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 
I have thought for some time that the best option for Turnbull is to resign. The alternative is to lead the rabble to the next election, lose, and get ditched then. Better to quit now and let them come to the realization themselves that Turnbull is their best option.
Turnbull doesn’t seem the quitting type to me. I suspect he’ll tough it out for a while by which time the bill will be passed.
Ultra optimistic indeed. I’d love it, but I don’t believe it. Turnbull will get this one up. I do think it’s better than nothing, as people will get used to it and then wonder what the fuss was about. In turn, better legislation can be passed
Second option – this one passes, so he enters more ambitious bill to act as DD trigger and pushes them further. This based on a reasonable response to the first legislation but a significant ‘should be stronger’ opinion on the crosstabs.
I can be optimistic too.
I’m hoping Abbott’s resignation marks the end for Abbott. I’m no Turnbull fan and no Liberal fan but Turnbull is about the best of a bad bunch.
Rudd will very probably win the next election but his second term will be a poisoned chalice. The Australian housing bust, the second round of the Global Recession/Depression and significant resource shortages all look likely to hit in the next term.
I was hoping something with the Greens might be done, last minute like.
JQ are you speaking as one of Australian’s leading academic economists?
Or as a supporter of the ALP?
@Ikonoclast
i hope so
As someone who would like to see a decent emissions trading scheme passed into law.
I don’t think the ALP has any need of my support now, or for the next three or four Parliaments. The global climate on the other hand, needs whatever help it can get.
Ah, OK JQ, a one issue man.
I agree with you on the next three or four terms.
I just don’t think there is a hope in hell that politicians, anywhere, can do anything about reducing CO2 emissions. Politicians are hard wired to fiddle and fudge.
That’s what Kyoto was and that’s what Copenhagen will be.
Adaptation will be the solution.
“In turn, better legislation can be passed”?
Like legislation that takes the $7 billion back from the the coal industry et al, and uses it to build renewable energy infrastructure then systematically closes down the coal industry as the renewable energy comes on line? That’s not even possible as a fantasy yet any policy that doesn’t propose closing down the coal industry as rapidly as possible is basically fraudulent. You can bet that it won’t even be discussed until every other scam, rort and rip-off has been worked through first. What puzzles me above all else why there a willingness to subsidise coal to such an extreme when so much manufacturing industry has been cheerfully put to the sword over recent decades?
Turnbull has always been impressive under pressure. And his stand here was what one has come to expect of him. The man’s got balls.
Let’s hope the odious, effete Abbott disappears without a trace. Leftists and ordinary workers hate him for his anti-labor stance, women hate him for his anti-reproductive freedom stance, and environmentalists hate him because he cares not a fig for the planet.
This is, I guess, what ALP partisans would be hoping for. If the Liberals put Abbott in charge then their electoral prospects will be trashed for a long. long time.
It remains to be seen whether Abbott can take over the Lib leadership. In the imbroglio so far, a majority of Liberals seemed to have held to the view that a realistic attitude to climate change is their only hope of electoral viability.
Of course, a significant majority now apparently think that Malcolm Turnbull, and the CPRS deal, are worse than electoral death. But if they don’t have the numbers, their only option is to walk.
I’d hesitate to say a split is on the cards, but it certainly seems more likely than at any time I can remember.
@Alicia
Hear hear Alicia. Abbott was only useful as some sort of JH sidekick – complete with sneering attack dog in parliament and he earned his reputation as being JHs bootlicker (actually he helped reduce parliament to a schoolyard in my opinion). The taint of workchoices is all over him. No hope there.
Malcolm’s got balls and Tony’s effete. Puh-lease. Hasn’t political analysis got beyond this?
I’ll definitely be doubly disillusioned if I have to choose between Labor and the Coalition anytime soon.
Anthony, I don’t think Ive watched anything more stomach-turnng than Abbott’s interview after his knifing (in theback!) of Turnbull. Turnbull’s dismemberment by lesser individuals wrapped up in an ideological psychosis, for trying to drag them into the twentieth, let alone twenty first century, allows Turrnbull the right to choose his own time to walk away regardless of any future party room spill, and he will walk away back to his North Shore mansion to look on in amusement, as these troglodytic myopes do what Labor did for ten years and keep themselves out of government, as befits juvenile delinquents.
John, in my opinion Turnbull will survive the ruckus and live to see another day even though there are vast ideological differences within the Liberal Party between the neo-conservative illywackers and the Turnbullities.
“The global climate on the other hand, needs whatever help it can get.”
I’ll go along with the notion that mitigation is justified for the moment.
The CPRS is just woeful.
I posted a simpler, better idea at catallaxy.
http://www.catallaxyfiles.com/blog/?p=7093&cpage=3#comment-168515
Fire away.
@Michael of Summer Hill
My bet is on Turnbull surviving this one. If not – my runner up bet is on Hockey. However if they dont get the illywhackers in line none of them will survive and thats preferable by a long shot. They really have lost it.First workchoices and now this fruit loop climate denialism mess. What planet did they come from?
A case of DNFTT
Not so long ago the economic right opposed abolition of slavery – (they lost that one).
They opposed the spreading of the franchise – (they lost that one).
They opposed equal rights for women – (they lost that one).
They opposed immigration – (they lost that one).
They opposed abortion rights – (they lost that one).
They opposed land rights for indigenous peoples – (they lost that one).
Now they oppose climate change but, true to form, this is just another issue they will naturally and assuredly loose.
As amusing as all this is, in the long-run, they are nothing but a noxious, reactionary rightwing “Tuckey-rump” in the Liberal Party.
If something unexpected happens, the Liberals will be wiped out at next election time.
So I hope Turnbull falls, as this will bring out the uglies in the Liberal party, and the electorate will take its revenge at the next opportunity. Most likely Australia will then be rid of the Liberals for many many years.
A win for everyone except Tuckey, Abbott, Schultz and co.
Even if Abbott takes the leadership tomorrow and changes the partyroom position on the CPRS, there could be enough votes to get it through. I imagine there would be enough Senators who don’t want to lose their job from a double dissolution happening.
Chris – how was Thomas Carlyle *economically right*?
How did George Reid oppose immigration to a greater extent than the ALP or Protectionists?
Abortion rights can be thought of as an exercise of the right to privacy vis a vis private property and self ownership.
Land rights are not strictly left or right. If you categorise me as *economically right*, it is my view that land rights don’t go far enough.
@Chris Warren
Sadly, if the right had their way they would undo all those ignominious defeats one after the other. Hopefully, the public is recognising just how loopy these people are.
I suppose it’s too much to hope that the decision by the coalition to support the deal will be bucked by the Liberals in the senate.
I think the time may have come for a bit of mischief making.
I think maybe posing as capital c-conservatives and writing to pro-CPRS senators may put the final nail in this rotten deal and send the conservative forces into the wilderness at the same time.
What’s not to like about that?
Time for a visit to the Andrew Bolt/Piers Akerman blogs …
Mark Hill
I never mentioned Carlyle, so why pit false words in my mouth. Anyway; Carlyle was a extreme rightist, based on undemocratic hero worship, enacted as a State function that led to a political disaster in Germany. According to Wikipedia….
Carlyle’s distaste for democracy and his belief in charismatic leadership was unsurprisingly appealing to Adolf Hitler, who was reading Carlyle’s biography of Frederick during his last days in 1945.
So two rats, who never met, recognised each other.
I never mentioned George Reid, and I suspect you have misrepresented him just as you did Carlyle.
Abortion rights do not conflict with privacy and do not involve private property rights nor ‘self ownership’ (whatever this is).
Yes the camouflaged-right do claim that Land Rights “do not go far enough”, but only because they want to force aborigines to buy their own homes, and have freehold rights to sell land to mining companies.
This is not just ‘economically right’ but ‘economically and socially rancid’.
@Alice
Joe Hockey knows he can’t win without being the catspaw of the anti-action on climate change forces. He will stay out of this I suspect, if he has any smarts at all. The party is headed down the toilet.
I suppose it’s too much to hope that the decision by the coalition to support the deal will be bucked by the Liberals in the senate.
I think the time may have come for a bit of mischief making.
I think maybe posing as capital c-conservatives and writing to pro-CPRS senators may put the final nail in this rotten deal and send the conservative forces into the wilderness at the same time. It would be delicious to be part of that.
What’s not to like about that?
Time for a visit to the Andrew Bolt/Piers Akerman blogs … Let’s get busy.
I’d feel so dirty 🙂
@nanks
What was Bismarck’s dictum here?
Nobody would eat sausage if they knew how it was made …
Chris,
You’ve inferred many “right” groups that have no preference to free enterprise are “economically right”. I assume that means that “economically right” doesn’t mean there is a preference towards free enterprise. You’ll have to call me something different.
I’d be interested to know why you think I’ve misrepresented Reid.
What is socially rancid about allowing Aborigines to be able to have their native title as freehold? It is economically retarding not treating them as equals. I can sell land I inherit but a native title holder can’t. I think that is systematic discrimination.
But now seriously…people are saying the Liberals are finished. People have been saying this since Rudd won in 07. Knowledgeable experts in political science were saying it too.
Does anyone reckon Rudd would win by a margin equal to or larger to what Howard had after Keating lost office? The ALP came back from that. Beazley gave Howard a good nudge as well.
The Liberals don’t have leadership but the ETS or any carbon tax is a lot less popular than most commenters here would want it to be. Rudd could be re-elected with a small increase in his majority in the House but the bill might be settled by a joint sitting.
The effect of minor parties in a DD might be totally unpredictable, except in hindsight.
The natural take for most pundits is that disunity is death but I’d caution against that in this case. You need to be careful not to conflate as Turnbull does in all his exhortations, that a vote against an ETS is to ‘do nothing on climate change’. Whilst it’s true that AGW skeptics would naturally object to an ETS it’s not clear that the electorate have been sold on the notion that an ETS is the answer to their clear environmental concerns, particularly now that the hard yards begin. Last weekend they were sampled for their views and with caution about the usual margin for error in mind-
“The Survey, commissioned by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Queensland, released by ACCI and undertaken by Galaxy Research over the weekend, indicates that:
• 71% believe a CPRS will raise electricity prices;
• 49% believe there would be job losses if we move in isolation;
• 82% do not believe enough information has been provided about the CPRS; and
• 54% believe Australia should delay introduction of a CPRS until after Copenhagen.”
As the LP rebels on this ETS legislation have found, they are largely being bombarded by strong opposition to this scheme at the eleventh hour from within their electorates, at the very moment the folly of Groupthink emanting out of EAU’s CRU is hitting the airwaves. As a result I’d caution against the traditional firm belief that disunity is death, when a sudden Rudd/Turnbull chumminess on ETS may simply smell of a Groupthink conspiracy out there in voterland. It will be interesting to see which way this breaks as I have a hunch there’s a firestorm developing out there that Rudd and Labor are oblivious to at present. You also need to remember that no double dissolution election could occur before Copenhagen and both Rudd and Turnbull will look a little silly if there’s no binding outcome achieved there again. We live in interesting times again.
Freelander, I wouldn’t worry about the neo-conservative illywackers toppling Turnbull for they never had the numbers. Its all a big bad dream for those going bonkers.
How the heck do you even begin to justify that remark. In the US context most people who say the “economic right” are probably refer to the Republican Party. However you can’t possibly be refering to them because as Wikipedia states:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Party_(United_States)
The first republican president was Abraham Lincoln. He waged a civil war to emancipate southern slaves.
In Britian anti-slavery activist William Wilberforce received support from Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger. William Pitt is often refered to as a Tory. So perhaps more notionally right than left.
John Stuart Mill – something of a poster boy amoungst classical liberals – opposed slavery and wrote a book called the “Subjagation of Women” in 1861 arguing that women ought to be regarded as equal to men.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill#Human_rights_and_slavery
I think the terms left and right are quite crude and unhelpful political classifications. You did qualify it with a reference to the “economic right” but this makes the remark even harder to justify. I can’t see any sense at all in what you are saying. You might as well be saying that the economic right eat babies and sacrifice virgins.
@TerjeP (say tay-a)
Terje – you know and I know the Republican party of its foundings in the 1800s was a completely different animal and closer to liberals (US for left) than it is today.
Alice – However I have no argument with the notion that the Republicans have changed since the 1800s just as everything else has changed. I suspect that in the 1800s everybody was more religious and socially conservative so in some regards they have perhaps changed less than other US political parties.
Slavery was abolished in the USA in the 1800s and in the context of the Republican party they were clearly on the right side of that moral debate.
However why on earth should Chris be permitted to get away with such a reckless reinvention of history. Next he will be claiming that Jesus was a member of the Labor party and Aristotle voted for Bob Brown. That the Liberal party was founded by Fred Flintstone and that The Australian Democrats were merely a myth.
oops. Ignore the “However”.
Its a bloodbath in LP this morning.
My bets looking safe. Hockey thinks he is the man..but not on this one he isnt. Just like workchoices the electorate will give Rudd the mandate he needs (which they have already given once). The denialists will sink in their own spin. They are well and truly in the desert now.
@TerjeP (say tay-a)
I did prefer Republican V1 Terje as I did prefer Liberal V1950s in Australia and yes on the slavery issue – Chris is not quite correct.
Chris Warren@#22 November 26th, 2009 at 21:23 said:
This list gets the Right wrong. In fact it was the Cultural Old Right, rather than Economic Right, that opposed most of these reforms. Most of these reforms were as much liberal as Left wing. The Economic Right is usually strongly in favour of liberal immigration: cheap labour.
But the Cultural Old Right has certainly lifted its game recently, opposing ideological insanity on both sides of politics, such as
– Invade-the-World (Iraq-attack)
– Invite the World (rampant unlawful immigration)
– Indebt-the-World (borrowing to the hilt from Red China to finance irrational speculation and conspicuous consumption)
One can run-off the same kind of shopping list of failures for the Broad Left. Not long ago it:
– supported nationalisation of the entire economy (they lost that one)
– supported Closed Shop unionism across-the-board (they lost that one)
– supported appeasement of the Soviet Union foreign policy (they lost that one)
– supported indigenous self-determination (they lost that one)
– supported hard-core multiculturalism (they lost that one)
– supported lenient prison sentences (they lost that one)
– opposed state aid to religious schools (they lost that one)
– opposed the GST (they lost that one)
The Left lived and learned from its failures.
Undoubtedly the Economic Right will lose on climate change. It will likewise live and learn.
Also the Republicans, at least in the North of the US, took a prominent position against slavery and later in favour of Civil Rights. Nixon worked for the passage of a Civil Rights bill in 1957. As did 80% of his fellow Republicans in 1968.
The subsequent reservations and opposition to further “rights-based agendas” that have come from the Right have been based on considerations of empirical common sense and ethical decency at the horrendous iniquities unleashed by nusto Left-liberal policies on vulnerable communities. Of which the complete anomic collapse in remote indigensous communities is only an extreme example.
Although the Right-liberals were responsible for the same process occurring in the CIS.
Now to deal with climate change we have an ETS, designed by liberal economists to reduce carbon emissions without taxing the economy unduly. It is designed to fail, as it has done.
So perhaps it is the newer form of liberalism that is the problem, not so much Right or Left.
@nanks
LOL Nanks ‘Id feel so dirty’ (know exactly what you mean but it could be fun to pose as a capital C) but Fran does have a point….delicious.
“Now to deal with climate change we have an ETS, designed by liberal economists to reduce carbon emissions without taxing the economy unduly. It is designed to fail, as it has done.”
Well Ken Davidson comes to the same conclusion as he reports the growing disquiet-
“Australia (and other countries) would be better off with no ETS. Two recent reports – The Brave New World of Carbon Trading by Australian ecological economist, Clive L. Spash, and A Dangerous Obsession by Friends of the Earth – spell out in detail why the attempt to deal with global warming by setting up ETS schemes have already failed, why they will continue to fail and also why governments, in thrall to financial interests, continue to persevere with them.”
Now Spash has been disciplined for breaking ranks with the lockstep Groupthinkers at CSIRO with the usual Groupspeak-
“CSIRO has a nationally recognised role as a trusted advisor on matters of science and as such it is important that all our staff are able to fulfil their duties in an apolitical, impartial and professional manner.”
Perhaps email that to the good folk at EAU CRU Dr Clark?
To those rubbing their hands together at the disagreement within the Coalition generally, all I can say is I’m very surprised at some of the negative response to an ETS from friends and acquaintances I’d usually associate with the left/green side of the political spectrum. There seems to be a strong feeling that this Rudd/Turnbull chumminess on ETS is just more feelgood politics and deal making with powerful vested interest groups with no real positive outcome for the environment. You look in the comments sections of MSM articles on this and there’s a strong negativity to it all but more interesting are the repeated calls for a referendum on this. That tells me people feel disenfranchised by Rudd and Turnbull Groupthink over this and the LP rebels know it. That’s just simple democracy at work and the Groupthinkers on this issue will ignore it at their peril. My take is you wouldn’t want to fight an election on it as that ACCI survey shows. Conflating opposition to an ETS with lack of concern for the environment is pure folly IMO and that’s what the Rudd/Turnbull/MSM nexus is trying to rush and hustle the electorate along with now. I reckon it’s getting their backs up.
@Mark Hill
Why a DC grid? Doesn’t that cause massive transmission losses over long distances? This seems like a red herring. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Currents#Early_transmission_analysis
@ Jack Strocci
It’s been repeatedly pointed out to you, with evidence, that your view of what remote indigenous communities are like is wrong, wrong, wrong.
I think this is the wrong thread. Maybe not, it’s all ETS related.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current#Advantages_of_HVDC_over_AC_transmission
This technology is solid state and did not exist in the Edison-Telsa battle.
Remember I’m saying this should be done with the earmarked revenue of a carbon tax to make geothermal etc more viable in the context of Government owned power generation.
I think it is fair to say it would be money better spent than the subsidies now in the CPRS or the poorly administered batt scheme.
senator.coonan
senator.fierravanti-wells
senator.Heffernan
senator.payne
senator.boyce
senator.brandis
senator.ian.macdonald
senator.mason
senator.trood
senator.Humphries
senator.birmingham
senator.fisher
senator.barnett
senator.bushby
senator.kroger
senator.ronaldson
senator.ryan
senator.troeth
senator.adams
senator.cash
senator.corman
senator.eggleston
senator.back
The above senators may well move the gag to get the CPRS through or otherwise vote for it. Anyone who would like to stop the CPRS, should use the above user names followed by “@” followed by “aph.gov.au”. I suggest we find as many people to contact them to ensure that the bill is defeated.
Enjoy
OK TerjeP
The right often reinterpret others words, to add-in convenient stupidities, instead of sensible commentary.
Needless to say – I do not believe that “The economic right eat babies and sacrifice virgins” and what I in fact said is not, in any way, consistent with TerjeP’s eating babies and sacrificing virgins.
If TergeP is feeling a bit vulnerable perhaps he is a “baby virgin” – I dunno?
If that is the level of TerjeP’s discourse – then fine, but why waste others time?
Jack Strocci
Cultural right and economic right are both of the same coin.
Your list of Broad Left is bizarre:
1. The Broad Left never
– supported nationalisation of the entire economy
2. The Broad Left never
– supported Closed Shop unionism across-the-board
3. The Broad Left never
– supported appeasement of the Soviet Union foreign policy
4. The Broad Left always
– supported indigenous self-determination and still a work-in-progress
5. The Broad Left never
– supported hard-core multiculturalism
6. The Broad Left never
– supported lenient prison sentences [This is a subjective canard]
7. Some Broad Left
– opposed state aid to religious schools [means testing is not opposition]
8. The Broad Left never
– opposed the GST as it was split on this issue. Anyway as Hewson found, it was the electorate that opposed the GST. Also Australia was forced into the GST by a rightwinger who lied to the public on this issue (saying ‘Never’) in order to get elected. We have now got rid of him.
Maybe “Its Time” to revisit the GST issue. Why should poor people pay the same tax for a service as a millionaire? Why should all goods and services be taxed at the same rate?
I have no problem in principle with a GS&T Chris. I do believe though that the funds raised should be deployed to address the inequity of such a regressive system. If this were done consistently and coherently through the provision of quality service in kind — housing, transport, communal kitchens, public education upgrades, before and after school care at high school level, health clinics, pre-school case management etc then in effect the arrangements would be progressive as the funding would be a transfer from the middle class and above to the disadvantaged but in ways that would be difficult to rort.
James@#43 November 27th, 2009 at 09:45
I know, by the same kinds of knaves and fools responsible for setting up and administering that unfolding slow-motion disaster. The “evidence” they present is of similar credibility, being mainly in the nature of cover ups and smokescreens so belatedly blown by “Little Children are Sacred” report.
If you want your credibility downgraded to “zero” keep going in that direction.
I’ve been there a number of times. I know what my lyin’ eyes saw.
The Church disgraced itself by covering up similar episodes of abuse as they came to light over the past generation. Left-liberal agit-props and apparats achieved an epic fail on this issue and only exacerbate the disgrace with denial.
Strocchi’s Law of Ideological Ass Symmetry