While tensions may be simmering beneath the fragile veneer of a supposedly “united team,” the spectre of Industrial Relations and the emerging sense that the Liberal Party needs to establish some clear policy credentials is beginning to haunt Tony Abbott who thus far has simply relied on the tried and true tactic of simply opposing any initiative put forward by the government.

One only need look at the latest polls to see that this approach is paying off, however it’s unlikely that this strategy will hold water until the next election – particularly when the current carbon tax debate will be done and dusted, and a distant memory by 2013.

Mr Abbott has consistently said that WorkChoices is “dead, buried and cremated,” however he is now under some considerable pressure from within his own ranks to revisit the party’s main reason for being – industrial relations reform.

It is a subject that has been broached in the past by the WorkChoices architects Nick Minchin and Eric Abetz, and now has attracted the outspoken support of former Howard government minister Peter Reith, as well as John Howard himself yesterday.

Mr Howard has issued a stark warning to the Liberal party that they will need to revisit industrial relations before the next election.

https://guttertrash.wordpress.com/2011/07/18/howard-challenges-abbott-to-revisit-workchoices/

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott appears to have executed his second policy U-turn in 24 hours, affirming the Opposition's emissions reduction target as 5 per cent despite describing the figure yesterday as "crazy".

Mr Abbott told a public forum of retirees on the Gold Coast yesterday the emissions reduction target of 5 per cent below 2000 levels was "crazy" because China will be pumping out far more pollution.

However, both the Government and the Opposition support the 5 per cent target.

This morning Prime Minister Julia Gillard challenged Mr Abbott to explain why he had done a "backflip" on the reduction target.

"Yesterday, he now appears to be saying, well he doesn't want to be doing anything at all, and he needs to answer for all of that," she told ABC radio in Newcastle.

Now, Mr Abbott says he was talking about the different ways of arriving at the 5 per cent target.

"Let me make it crystal clear. The Government and the Opposition are both committed to a 5 per cent reduction in emissions by 2020," Mr Abbott told reporters today.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-07-19/tony-abbott-emissions-comment/2800910

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Anone who trust Icarius Tonicchio is crazy... He deliberately says gross things to confuse the issues and gain monetum by pedalling backwards and claim with a pounding of the chest that he is reasonable... The same tactic was used by his "daddy" Howard when doing his stints of hot and cold showers plus non-core and core ways to ffffffffff us... Tonicchio is rotten to the core and not committed to anything...

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has challenged Tony Abbott to explain why he described his own party's emissions reduction target as "crazy".

The Opposition Leader told a public forum of retirees on the Gold Coast yesterday that the "crazy thing" about the target of 5 per cent below 2000 levels by 2020 was that China would be pumping out far more pollution.

However, both the Government and the Opposition support the 5 per cent target, and Ms Gillard says the Opposition Leader needs to explain why he has done a "backflip" on the reduction target.

"He now appears to be saying ... he doesn't want to be doing anything at all, and he needs to answer for all of that," she told ABC Local Radio in Newcastle.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-07-19/gillard-on-abbott-crazy-comment/2800486

Dear dear Julia...

Please do not ask Tonicchio to explain his crazy talks... He does say crap, deliberately to gain a few notches in the rabid department, then hone back and explain how reasonable he is — which of course HE ISN'T. But that's the trick he's been using over and over again — a trick learned from the master of deception, John Howard...

When Tony says something crazy just point out how crazy he is... Don't challenge him... let him simmer in his own mess... He'll soon pipe down...

Close Australian shares rallied today, with strong gains across the board adding $23 billion to the market's value, on hopes the US debt impasse is nearing its end.

At the close, the benchmark S&P/ASX200 index was up 81.6 points, or 1.8 per cent, at 4549.7, its best day since December 2, while the broader All Ordinaries index jumped 79 points, or 1.7 per cent, to 4618.4.

All sectors were in the black, with financials rallying 2.1 per cent and materials rising 1.8 per cent.

need2know:
- The dollar jumps 1 cent to $US1.0737
- Asian stocks rally on deficit-cut plan
- Gold edges higher to $US1609
- WTI crude oil jumps above $US98
- Dow futures rise 17 points to 12,524

RBS Morgans private client advisor Bill Bishop said progress in the US debt stalemate had given the market confidence.

Tony Abbott has had to correct his second climate change policy gaffe in as many days, as Julia Gillard's job to sell her policy grew harder with the launch of a $10 million advertising campaign backed by angry industry groups.

Mr Abbott was accused by the government of deliberately misleading people when he told a radio station that although he supported reducing carbon dioxide emissions, ''I've never been in favour of a carbon tax or an emissions trading scheme''.

This statement was at odds with several public comments he made in support of both a carbon tax and an ETS during 2009, when Malcolm Turnbull was trying to negotiate an ETS with Kevin Rudd.

For example, in October, 2009, Mr Abbott said: ''We don't want to play games with the planet so we are taking this issue seriously and we would like to see an ETS.''

Mr Abbott changed his mind just before he rolled Mr Turnbull on December 1, 2009, telling his leader he was a ''weather vane'' on the issue.

After taking the leadership, Mr Abbott changed Coalition policy to one of opposing a price on carbon.

Confronted with his past comments yesterday, Mr Abbott said he had never supported a carbon tax or ETS since becoming leader.

Two days ago he was forced to clean up after himself when he described Labor's target of reducing emissions by 5 per cent by 2020 as ''crazy'', even though his direct action policy shares the same target.

Abbott Falters With Second Carbon Gaffe

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has attacked Prime Minister Julia Gillard's suggestions that the Murdoch-owned News Limited has "hard questions to answer" saying they are a "thinly veiled attempt to intimidate the press".

Yesterday, Ms Gillard demanded that News Limited answer questions about its conduct in Australia in the wake of the British phone-hacking scandal. 

But Mr Abbott says Ms Gillard's comments have nothing to do with the News of the World phone-hacking scandal and are instead a bid by the Government to avoid scrutiny. 

"Frankly it demeans our polity for this kind of thing to go on. Prime ministers of Australia should be better than that and I call on the Prime Minister to put up or shut up when it comes to those sorts of issues," he said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-07-21/abbott-on-news-ltd-hard-questions/2804430

He would say that, the little rat... Most of the press is giving him a free run... when the press actually should run him down for telling porkies. Sad hypocrite....

2. Tony Abbott is claiming he never supported an emissions trading scheme. Jaded observers will interpret this as simply another instance of Abbott revisionism, but I think it's a crucial new development. It demonstrates that the Leader of the Opposition is now prepared to deny even things that he has put in writing. Moreover, The Age references a recent public meeting in South Dandenong at which Mr Abbott explained to the audience why carbon dioxide is difficult to measure in the atmosphere: "It's actually pretty hard to do thus because carbon dioxide is invisible and it's weightless and you can't smell it." Having thus rendered carbon dioxide formally non-existent, Mr Abbott nevertheless maintains his intention to give this wily non-gas a hard time in the years between now and 2020, by soaking it up with extra trees and burying pellets of it in people's paddocks. But he will encourage new brown-coal power stations, apparently: Verdict: Stay In Bed. Place Pillow Over Face.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-07-21/crabb-there-are-days-when-politics-just-gives-me-the-sheets/2804736

Good one, Annabel...  Dish it equally to the PM and Tony Abbott at the same time...That's the spirit... But the main problem with News Ltd and the PM is that the honchos there HATE HER! THEY DO! So they're doing everything in the book of tricks to denigrate her, while, even you, Annabel, must admit she's not doing such a bad job ON ALL FRONTS. But the News Ltd campaign is bearing fruit if you think she does... Meanwhile as you know Tony is a little shit for changing his mind and telling us he doesn't... So HE LIES and News Ltd LOVES his lies... and they also LOVE those of that phoney Lord of the Lies Monckton... One cannot be even-handed any more... One has to protect Julia no matter what or we will end up with Tony da Porkie... This would be a travesty of politics.

Quitter!... Com'on! Get out bed and fight!!!

 from Crikey .....

Abbott Unbound -- free of the shackles of truth and consistency

Crikey Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes:

CARBON PRICING PACKAGE, CLIMATE CHANGE, TONY ABBOTT

Tony Abbott's tendency to utter whatever comes into his head certainly isn't doing him any harm. In one week, he's racked up three howlers on a carbon price. They've all received critical media coverage. But you get the impression the public doesn't particularly care.

The noteworthy feature of the current "debate" over the employment and cost-of-living impacts of a carbon price is that we appear to have reached a standard in public discourse where the truth, or consistency, aren't preferred positions any more; that something happens to be true or logically coherent or consistent isn't especially relevant, certainly not more so than whether it sounds clear, has "cut-through", reinforces people's expectations rather than runs counter to them, and most of all suits a preferred narrative.

Or perhaps it's not so much the case that we've abandoned the idea that truth is important, as that we've adjusted our standards about truth. My facts are now as good as your facts, regardless of whether they are indeed correct. And, really, everyone has a right to their own facts; insisting on one set of "true" facts is, well... let's call it what it is: blatant censorship.

The chattering classes need to stop trying to impose their own elitist concept of facts on the facts of large corporations -- validated, of course, by originating in the real world of private enterprise -- and climate denialists.

Of course, the Right -- frequently in the form of ex-Marxists -- used to stand guard against trendy academics advocating exactly this sort of relativism. Much fun was to be had, and rightly so, at the expense of Cultural Studies academics (RIP "The Humanities") and their war on that tool of white patriarchal capitalist genocidal oppression, logic-centric discourse. But we couldn't expect them to hold out forever, so cut them some slack. The castle of reason has been overrun; the survivors will have to take to the hills and turn to irregular warfare.

Oddly, despite the media attention, most missed Mr Abbott's particularly risible remark. It wasn't merely that Abbott claimed he had never supported a carbon tax or an ETS -- a claim so demonstrably untrue even The Australian mentioned it. He belatedly qualified that by adding the caveat "as leader" hours later, the worst recovery since Basil Fawlty, learning his American guest enjoyed the works of Harold Robbins, pretended to be lambasting someone else. "Oh Harold Robbins. I was talking about... Harold Robinson."

But it was what Abbott said immediately before that that was more interesting, when asked about whether he thought climate change was a myth:

"Yeah look I never said it was a myth. I once used some colourful language describing the so-called settled science of climate change but look, climate change is real, humanity does make a contribution to it and we've got to take effective action against it. I mean, that's my position and that's always been my position but I've never been in favour of a carbon tax or an emissions trading scheme."

Abbott's difficulty in asserting he has never believed something is of course problematic because he has professed to believe everything at various points. As we know from his no-holds-barred debate with himself, Abbott once claimed "atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have significantly increased since the spread of industrialisation, but it seems that noticeable warming has only taken place between the 1970s and 1990s", that "notwithstanding the dramatic increases in man-made CO2 emissions over the last decade, the world's warming has stopped" and that "there may even have been a slight decrease in global temperatures (the measurement data differs on this point) over the past decade." Although, we're still waiting for Greg Hunt's "direct action" plan to combat the coming Ice Age.

Indeed, on the issue of human contribution to climate change, don't get Tony started. Climate change has "been happening since the earth's beginning. The extinction of the dinosaurs is thought to have been associated with climate change" and "climate change happens all the time and it is not man that drives those climate changes back in history. It is an open question how much the climate changes today and what role man plays."

But then again, for every quote from Abbott asserting humans have nothing to do with climate change and the planet's getting cooler, you can find Abbott averring that climate change is indeed real and human-caused and needs action -- action, of course, by a carbon tax, the preferred approach of the "intelligent sceptic".

But that's the Opposition Leader for you, a man who has kicked free of the shackles of truth and consistency. Tony Abbott's on course to be our first post-modern Prime Minister. He's the big-government social engineer who enthuses about small government, the global cooling carbon tax advocate who wants direct action to address global warming, the proponent of lower taxes who proposes his own new taxes, the economics graduate who doesn't grasp economics, the leader who urged Peter Reith to run for the party presidency then voted against him, the bloke who wants to stop the boats via policies that in the past guaranteed asylum seekers came to Australia.

And, to recycle John Howard's famous line, the time will suit him.

From Annabel Crabb

The Opposition Leader's discomfiture in the face of certain large repositories of expertise is a matter of record.

He disapproves of climate scientists, of Australian economists on the whole, and he has no time at all for the work of Treasury officials, which should make things fairly interesting should the public distaste for Julia Gillard bear its probable fruit two years hence, and install Mr Abbott as their lord and master. Awkward.

After several months spent demanding details of the Government's carbon tax, Mr Abbott has not let the details themselves break his stride for a nanosecond. Treasury can predict until it's blue in the face that the cost of living will rise by a modest 0.7 per cent; Mr Abbott doesn't believe it, and campaigns accordingly.

In one sense, he's living the dream. A political campaign that is 100 per cent rhetoric is - to any politician - as a milkshake that is 100 per cent Milo would be to any child. And after all, as Reagan famously told the Republicans in 1988: "Facts are stupid things"

-------------------

Thanks, Annabel, for starting to see the light about Tony versus Julia.... Tony is a pathological liar and lies whenever he can, which is ALL THE TIME. Tony is bad, real bad — simple ... And please bag the Murdoch press that has been supporting this little shit.

BRITAIN'S Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron, has personally congratulated Julia Gillard on her carbon tax policy in a letter penned from the desk of 10 Downing Street.

In a clear embarrassment to the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, and his Coalition - who have vehemently opposed any price on carbon - Mr Cameron described the federal Labor government's move on climate change as "bold" and "ambitious".

Mr Cameron said he was convinced climate change was one of the "most pressing threats to [a nation's] prosperity and security".

"I have always been clear that in order to tackle it [climate change] effectively, all major economies will need to take robust action to curb their emissions and put their economies on a more sustainable, low-carbon footing," he said.

The Tory Prime Minister - who, like Ms Gillard, leads a minority government cobbled-together in a coalition of unlikely and ideologically contrasted political allies - reiterated his stance that the world's largest economies had a responsibility to address climate change.

"Your announcement sends a strong and clear signal that Australia is determined to make its contribution to addressing this challenge," he said. "It will add momentum to those, in both the developed and developing world, who are serious about dealing with this urgent threat."

THE former NSW minister John Della Bosca has called the federal government's carbon tax a mistake and the ''craziest thing'' the Prime Minister could have done.

He is the second senior NSW Labor figure after former premier Morris Iemma to criticise his federal colleagues for introducing a carbon tax.

''I'm not a climate sceptic,'' he said. ''Action on climate change is one thing. But I think the carbon tax is a mistake. It's the craziest thing she [Gillard] could have done.''

---------------------------

John Della Bosca is not a bad bloke but he is committed Christian, and he erred a bit somewhat...

His wife Belinda Neal may be a hard cookie to live with but then the good old John had an affair with a 26 year old woman...

Some people have commented:

I'm sure anyone would be tempted to infidelity if they were shacked up with Belinda "Iguana-gate" Neal.

Della Bosca was surely angry, too. He contained it. ''I've taken my medicine, I have to live up to my poor decisions.'' He regretted the ''embarrassment to my colleagues, my friends, my community, my church and my family''.

A Catholic and an old boy of De La Salle at Cronulla, he said he did not want to pass judgment on the woman for going public.

No that the Church can take blame for these "poor personal decisions" as Della Bosca calls them, but the tendency seems for politicians to evoke their religious status after their scandals. Nice of him not to "pass judgement" - as if he was in a moral position to do so.

http://unbelief.org/forum/index.php?action=printpage;topic=1024.0

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Yes I know that not many of the catholics in the Labor party Love Julia... See she's not one of god's mob and she lives in sin... I've heard some really nasty comments from that corner of god's gift... But take your effing medicine your people of little faith in science. Julia's carbon tax is the right thing to do, though it might make you uncomfortable. Della Bosca is not in a position to say anything. Sure the carbon reduction scheme in New South Wales was a good thing but it had reached its used-by-date, mostly because Tony Abbott has destroyed people's goodwill... And it would not have cut full mustard with the Greens. Thus once more, there would not have been any movement to save the planet...

John Della Bosca, even if you disagree, you should shut up and let Julia do what she did — it takes guts.

John, you are the crazy one...