be thrashed at the next election which will inevitably lead to the long foretold split in the Right wing.
It will mark the end of Menzies creation. All for less than nothing.
More than that, one can say goodbye to effective accountability for the time being.
With a hopelessly divided and delusional Opposition facing the ALP holding five state, two territorial and federal governments for probably a decade it spells the evolution of a one-party state.
The LP are stark raving mad if they think they can somehow muddle through this quagmire.
@Jack Strocchi
Jack – I dont want to disillusion you but Menzies creation died quite some time ago. Thats the major problem with modern LP. Of course Hockey is trying to work out how he can play this one and I suspect how he can work out how to support the ETS as well…but its not dumb of Hockey to ask the party to tweet him on what their ETS stand is. He wants to count for or against.
The last dozen post here are pretty fair, but I’d accept, no problems, that the Tory ( and we CAN call it “Tory”, now ) party is in fact in the process of a vicious purge of those not au fait with certain dogmatic views, something begun by Howard in the eighties. Hence the necessity not only to drive Turnbull and his shrinking bunch of reformers out, but to demonise him thru the Murdoch press as somehow being the cause of the current problems, rather than the ultraist intransigent backstabbers whose shamefulbehaviour is stillbefore us courtesy ofpublic media, who are reacting to hormones, pathology, bloodlust, etc- anything rather than clear thinking.
Look at the sorts of creature involved in this sort of movement.
Matthias Cormann; straight out of a history book on John Calvin and apartheid, Corey Bernardi, Minchin, Abbott himself, Fierravanti Wells and influential fellow travellers outside parliament like Shanahan and Miranda Devine, who have their sinecure of a virtual “rotten borough” provided by Nurdoch rather thanobtained thru public consent or personal ability (Van Onselen seems another one, just into that fold)
I feel like I’m re reading Stendahl’s classic “Scarlett and the Black”, set in the reactionary clericist France of the eighteen thirties; what should have been and until recently was, the true heyday of what we might today refer to as “Opus Dei” politics.
Make no mistake: some of these nutters actually seek a theocratic dictatorship. Some one on teev tonight described this using a parallel term; “Talibanisation” when it comes to the coalition.
@paul walter
Yes. I agree ‘some of these nutters actually seek a theocratic dictatorship’. Personally, I like to call them the Pelliban after their liberal leader, their Ayatollah, Big George.
Looks they are retreating inwards. Minchin and co want the gaze of public opinion off their lot, asap, as the dissasemblng of Van Onselen tonight indicated. Then they get on with a “night of the long knives” along the lines of
Howard twenty years ; the instigation of a pogrom of dissidents ( any one who thinks differently to them ).
“Silence of the Lambs?
Not that Labor people can be happy, after similar purges of independent thinkers also over the last twenty years.
One last comment ( should be at “lunatics” thread as a continuance of Freelander and myself’s conversation about Abbott’s pathology )
After quickly consigning Turnbull to the dust bin of history because of Grech,
Guy Rundle reckons that the elevation of Abbott to rebuild the libs ignores the reality that the electorate regards Abbott as “a prick”. I include following in light of a previous conversation with Freelander, re the Abbott pathology.
Rundle continues:
” … The Banton stuff, the teenage (non) paternity case, the RU 486 sleaziness, the Pauline Hanson stitch-up, the excess aggressiveness he shows toward female opponents; they all ring alarm bells, especially with women voters”.
I don’t think this has been a sorted-out lad, at all, particularly if that alleged homophobia during seminary days is also true.
“
@paul walter
Pauls says “and we CAN call it “Tory”, now ?”
Well only in the sense that mature aristocracies after a few hundred years of close association and natural genetic evolution tend to end up stark raving mad.
Pr Q said:
That accords with my (hastily revised post-bedlam) prediction. Prior to that I have repeatedly predicted that Turnbull will prevail in both ETS policy and LP leadership politics. I think he will fall over the line, presumably exhausted.
The LP rebels have no electable candidate. The delusionists have the whole weekend to ruefully regret last weeks bender. It only needs a dozen or so to start having buyers remorse when a candidate like Tony Abbot is on offer.
I predict that Hockey will NOT stand for leader of the LP. I dont think he fancies sipping delusionist Kool Aid from the post-Turnbull LP’s poisoned chalice. It’s way to early to sing out Hey Joe…
The revolt has no legs. It represents a majority of the base but a minority of the LP primary vote. And a dramatically smaller minority of the LP’s total potential vote catchment area. It will also be opposed by LP donors and interest groups who have invested heavily in keeping the generous concessions extracted out of Rudd.
I am unsure of the electoral math for the half-Senate election. But surely another big 54/46 TPP victory for the ALP in the 2010 election will allow it to rule outright in the next Parliament? Therefore obviating the need for “dealing with three or four different parties in the Senate”. It will be able to get its legislation through on its own numbers, no?
Or will the ALP have to deal with the Greens holding the balance of power. That was Anthony Green’s prediction, made way back in the halcyon days of JUL 09.
@Jack Strocchi
Buyers remorse – its called cognitive dissonance.
Hey Jack – sorry no ref to politics or economics but you just mentioned a great song…
Hey Joe, where you goin’ with that gun in your hand
Hey Joe, I said where you goin’ with that gun in your hand
I’m going down to shoot my old lady
You know, I’ve caught her messin’ around with another man