Two years of Government for Labour and we have seen no progress on the most important issue of our civilisation. Elected on a mandate for real action on climate change, among other things, yet we have not made progress. Kevin Rudd looks around for someone to blame, but he need not look far. He just needs to find the nearest mirror.
We know he has his sights firmly set on keeping Government for as long as Howard did. He will use each and every issue to manoeuvre them into a political advantage for himself by either carefully wedging his opponents or by bribing the electorate with another billion-a-day handout, designed only to manage the day’s headline issue.
Rudd’s CPRS has been designed to be so abhorrent to the far left and the far right of the political spectrum that neither the Greens not he Coalition could support it. Not that they had a chance to negotiate, at least for nearly two years negotiation was off the table, it was “take it or leave it” for as long as it was politically necessary.
The government cut out all negotiations with the Coalition until the bitter end of Malcoml Turnbull’s tenure. This was completely orchestrated to steer Turnbull into a position of weakness within his divided party on the issue. Any press conference for two years with any Labour representative contained little explanation of the policy itself, no substance beyond merciless abusing of the opposition on every point they made.
Two years to explain the scheme to the public, two years to negotiate an effective scheme with either the Coalition or the Greens and the Independents in the senate. The Government chose only to negotiate with the Coalition in order to force them into a position that their fragmented base could not accept and would yet again plunge them into internal anarchy.
Rudd calls this mission accomplished, for it means that the opposition is again hurt, his job more secure, our planet more ah, rooted? The Government could have negotiated a scheme that would actually, reduce emissions by negotiating with the Greens and Independents in the Senate. Sure nutcase Fielding would vote no, however a mere handful of Coalition Senators crossing the floor (which did happen!) and we would have been on an effective scheme -it was possible!. It could have been the real deal, not the appalling deal that was chewed through between Wong and McFarlane in the dying days of Tunbull’s opposition.
But alas, Rudd instead chose to sacrifice two of the most pivotal years in our history for nothing but political games with the opposition parties, to the detriment of Australia’s environment and place in the civilized world. Fortunately China and the USA have made some progress over this time, maybe even enough to save the world.
Both China and the USA had for a long time been the favourite excuses for Rudd and others of similar lack of conviction to use for stalling, or apportioning blame for the lack of global agreement and progress on this issue. When Rudd could only see the opposition as his target, other leaders saw targets like… reducing emissions and creating new-tech “green” jobs.
Well, through a massive investment of political strategy in a CRPS policy of such utter disaster, Rudd has watched the rest of the world enter Copenhagen with progress made. Rudd only has the scalps of Nelson and Turnbull as his and Australia’s progress, unless we consider Abbott as an alternative PM as “progress”?
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