Alan Kohler
Smoking out the Coalition
It will be quite tricky for Kevin Rudd to come up with a double dissolution trigger this year – that is, a bill that he knows will be rejected by the Senate: much more difficult, it seems to me, than getting something passed. It’s far easier to get the Coalition and the Greens to disagree than to agree.
But so far so good with the change to the carbon pollution reduction scheme announced yesterday: both the Coalition and the Greens have said they will vote against. That’s excellent enough on its own, but Senator Fielding muttering vague and irrelevant opposition to it as well is icing on the cake.
That the Rudd government desperately needs a double dissolution trigger is obvious – it is ahead in the polls now but this time next year unemployment will still be rising and Peter Costello will probably be Leader of the Opposition. Never has there been a clearer political case for an early election.
But the Senate is finely balanced, with both the left and the right wings – the Greens and the Coalition – needed to get a bill blocked. To get something passed, on the other hand, the government only needs one of them (plus the Independents if it’s the Greens).
So devising changes to the CPRS that would be guaranteed to produce a double dissolution trigger required a deft touch.
And deft it was: delay the emissions trading scheme by a year but put a 25 per cent reduction in carbon emissions “on the table” (as they say in the spin manuals).
The commitment of a 5 per cent reduction by 2020, which will now have to be done in nine years instead of 10, is still small enough to keep the Greens offside; the one-year delay locks in their No vote.
Announcing that Australia will reduce its emissions by 25 per cent of 2000 levels by 2020 if the rest of the world agrees to stabilises atmospheric carbon dioxide at 450 parts per million by 2050 (the level required to actually save the planet) produced an immediate press release from the Nationals’ leader Warren Truss, huffing and puffing that it’s a dog of a scheme and should be thrown out.
Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull followed up soon after with his own commitment to reject the new scheme.
There is absolutely no chance of that 25 per cent target being implemented, of course. The odds against world leaders burdened by the worst recession in any of their lifetimes actually doing what’s required to save the planet are astronomical.
So that’s one box ticked for an early election; another box ticked would be good. Next: IR legislation.
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