Saturday
Sep072013
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Aussie elections open thread
Sep 7, 2013 Climate: Parliament Foreign Here's a thread for anyone who wants to discuss the Australian election result. What does it mean?
Sep 7, 2013 Climate: Parliament Foreign
Reader Comments (104)
johanna
Good news from Oz ! The first Carbon Tax to bight the dust. The BBC are blaming Tony Abbott's win on :-
"Under Mr Rudd, Labor initially saw its figures improve. But Mr Abbott, who enjoyed the strident support of Rupert Murdoch's newspapers, then widened the gap again"
Is not yet clear whether Abbott will have the support he needs to repeal the carbon tax. As an aside I find Australian politicians 'an acquired taste'
I was watching a live Twitter feed from ABC as the count went on. Even better news for Aussie is that just about every leftist who "tweeted" - and there were a lot of them - were promising to leave the country.
I wonder where they would go?
nTropywins
Tony Abbott has made a promise to ditch the carbon tax even if he has to call a double dissolution to achieve it. Labor have no ethics at all if they block it in the Senate after Julia Gillard
" There will be no carbon tax in any government I lead" It will expose them as total hypercrites where as they can recover some respect if the let it through the Senate; they have a lot to loose from an early double election.
nTropywins: Got a reference on that? I was struck by Abbott's confidence in his victory speech that this means the end of the carbon tax. I've always loved Australians as well - and this one was born in Britain. What's not to like so far?
Euphoria will give way to something more realistic no doubt. But after Canada I can't read this as bad for those of us concerned about climate truth and energy freedom.
Ross Lea: Thanks, that explains a lot more. Keep us posted.
From: The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet
To: The Department of Climate Change
As your department has been deemed by my government to be of absolutely no use whatsoever, could the last persons leaving your buildings please turn off the lights and disconnect all coffee machines from the power points.
Thankyou,
Tony Abbott
Prime Minister
8 September 2013
The key thing to note is that the results of the Senate election don't kick in until June next year.
So even if the Coalition wins the Senate today, it still faces 9 months dealing with the current Green-dominated Senate.
Richard Drake
Thanks but I am sure Johanna knows far more about the situation than I do and I look forward to her comments.
As one of the Australian posters here it went pretty much as expected. It wasn't as bad as it looked under the previous Labor leader but it's a solid loss, the final seat tally will take a few days.
Quite a few politicians of the last few years are now gone and for the losers it's about generational change.
I would say Climate Change is dead as a major issue in Australian politics for a while.
Jeez. This is a bad time to open this thread. Its 11:15 Japan time, therefore 01:15 EST. Johanna's going to be under the doona with her stuffed koala.
Its all looking good. Ex-Labor voter looking forward to a Liberal landslide. eSmiff will be happy, its pure class warfare, and we workers are voting conservative :)
Rudd was going to ditch the carbon tax anyway and planned to link up to the EU ETS by 2018 (conveniently far away). Carbon policies are a vote loser for any party so if Rudd opposes Abbott's reforms it will be hypocracy and a big mistake.
Bloomberg
The 'carbon tax' won't be gone ...for 'three years'. Three years is a long time. I'm sure a party in power three years from now would apply all possible effort to lever out a source of cash flow.
Don't cheer too soon for the end of the carbon tax. Abbot is, after all, a politician...
No Rudd was going to link up to the EU ETS from 2014 (as your Bloomberg link shows). This was 1 year earlier than their initial plan of 2015.
This was never going to be possible with the current senate sitting until June 30th 2014, it was a hollow promise the moment he made it.
Labor campaigned on a much reduced carbon tax, the Liberal National coalition on no carbon tax. There's not much difference, the carbon tax is dead politically in Australia.
The BBC says that Tony Abbot "used to" be sceptical of climate change. It couldn't bring itself to say that he still is.
Richard Drake
I dont claim to understand Australian politics and don't trust anything with the name 'Guardian' in it. Subject to those caveats here is a link
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/07/tony-abbott-new-prime-minister
David Chappell - Tony Abbott won the Liberal (UK Tory) leadership in opposition because of the carbon tax. Then in opposition he destroyed one prime minister and then another because of the carbon tax. Yes other matters played a part but for at least five years he said he would get rid of the carbon tax. Signed in blood he said, which was perhaps a little over the top.
Make no mistake. He WILL get rid of the carbon tax, even if it takes a double dissolution of both the house of representatives and the senate to do it. If he does not he loses all credibility and he knows that.
And given that it will take at least two terms before Labor has a chance of forming government again, we can forget about carbon taxes, emission trading schemes and all the associated bullshit that goes with them for six years. By which time everyone might have got over the current fad and moved on to other things to worry about.
Thank god we live in a democracy. Happy days in Terra Australis.
nTropywins: I'll read it holding my nose, as usual :)
'What does it mean?'
___
One presumes this means elsewhere like, say, here?
One would like to think such a result might give certain politicians and media pause to consider what words and deeds find favour with electorates once realities and consequences bite, and how confusing representing with ruling or controlling edit suites is still not quite enough to make the move from ballot-based choices or flat-out misinforming.
However, looking at the ferret-in-sack death spirals of certain parties and certain joined-at-the-hip media here still, it seems this may yet to have sunk in.
Sunk being the operative word.
"strident support"
The BBC are experts at doing strident support for Big Green.
GrantB:
"Tony Abbott won the Liberal (UK Tory) leadership in opposition because of the carbon tax."
Absolutely correct. Abbott was very unpopular with most of the (sitting) Lib/National coalition MPs because he has been easy to target as a religious right wing nut-job (funny how being a green left wing nut-job doesn't imply electoral liability). If it wasn't for the pro-Carbon tax position of the previous leader (Malcom Turnbull), Abbott would not have won the leadership at all. Labour have kept up the attacks on Abbott's character and it appears to have had some impact as their numbers are not as bad as they were portrayed at one stage (they still hold the major cities in the South-East and three seats in Queensland).
redc
This was political grandstanding between Rudd and Connie Hedegaard. The full two way link is scheduled for 2018 - but given the state of the EU ETS these politicians both know that they would both be out of a job by then. Hedegaard is due to be replaced after EU parliametary elections in the spring. The next EU parliament is likely to do an 'Abbott' on climate policies and the EU ETS.
Hell no, Hector, far from being tucked up under the doona, I am wide awake with a stiff Scotch at my side.
The incoming government published a list of savings proposals last week as part of the plan to stop us going further and further into debt. Included were a long list of stupid programs that were supposed to change the climate of the planet. Millions and millions of dollars worth. I knew that the previous government was a bunch of incompetent wasters, but any sentient taxpayer would weep to look at that list.
I am not a natural Tory - in fact, I have voted Labor for most of my adult life. But this latest lot of urgers and chancers and crooks and charlatans have made me do what was unthinkable for a long time - vote for the other side.
In no small part, it was discovering that PM-elect Tony Abbott has been doing volunteer work in remote Aboriginal communities for years during his very scarce free time that made me change my mind. The senior Labor people spent any free time that they had stacking branches and organising jobs for "mates."
I don't think that things are going to change very much. As an ex public servant, I can attest that for the vast majority of issues, "the science is settled". That is why we are a stable democracy.
But, as usual, it is up to the incoming conservative government to rein in spending and fix up the mess left by their predecessors.
Counting is not yet done and only part of the upper house (Senate) count has been completed. In one State, there were 111 candidates listed. We have not only compulsory voting in Australia, but also preferential voting which means that candidates have to be numbered in order of perference.
"Fortunately", there's a voting shortcut (called "above the line") whereby voters can simply select ONE party group on the ballot and trust the party's previously defined preference allocation. That's what most voters will do.
One side-effect of preferential voting is that people can get elected with a very small primary vote if they've arranged to get beneficial preference with other parties.
Such is illustrated in Western Australia where it appears that the first candidate of the Australian Sports Party will be elected to one of the 6 available Senate seats; having polled only about primary 1800 votes out of the total or 860,000 counted so far. Those votes, judging by the results not indicating individual candidates as receiving a primary vote, would appear to be above the line so the distribution of preferences can be entirely mechanistic.
The preferences deals done are complicated but the "best friend" preferences that flow after the party's initial one are enlightening when mapped ... which I did on Thursday; identifying Sports as one of the main preference buckets in the campaign. I later drew in the next-level of preferences, up to the sixth candidate on the "ticket" for each party and the preference bucket effect became even more pronounced (it's a messy diagram that I'm ashamed to put online); indicating that those lower-level preferences would eventually flow to either of the two prominent preference buckets as they'd cross-preferenced each other at that level.
Election results could take until the end of the week to be sort of final. Senate count is going to be tedious. The elected Senators won't actually sit until July next year, the newly elected lower house "government" will have to make deals to pass legislation with a "old" Senate in which they don't have a majority at the moment.
The Greens, FWIW, have received less than 10% of the primary vote but still end up with one of the 6 seats.
Apart from the concern of whether Abbott will repeal the Carbon Tax, one would hope that he will also dismantle the bureaucracy of the BORG (per Chris Monckton's report on JoNova and WUWT). If Abbott turns out to be just another tool of the UN's Agenda 21, then I fear for the future of Australia - and the the rest of us in the West.
Its Pielke's Iron Law in operation. All parties proposing to 'tackle climate change' by raising local energy prices will be ejected from office at the earliest opportunity their electors have. Whether AGW is true or not, this is a political fact of life we had all best get used to, because its not going to change. So its either adapt or its adapt. But don't try raising energy prices because you will get kicked out.
At the first sign he's going to boot the carbon tax into touch, they'll be a huge amount of pressure put on him by governments worldwide, who desperately need to keep the carbon taxes money flowing.
Would it not be nice if one of our two main political parties had a sceptical agenda, or at least a sceptical leader?
WUWT
In the west - undoubtedly and more especially here in Global Warming central [UK] there is a long haul to go - but Australia has pointed the way, hallelujah for that.
Joolya and Kev - good grief, I'd rather take a midnight swim in the Mary river than have a drink and share a table with those two.
Peter Stroud,
"Would it not be nice if one of our two main political parties had a sceptical agenda, or at least a sceptical leader?"
The whole of the Westminster claque, including the bubble media - shames the people of Britain, between the lot of them - there's more cojones in a small bag of KP.
The alarmists, run the show and riddle the corridors of power and not one major politician speaks out - that's how spineless they are, they call it a democracy - I call it [Westminster] an elective dictatorship - liblabcon are all one and the same.
I'm fully expecting "whilst we are aware of the difficulties imposed by the introduction of the iniquitous carbon taxes by the previous government these taxes are so entrenched in our financial structure that we will not be able to rescind them, however we will be looking at methods to mitigate the expense".. In other words 'different party, same sh1t'.
Channel 4 says it is unlikely David Cameron and Tony Abbott will see eye-to-eye on climate change (so it is unlikely our government stands to learn as much as it might from the overthrow of the Labour Party in Oz).
One of my wife's relatives in Oz wrote on his wall that he got half way down his list of senators on the ballot paper to find a "climate denier"! I hope he put his cross there ...
John McTernan on Channel 4 (Julia Gillard's Director of Communications) acknowledged that Oz has probably the most hardened view against man-made climate change of any country outside the USA.
I think that was a tacit recognition of the work done by JoNova / David Evans and probably some of the others involved with 50:1 videos ( topher.com.au) Well done!
I think we need an 'English' translation for some of our own politicians...
What this means is that the only way they can take away Western market, freedom, economic growth, etc is trough a International climate treaty that takes this away international overnationally.
Democracy has to go?
Watch out for the UNFCCC/IPCC propaganda, meetings and their attempt to do just that?
What really saddened me on the Grauniad site was the shear spitefulness of the anti-Abbott commenters. Perhaps one good definition of “left-wing” would be petty fault finder, with absolutely no constructive criticism.
Radical Rodent
Hear ! Hear! The majority of those comments indicate the intellectual and maturity level of the readership. It is the first time I have read the comments on a Guardian article it really does sadden me :-(
When Kyoto was rejected by countries representing 85% of global CO2, there was the EU ... and one other significant country.
Soon there will just be the EU as the only group of nutcases supporting destroying their economies.
Sep 7, 2013 at 6:59 PM | Radical Rodent
What really saddened me on the Grauniad site was the shear spitefulness of the anti-Abbott commenters. Perhaps one good definition of “left-wing” would be petty fault finder, with absolutely no constructive criticism.
For some reason spitefulness seems common among left-wingers nowadays. Remember how for years before Margaret Thatcher's death there had been people who said they would celebrate the day she died? The people who said that were not just political activists; various right-on (a funny adjective for left-wingers!) luvvies made similar comments. Going further back, when Ronald Regan was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease some leftists seemed pleased.
In fairness I can remember some Young Conservatives saying "hang Nelson Mandela!", but they were wet-behind-the-years idiots and is was not until after Nelson Mandela was released from prison that it became obvious what a remarkable man he is. In contrast the remarks about Thatcher and Regan were made by people who are supposedly mature.
In general people to the right of centre know that there is such a thing as common decency. Decency was "common" because it was shared by people from most parts of the political spectrum, but many on the Left have forgotten what it is - as a glance at the comments on the Guardian website shows.
So long as it's not a bunch of redneck neocon wannabes or a bunch of innumerate, censorious, lefty autocrats, I ain't bothered either way.
Oh, hang on, those are the only choices =(
Roy: Very interesting. Here's to float a historical reason, on which I'd be very interested to hear the opinion of resident BH lefties like Geoff Chambers and Michael Hart.
The right was deeply humbled by the defeat of Hitler and what it revealed of the horrors of that form of totalitarianism. We (I self-identify as right, in the Richard North sense, for now) had every reason to embrace the common decency of someone like George Orwell, who never stopped calling himself a socialist. We needed all the friends we could get.
But on the disappearance of Soviet totalitarianism there were no concentration camps uncovered - many though the bones and agonies of Kolyma and the worst of the Gulag had been. The left at once projected the anger they felt about the loss on those, like Reagan and Thatcher, who had done most politically to cause it. There wasn't anything like enough grieving about the human cost of the seventy years.
It's only a first cut. Martin Amis had some valuable thoughts along these lines in his book on Stalin, Koba the Dread, a few years back.
Abbott has always been kind to the green agenda, supporting cap-and-trade. But he has won his seat here in opposition. It appears to be the number one issue, and he is talking tough about how the whole department will be shut down. Mitt Romney could have been president if he had talked like that. Instead he limited himself only to the Keystone Pipeline.
Curiously, the political spectrum website puts me to the left – surprisingly far to the left, though I have long referred to myself as a socialist in the Thatcher mould (now, that is going to raise a few hackles!), following the guidance of Abe Lincoln:
That the American politicos themselves have forgotten such words of wisdom does not speak well for the future.
Here in the US ABC News (American Broadcasting Company) is left leaning and downright doctrinaire when it comes to global warming. But even they acknowledged that the loss was due to the "widely unpopular carbon tax". Obama has talked about a carbon tax in the US. But I've got to believe that this will put an end to the ambitions of the totalitarian left in both the US and the UK to institute their own version of the carbon tax.
Has Cameron congratulated Abbott yet?
Two years ago, he was praising Gillard for her carbon tax
http://autonomousmind.wordpress.com/2011/07/31/cameron-the-carbon-conservative/
I got the impression she did it to please the Greens. He probably did it to please Samantha.
I do think we (and I) should stop talking about left and right because here on BH we have regulars who are very left wing but are fully against the green agenda just like the rest of us. By lumping all "lefties" together we are insulting them.
mpaul
As I understand it the carbon tax in the UK is full speed ahead (over Niagara falls or something bigger).
A very interesting experiment by chance. We can look for the signal of the start and stop of the carbon tax in the Mauna Loa data.
/sarc just in case
Dung: "...very left wing but are fully against the green agenda just like the rest of us"
Green is not a political ideology: its showbiz for Emos.
With apologies to Anon.
One of the biggest difference between Australian Labor and the Coalition Parties (Liberal, National) is how they propose to tackle Climate Change: Labor introduced the Carbon Tax and were going to link us to Europe's system via a yet-unseen Emissions Tradiing Scheme (ETA; the Coalition (eventually) rejected such market mechanisms and have proposed what they call Direct Action ... this means: planting lots of trees, improving our soil (soil carbon capture), that sort of thing ... and they also plan to remove all market-distorting programs that inject huge sums of taxpayer money into Green programs.
The Coalition is split internally on Climate Change. At the moment the Sceptics in the parties hold sway. But there is a significant group who are Believers. Tony Abbott PM will be given a couple of years to show that he can handle the job. If he can. then their published policies of removing the Carbon Tax, removing government Green programs, will get done. If he can't, there is significant risk that the Believers (led by former party leader Malcolm Turnbull) will re-assert themselves.
Need to remember: when Abbott won the leadership of the Liberal Party over Malcolm Turnbull, he prevailed by just one (1) vote. He has authority now, having seen off two Labor PMs and becoming PM himself, through a very self-disciplined performance over the past 4 years. But there is always that spectre of Turnbull hanging over him if he flaters in any way.