Wednesday 15th of May 2024
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a broad church .....

a broad church .....

from Crikey .....

So how come an ETS was OK under John Howard? Ask the oldies .....

Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes:

What's happening in the Liberal Party is an attempted right-wing putsch by people -politicians, party officials and party members - who strangely found an ETS much easier to live with when the Liberal Party was ruled by the conservative John Howard.

Older people, who think the certainties of the Howard years can be magically restored.

Several commentators have suggested Malcolm Turnbull has suffered the same fate as Meg Lees (albeit rather more quickly than the demise of the Senate School ma'am, which took months). But there's one crucial difference. Turnbull is implementing the policy the Coalition took to the last election, the one to which John Howard committed his Coalition, - not just his party, but his Coalition, and not via some sneaky process, but publicly, and in the joint partyroom, and through Cabinet.

And Kevin Rudd's CPRS, with its generous handouts to big polluters and its ineffectiveness in actually reducing carbon emissions, is as near as damnit to what John Howard would have lumbered us with.

So where was the Liberal membership when all that was going on? Weren't they paying attention when John Howard shook Peter Shergold's hand and thanked him for his report, or when Howard eagerly declared at his debate with Kevin Rudd that he would be introducing "the world's most comprehensive emissions trading scheme"? Why weren't they whipped into a frenzy by Alan Jones three years ago?

And where were Nick Minchin and Tony Abbott? Liberal Party members might have had an excuse for not paying attention, but Minchin and Abbott were right there in the Cabinet room. In fact, until about five minutes ago, Abbott was all for passing the CPRS.

Perhaps Turnbull's strategy is to wait a day or two, by which time Abbott will have changed his mind yet again and backed the CPRS deal.

And for that matter, where were Minchin and Abbott on Wednesday, at 1pm, when Turnbull invited his party to vote on a leadership spill? Abbott said at his press conference yesterday, - where he was more insipid and uninspiring than Kevin Andrews the day before, that he was "too shellshocked" by the week's events to act earlier.

"Shellshocked." Hell, Peter Costello never even used that excuse.

What in fact happened was that the conservatives were so staggeringly inept that their plan to knock off their leader never got out of the starting blocks because Turnbull played the oldest trick in the book, bringing on the spill before they were ready. Now Tony Abbott is hoping that, with a few more days to get the numbers together, they can succeed where this week they so miserably failed. But this week they wouldn't have faced Joe Hockey, who will almost certainly step up if Turnbull resigns next week.

Sorry Tony, this week was your shot, mate, and, 'shellshocked' or not, you blew it.

This is in two ways a generational battle for the Liberal Party.

The Liberal base, as they say in Adland, "skews old". Really old. The Liberal base is essentially small businessmen and woman and a blue-rinse tribe of over-50 - often over-60 - wealthy suburbanites and self-funded retirees. It's no wonder that the conspiracy theories of Alan Jones, the Dan Brown of Australian radio, have sent many of them into a frenzy - it's the same geriatric audience as the Liberal Party. They are the ones who have assailed Liberal Party phones, fax machines and email in-boxes this week.

And they are people who don't believe in climate change and won't live to see its more substantial effects even if they do.

They are necessary but not sufficient for the conservative side of politics to be competitive electorally. Nowhere near sufficient. An electoral strategy to appeal to the base will achieve just that - a base vote.

It's also a generational battle within Parliamentary ranks. Both sides have their older and younger members. Wilson Tuckey might be 74 but Petro Georgiou is 62. For every Simon Birmingham (35, disgustingly young) there's a Matthias Cormann, 39. But the conservatives and denialists have an average age of 54, whereas the moderates and advocates of climate change action average just under 46.

It's a generational split that mirrors that of the community itself, in which climate change denialism tends to be the fetish of older people.

The conservatives are also led by the Howard stalwarts, Abbott and Minchin and Abetz.

The Liberals could have avoided this immensely damaging split, and relatively easily. John Howard read the electoral signs and began moving belatedly on climate change in his last term. If he had moved more quickly, and legislated an ETS using his personal dominance of the party to keep the denialists at bay, Australia would have an ETS much like the one it will end up with from Labor, without the Liberal Party having torn itself apart and consumed two leaders and counting over it.

Howard was an enormously successful leader. He gave the party four terms in Government, a record only bettered by Menzies. But it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Liberals are now reaping what he sowed through all those years of refusing to accept climate change.

To me Howard is a nasty word but...

G'day John,

The shambles of the Liberal Party in my opinion is not due to the demise of the “G.W. Bush advocate and general backside kisser” namely John Howard for one absolute reason and that is because Howard’s policies were dictated and supported by the Terrorist U.S. Administration. And Murdoch was a powerful ally.

 

I cannot remember any policy, especially foreign policy, which Howard had actually concocted himself – without the dictates of the US being paramount – hence perhaps the responsibility for his Climate Change denial.

 

He was without doubt a Corporation’s Government - of the people - by the Corporations and for the Corporations. “The Power was with him”!

 

As the effect of unrestrained pollution of the planet by the industrial Corporations became known even by the “Galileo” scientists, as far back as the turn of the 20th Century.  Corporations have controlled the attitudes of most governments of the “civilized” world by arguing that it creates employment. How kind are they?

 

This is merely an admission that IF they have unrestricted power they will make their profits by reducing business taxes and selling the Australian citizen’s assets to foreign interests.  This gives them (like Menzies) the appearance of budgets with surplus when in fact, it is the abdication of duty of care for the citizens that have trusted them.

 

I could never come to understand the media when they talked about Costello paying off the Labor Party’s debt. My figures can be checked but, as I remember, when Howard/Costello took office in 1996 the foreign debt was in the region of $198 billion and when they left office it was over $700 billion!

 

And yet the ABC,with compliments to Fran Kelly, portrayed Howard as a financial and foreign policy genius! Struth.

 

So we come to the reason/s that the Liberal/National parties are imploding?

 

Big business in Australia is nervous, not only because of the Wall Street caused world financial collapse (mainly due to business CEOs and their unrestricted greed) but, I believe that the calm attitude of the Rudd government has given them some dearly needed confidence.  Ergo, NOT the defeat (even in his own seat) of the Howard “New Order” is the cause of the Coal-itions problems but, the world wide abhorrence for the policies that the Bush/Howard regimes advocated and has become public outrage.

 

IMHO John, the conflict in the conservative ranks is not only a leadership problem but rather just another fault in the Howard ignorance to reality. In other words, the Coal-ition is torn between the pro-Corporation’s attitudes as to how they can continue to con our citizens that their jobs are more important than the survival of the planet and the fast becoming acceptance of the “Galileo” experience.

 

The Turnbull policy of honoring your promise (and in a Court of Law that carries a lot of weight) is to many of these “born to rule” politicians contrary to their “right to rule”.

 

Malcolm Turnbull IMHO has no option but to take on the Conservatives and the Nationalist hypocritical Nationalist leader in the Senate – the “no sale of Telstra” Barnaby Joyce.

 

Just digressing, - I listened to the speech of this un-Australian in the Senate where he repeated his desire to protect the “working people of Australia”.  Only Penny Wong picked up this hypocrite on the fact that he had voted in favor of Howard’s “WorkChoices” policy.

 

That is about as good as the promise he made to his Queensland electorate that he would not allow the sale of Telstra.   Elected - and he supported the sale.

 

I can’t stand Malcolm but, he is the only conservative who, with Ian MacFarlane, has demonstrated an attitude of honor?

 

Cheers John.

 

God Bless Australia.  NE OUBLIE .

 

 

 

 

It is what they do not what they say.

If only – the saddest words one can imagine.

 

The media is having a ball in rewarding or condemning the actions of our unstable parliament.

 

IMHO the issue continues to be the State Representatives in the Senate controlling the decisions of the elected House of Representatives.  A shambles it is.

 

The results of such a surely unintended arrangement can only achieve two things – either the Senate can vote against any legislation that a party of a different persuasion puts forward by simply exercising their political advantage or, they can merely fall into line (as they did with Howard) and rubber stamp any matter that his “New Order” wanted to ram through.

 

Conversely, if I remember correctly, Malcolm Fraser also had a Senate advantage but never abused it?  A man with dignity?  Very rare and easily forgotten.

 

The media-loved but embarrassing performance of the “party of born to rule” members have – if anything – demonstrated the unworkable arrangement that a State elected body of individuals can not only exercise their Constitutional defense of issues concerning the welfare of their state, but to disadvantage the vested interests of the other States.  Under the Constitution, I don’t believe that the defense of one’s State was intended to be used to emasculate the elected Federal Government of Australia.

 

I have long lost any respect for the so-called State Senators.

 

“Review” is, I believe, expected to defend, if it is necessary, the interests of the State which elected them.  I did not vote for Barnaby Joyce – or Fielding – or Minchin – or any other of those people who seem to control my parliament.

 

God Bless Australia.  NE OUBLIE.