Malcolm Turnbull and Labor’s ETS
From the editorial in today’s Sunday Telegraph:
Let’s recap what is being proposed here: a major reform of the nation’s economy that, for the first time, will put a priceon the carbon emissions that underpin Australia’s prosperity.
The Coalition will not be implementing this. The Rudd Government will.
It is Mr Turnbull’s job to hold the Government to account, to expose the flaws in the scheme and to speak up in the interests of Coalition voters.
Instead, he was suckered into negotiating the shape of the ETS by the Government in a classic example of the kind of wedge politics that Labor used to accuse John Howard of playing in government.
He shouldn’t have been co-opted.
The Opposition should have simply waited until the legislation was presented and decided on its stance. Instead, Mr Turnbull was too keen to distance himself from the Howard Government and the allegations that the Liberals were slowto act on climate change.
He forgot that governments govern and oppositions oppose. Now he has been forced to stake his leadership on the success of a Government initiative.
In his heart, Turnbull is more supportive of the climate change argument despite a growing number of distinguished sceptics coming forward on an almost daily basis. Among the latest has been Lord Christopher Monckton, a former policy adviser to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
Monckton told a conference in Calgary on Thursday that the science linking rising CO2 levels to calamitous environmental consequences is fatally flawed.
The latest studies – based on direct measurements in the atmosphere rather than frequently cited, notoriously misleading computer modelling – say the expected warming from the doubling of carbon dioxide (CO2) between now and 150 years hence is going to be one-sixth of previous UN Climate Panel estimates.
