A little over a year ago I sat in the ABC studios in Ultimo, Sydney, for a special episode of the live current affairs programme Q & A. Instead of the usual arrangement of a panel of five, there was only one guest: the newly elected leader of the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party, and therefore Leader of the Opposition, Malcolm Turnbull. Turnbull had just ousted Brendan Nelson, the man chosen to lead the Libs following their catastrophic defeat in the 2007 election.
The week before, in the very same studio (possibly the same chair) one of the Q & A guests had been the well-known Liberal stalwart, Tony Abbott, who said of Turnbull’s fresh ascension to the Liberal leadership that the new leader represented the future of the Liberals; a genuine change for the party. But from the man who proudly proclaimed himself to be “Howard’s head-kicker” perhaps also a touch of discontent and cynicism: “…the king is dead, long live the king. That’s the way things go in politics.” How true.
On that night in September 2008, as Turnbull sweated under the lights without ever losing his smile, the questions poured in, seeking to gauge ‘Malcolm the man’. The views he presented on the apology to the Stolen Generation, the Kyoto Protocol and Australia’s Republican movement painted the picture of man making a radical break from the Liberals’ previous decade under conservative John Howard. Discussion veered off into Turnbull’s glamorous and wealthy past, present and future, and his comments on Kyoto never grew into a question of proposed action on climate change. No one could have foreseen what a role the question of climate change would play fourteen short months later, as aggravation about Turnbull’s leadership and bickering over an emissions trading scheme boiled over into a November week of high drama. Everyone was just dazzled by the lights and that smile.
How do the Liberals split over one little piece of legislation, and why is it such a big deal for them?
The issue for the Government is the Senate. Actually the issue for everybody is the Senate. The CPRS (Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme – the legislation at the centre of this monumental fight) will likely be passed in the House of Representatives, where Rudd’s Labor have a clear majority, but things get decidedly murky upstairs. Here Labor needs support from either the Greens, who despise this legislation as being utterly weak and ineffectual; the Nationals, who despise it for being too heavy-handed; the independents, among whom Family First senator Steven Fielding is notable for wanting a Royal Commission to debunk the ‘myth’ of climate change; or the Liberals. And thus the great schism.
The Liberal senators are a fractious bunch it seems, and on the CPRS they just couldn’t agree. Some wanted to follow the lead of Turnbull and vote the ETS in, others, such as the ‘rebel’ senators Nick Minchin, Tony Abbott, Cory Bernardi and Sophie Mirabella, refused to allow free passage to what they describe as a ‘giant new tax’ to disadvantage Australia.
The truth is that the death knell for Malcolm Turnbull sounded with the implosion of the Godwin Grech affair earlier this year. Turnbull himself called the leadership challenge ‘game on’ in October when he announced: “I will not lead a party that is not as committed to effective action on climate change as I am.” There’s not really any easy way to back down from a statement like that, although backing down has proven to be the furthest thing from Turnbull’s mind.
However, the hawks within the Liberal party have been circling Turnbull for months, unhappy with his direct style, bossy leadership and progressive views. Or as Ian Macfarlane, Turnbull’s ally on the CPRS, put it on The 7:30 Report on Monday evening, “If Malcolm has a fault it is that he sometimes forgets to stroke people’s egos as he moves forward.” ‘No knack for politics,’ the hawks said. His mishandling of the party room on this CPRS issue gave them the impetus to strike.
What exactly happened this week?
It all began one Tuesday morning, eight long, intense days ago. At 10am, to be precise. The night before, Ian Macfarlane had struck a deal with the government on a whole host of amendments to the CPRS. Turnbull presented the legislation on Tuesday morning to the Coalition party room, which promptly descended into impassioned discord as up to 70 members spoke for or against the legislation. The meeting lasted all day and into the night and eventually Turnbull emerged and declared the numbers in favour of carrying the CPRS. Numbers his opponents claimed he did not have. Liberal MP Peter Slipper called Turnbull’s result declaration “as dodgy as a Zimbabwean election organised by Robert Mugabe”.
Wednesday afternoon. Incensed, Turnbull’s opponents tried to move a spill (a ballot to spill the leadership and allow a leadership challenge) at a Liberal party meeting. Kevin Andrews was the unlikely patsy who put up his hand to say he would run against Turnbull. The spill never got off the ground, defeated in a mere twenty minutes by 48 votes to 35. Round one to Malcolm.
Turnbull declared himself humbled and vowed to work on his “interpersonal skills”.
Thursday dawned bright and new, bringing fresh horrors to Mr Turnbull’s office door. An embassy consisting of Tony Abbott and Nick Minchin delivered an ultimatum, which they tastefully described as a ‘compromise’. Either change the party’s position on the CPRS and ship it off to a committee, where it can die quietly in a corner, or face a revolt of your frontbench. Turnbull, as you can guess, defiantly flexed some of his newfound humility and told them to stick it. Twelve Liberal frontbenchers resigned their positions within the Opposition, enabling them to cross the floor and vote against the CPRS in the Senate.
Turnbull said he refused to be bullied or yield to delay tactics. The rogue senators said they were responding to the grassroots of the Liberal party and its vociferous disapproval of the CPRS. Either way, Turnbull’s position as leader from this moment onward is widely seen as untenable.
On Friday Turnbull cheerfully reminded one and all that his leadership had been confirmed less than 48 hours ago. Independent Senator Nick Xenophon likened Turnbull to a Monty Python character: “…the black knight, who’s lost both arms, both legs, blood spurting everywhere and he says ‘Just a flesh wound!’” Talk about dead man walking.
A party meeting was called for Tuesday morning at 9am, where a second, successful spill appeared certain to get up. A hot weekend ensued as the Liberals seemed to have pressed the volcanic self-destruct button. Numbers are canvassed and support rallied. The challengers emerge.
Turnbull confirmed his position is unchanged: “There is no way I’m stepping down, resigning, stepping backwards or anything like that.” Tony Abbott came out as the rebels’ anti-ETS, anti-CPRS challenger and threw it down for Turnbull. And a third name found its way into everyone’s mouths. Joe Hockey.
Touted as a possible unifier, Hockey kept mum all weekend, coming out of isolation only to tweet out a request for his supporters’ opinions on the ETS/CPRS. Nothing says ‘I am the future’ like a Twitter-savvy politician.
But it’s not to be for big Joe Hockey – his long-term, vocal support of the CPRS led him to propose a conscience vote for all Liberals on the legislation, should he be elected as leader. This was immediately derided by Turnbull and Abbott as a non-position. A leader who won’t lead. Not exactly what the Liberals are looking for right now.
Monday brought more frantic calculations of numbers and very little in the way of real work in the halls of Parliament House. Mostly it was just scrums of media skating frantically up and down the corridors and stalking Joe Hockey as he went to the coffee cart.
And then Tuesday came. The media had already dug a Turnbull-sized grave and just waited for the nod to push him in. And it happened. Hockey self-sabotaged with his conscience vote stance, and could barely contain his relief at being knocked out in the first round. “I couldn’t be a hypocrite,” he explained.
And Malcolm Turnbull, committed Liberal, martyred himself for the principle of Kevin Rudd’s climate change policy. And he never lost that smile.
OK, what now? What’s Tony Abbott all about?
He’s described as belligerent and pugnacious (not just because he was a boxer), an outspoken, occasionally-foulmouthed, hardline conservative – the “Mad Monk” (he started out as a trainee priest). Tony Abbott has had his fair share of controversy and scandal.
He is intensely disliked by women, especially younger women, whom he alienates and infuriates with his right-wing, socially-conservative views on sensitive issues such as abortion.
As late as July he was publically in favour of passing an ETS, describing it as a “plausible” solution and saying “I don’t think it’s a good look for the Liberals to be browner than Howard going into the next election.” It seems that was all for show. Personally he has announced that he is “hugely unconvinced” by climate change, even describing climate change in his best Abbott-eloquence as “crap”. It is fair to say the Government’s CPRS legislation is dead.
Regardless of Abbott’s views he has capitalised handsomely and emerged the slightly bewildered, thoroughly chuffed, big winner of the schism. His prize? Leadership of a Liberal party that elected him 42 votes to 41 on a day when one of Turnbull’s supporters was away sick. A party so deeply divided by this internecine conflict that countless litres of ink have been used printing the words “unruly rabble” each and every day for the last week. Labor MP Greg Combet remarked yesterday afternoon “the extremists have taken control of the Liberals.”
Perhaps more importantly, they have no policy to reduce carbon pollution and very little time to develop one. Tony Abbott asked Australians forgive him of his past sins and grant him a clean slate from this day forth. He also asked us to trust the Liberals and “watch this space”.
We may not have to wait very long. The next election is less than a year away, and if the Senate votes down the CPRS for the second time, the Coalition will hand the Government the trigger for a double dissolution, a procedure to resolve deadlocks between the House of Representatives and the Senate whereby the Governor-General dissolves both houses of parliament and initiates an election for every single seat. Either way, Abbott’s biggest test yet is less than twelve months away.
So, what is an ETS anyway?
An ETS (Emissions Trading Scheme) is also known as a ‘cap-and-trade’ scheme. It is essentially an economic and administrative approach to controlling pollution that seeks to ensure that pollution reduction targets are met with the lowest cost to society. Theoretically, under an ETS the cost of polluting is borne by industry, who will therefore seek to reduce their financial burden by reducing their polluting, thereby meeting reduction targets in the cheapest way possible.
It is known as a ‘cap-and-trade’ scheme because this name identifies the two parts of the scheme. Firstly, the government sets a cap on emissions. Secondly, it releases permits to emit pollution, which are issued to various players, such as energy companies and manufacturing. These players can only emit up to the permits they hold. To emit more they must purchase permits at open market price from players who don’t need them, like, say, wind farms.
Say the cap is set at 10 million tonnes of CO2 per year. The government will then issue 10 million permits to emit one tonne of CO2. Just 1% of firms in Australia represent the bulk of emissions and only they will be required to purchase permits.
Obviously there is a great financial incentive to keeping your emissions down. For starters, buying extra permits cuts into profits. If you can modify your operation to emit less pollution in any way, you’re going to do it. Secondly, those whose operations are ‘green’ can sell their surplus permits, making green technologies more profitable for owners, and cost-friendly for consumers. ‘Emissions intensive’ goods and services, such as coal-powered electricity and the manufacturing industry it powers, will increase in price.
Profits that the government generates from selling the initial permits will be ploughed into carbon pollution reduction initiatives, and as compensation to offset the disadvantage to households and particular industries. Tony Abbott derisively called this a “money-go-round”. Greens leader Bob Brown called it “polluters’ pay day” and condemned the legislation. It now appears likely that an unholy alliance of Greens, Liberals, Nationals and independents will kill Australia’s proposed ETS.
The Rudd Government’s ETS is called the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) and it draws upon draft findings of the Garnaut Report among other sources. This is the legislation that Turnbull decided to back after his chief negotiator, Ian Macfarlane, spent five weeks hammering out amendments with Labor Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong. The Labor party was elected to government in 2007 on a platform of action on climate change, and Turnbull stated that he felt the Liberals could not afford to be seen as a ‘do-nothing’ party on climate change, despite the well-known climate change scepticism of certain members of the Opposition.
Problems with an ETS basically revolve around the localised nature of the schemes. With limited country participation something called ‘carbon leakage’ is inevitable. Increased restriction on carbon emissions in one country will see polluting industries and firms moving their operations to countries not bound by an ETS. This could spell the death of manufacturing in Australia with a huge impact on employment, and the ultimate uselessness of an ETS at all, as global emissions do not fall. One solution is carbon surcharges on goods imported from non-ETS countries. Goodbye, free trade.
The Kyoto Protocol was essentially an ETS, and shortly nations, including Australia, will meet again in Copenhagen to set out the next phase of their ETS. Rudd wanted to present Australia’s baby CPRS (“environmentally credible and economically responsible”) to the assembled crowds for much cooing and adulation. He will not get his wish.
Sources
Sydney Morning Herald
The Australian
www.abc.net.au – The 7:30 Report and Q & A
www.climatechange.gov.au
en.wikipedia.org
The fact that Tony Abbott won out, shows how out of touch the Liberal Party is. Whilst I’ve never been a supporter of the Liberals, it is pretty disheartening to have such a poor opposition party- doesn’t make for good politics or debate.
As Justine pointed out, he won out by one vote on a day one of Turnbull’s supporters was absent. So not only is the liberal party completely out of touch, it’s also completely fractured. Interesting times lie ahead.
The big debate going on in my workplace is whether Hockey tarnished his brand by getting involved in the whole thing. He could have stayed pleasantly removed from the mud slinging by continuing his claim of loyalty to Turnbull, escaping what many are forecasting as an upcoming election the Liberals are going to want to forget and swooping in as their Fresh Start Man.
Now he’s the guy too afraid to lead, who claimed he wouldn’t betray Malcy, but gave it a crack anyway.
Does he look better for sticking to his guns on the ETS, or worse for his avoidance of the hard bits while doing something he said he wouldn’t?
A fine summary of the recent Liberal debacle.
Just one point – Tony Abbott and Sophie Mirabella are not senators, being respectively the member for Warringah and the member for Indi.
True, Tim, thank you. I was trying to keep it as simple as possible. Maybe a little too simple!
I should probably include an apology to anyone with an in-depth knowledge of political science, economics or environmental science…
Dora – I think Hockey got out pretty unscathed really, although ideally he should have avoided the whole mess. His relief yesterday was palpable. Abbott will probably lead the Libs to slaughter next year and Hockey the phoenix will rise for good from those ashes.