Tony Abbot’s screws fall out
July 24th, 2009 at 11:48am
Tony urges the Liberal party to vote for the Emission Trading Scheme so that they’re not faced with what he believes would be an unwinnable double-dissolution election. Tony, comments like that are what we call “out of touch”, and create unwinnable elections.
TONY Abbott has urged Liberal MPs to back the embattled leadership of Malcolm Turnbull and asked them to pass Kevin Rudd’s flawed emissions trading scheme in the Senate to avoid a double-dissolution election that they cannot win.
The one-time leadership opponent to Mr Turnbull has turned into his staunchest public defender and has appealed to Liberal MPs to “allow” the Opposition Leader to exercise his assessment on emissions trading and to save the Coalition “from a fight it can’t win”.
[..]
Mr Abbott’s strong advocacy of Mr Turnbull’s right to change the party’s position threatens to fuel divisions over climate change. Last night, the Liberal leader in the Senate, Nick Minchin, another conservative on the issue, told ABC TV’s Q&A program the Coalition would block the emissions trading scheme in the Senate next month.“We don’t think parliament should be presented with legislation on this subject until after we know the outcome of Copenhagen,” Mr Minchin said.
“We will vote against this legislation in August, as will every other non-government senator.”
Although Mr Abbott believes an emissions trading scheme won’t cut global carbon emissions and that it will cost jobs, the conservative Liberal frontbencher and Howard government minister has called for Liberals to pass the ETS in the Senate and avoid a double-dissolution election.
That’s a corker of a paragraph…Tony wants to pass legislation that he thinks will hurt the country, just so that he can save his seat in parliament for a few extra months.
Padders notes on his blog:
It’s about time the Coalition, and the Liberals in particular, grew some backbone, not to mention some common sense. They should not vote for the ETS. Thousands of conservative supporters and members of which I am one, want to see some courage from the opposition, not a betrayal of principles.
Don’t worry Padders, I think it’s just one self-important windbag. Any coalition MP worth a cent of their income, let alone their seat in parliament, will not side with his utter lunacy.
At least The Nationals are all on the same page, as Andrew Bolt noted on his blog.
We will not support a scheme that costs Australian jobs, we won’t support a scheme that delivers nothing for the Australian environment and we won’t support a scheme that is way out of kilter with what’s happening in the rest of the world. We have principles. We have issues that we stand up for and if we want the public to support us in an election—whether it be a normal, routine election in two years or some kind of contrived double dissolution—then the public will want to be sure we’re standing up for things and that we will deliver better outcomes for the country.
Precisely. Liberal Party take note and preselect somebody else to run in Tony’s electorate at the next election.
Samuel
Entry Filed under: General News,Global Warming,Samuel's Editorials
