Dogs Are Better People Than Politicians

Couldn't Keep Denying

It amazes me that the Abbott government keeps limping on being the way it is. Normally, being the host nation for something like APEC or the G-20 burnishes the standing of a nation, but somehow Tony Abbott and his miserable government managed to lower the standing of Australia, simply by being their climate-change-denying selves. At the end, Tony Abbott made a speech to the effect that all the governments represented at the G-20 wanted to do something about climate change. It hardly seemed plausible given the degree of resistance mounted and shown by the same government, during the lead up to the G-20 meeting. It sure was hard not to talk about something all these guests anted to talk about it.

I guess that's the nature of summit meets. The host nation doesn't really get to control the agenda if it isn't a nuclear superpower. Tony Abbott made Australia look like an adolescent who is in denial about having to do chores, on the international stage. I'm sure the world took notice. Now that China and America have decided to do something about climate change, then it also activated Clive Palmer and the PUP's agenda of keeping an ETS. Greg Hunt might think they've mothballed the thing but it might comeback from the dead sooner than people thought. After all, the problem with Direct Action is that it is not scaleable in the same way as the ETS. The more there is to cleanup, the better it would be to simply ramp up the ETS again, and be done with it.

No Cuts To Adelaide ABC? Then Don't Make Stupid Cuts

Chris Pyne, he of the Coalition Government that came to power promising not to make any cuts to the ABC and SBS but promptly started cutting as soon as they got in, started a Chang.Org petition to stop the ABC cutting the Adelaide production facility.
Let us now count the shades of stupid in this petition and petitioner.

1. He's a freaking minister of government. He's a lot closer the to the decision making than public petitioners and their petitions. 
2. He is a freaking minister of a government that is cutting $254million to the ABC budget.
3. He is a freaking minister of a government that is cutting that $254million in the face of the ABC asking them not to make such cuts.
4. The alarming hypocrisy of a minister of a government making largely gratuitous, political cuts, on alleged economic grounds (whether true or not) can't complain about such cuts affecting their electorate. 
5. Since when does Chris Pyne care about the ABC's production capacity anywhere? If he's going to start caring about that, maybe he should be looking into the plight of the Film & TV industries a lot more carefully?

Naturally we are underwhelmed. It would be a great shame if the Adelaide unit had to close because of the cuts. It would be a shame if any production facility had to close because of the cuts, because that's the very zero-sum game this government set up. You sort of wonder if these people have any actual brains.

Hooray For Jacqui Lambie (Can't Believe I Just Typed That)

Jacqui Lambie has been going rogue for a few weeks now, over the conditions of defence personnel and something to do with their Christmas bonuses. It has gotten to the point where to refuses to pass anything of the government unless they do as she says, which is to say, she's holding the government to ransom, all on her own-some. The early net effect of this ornery statesman-ship is that the ALP has corralled her into stiffing the Coalition's plans to water down the Future of Finance Advice changes.

This is no ordinary stiffing; this is being described as a "body blow" by the SMH, but more accurately, it's the moment when it has become untenable for the Coalition Government. To date, the Coalition Government has managed to get some of their idiotic plank of policy through the Senate thanks to Clive Palmer making deals with them. Only a couple weeks ago it looks like Palmer was the idiot in letting the Direct (In)Action policy through in time for the Brisbane G-20 summit. Yet now, the rogue PUP Senator is undoing done deals.

If it's bad enough that Joe Hockey's government hasn't been able to pass its awful-awful-awful budget, six months hence from its big debut, then the PUP disintegration ought to give them pause. This might be the moment where it forces the Coalition (the No-alition) to properly think about a Double Dissolution, because they ain't getting it done now. The earliest opportunity to vote out these drongos would be most welcome.

Direct (In)Action To Be Enacted

...And Al Gore Was Nowhere To Be Seen...

Oh brother. Clive Palmer and PUP have reached an agreement with Greg Hunt to pass the Coalition's bizarre policy of paying polluters to pollute, 'Direct Action'.

Direct Action, the key plank of which is a $2.55 billion fund that pays major polluters to reduce their emissions, is now set to become law, assuming independents Nick Xenophon and John Madigan also back the legislation. 

The breakthrough represents a major win for Mr Hunt and a step forward for the government, which has been without a carbon abatement policy since dumping Labor's carbon price in July. 

But to achieve it, it has had to embrace the possibility of a return to emissions trading scheme at some point in the future.

At a media conference late on Wednesday with Mr Palmer and CCA chair Bernie Fraser, Environment Minister Greg Hunt said the government would restore funding to the authority, which would be "appropriately resourced" to conduct an 18 month inquiry. 

While Mr Hunt maintained that the government opposition to carbon pricing remained absolute, the government is now in the strange position of funding independent advice which may well recommend it does just that before the next election. 

A draft terms of reference, seen by Fairfax Media, shows the authority will be charged with investigating if and when Australia should implement an ETS, and what Australia's emissions reduction targets should be after 2020.

So Clive Palmer and PUP have offered a fig leaf for the Coalition, just in time for the G-20 meetings. No, we don't have a carbon price, but yes, we have this immensely cumbersome and white-anted policy called 'Direct Action' which is big government spending for dubious results. Very DLP. John Madigan will vote to support it. I would guess this works very well for the lobbying edifice of the energy sector because hey, it can be argued they get paid something for doing what they do best - keep polluting.

Despite Jacqui Lambe's far-right ethos of fining people for wearing religious garments, the Palmer United Party has put itself in the unlikely middle between outright climate change denial and having some kind of sensible policy. Unfortunately, they're not close enough to the sensible policy, but they are pushing for it. They've made the Coalition commit to another inquiry into the effectiveness of an Emissions Trading Scheme. 

Thus, the cycle of irony has gone full circle, possibly around some square peg-holes. Greg Hunt originally devised the Emissions Trading Scheme as mooted under the late years of the Howard Government, which Kevin Rudd cooped for the sake of convenience, and which Abbott and Hunt subsequently fought hard to brand a Carbon Tax and destroy. Now Greg Hunt has a chance to retrieve his original ETS from the mire of politics and look quite sensible. You wonder if the rest of the climate change denialist nutbars of the Coalition will let him. 

...but back to Clive Palmer for a moment. He and his party have somehow come up in the middle in the way that would have made the Democrats of old proud. You can almost hear Natasha Stott-Despoja squeal with joy at the deft manoeuvre. "Match-ia-vellian", she would've called it. Still, what exactly is the PUP platform that can pull Al Gore from a hat ("get into that, get into that!") and abolish Carbon Pricing, and then allow Direct Action to pass with a proviso to have an inquiry about an ETS? 

It helps to not really explain what the philosophical underpinnings of the party are, but it seems to be some kind of Whig-ist pragmatism mixed with hokey individualism and an avuncular populism. You could do worse. You could have no policy whatsoever on the issue of carbon emissions control. It is a kind of pragmatism to take a bad policy over no policy and promise to go investigate (again) a better policy. That, actually looks so much like actual politics. Natasha and Match-ia-Velli would approve!

I hate to say this but the Greens have so far dealt themselves out of the equation on the singularly most important issue on the environmental agenda. That can't be good. They might be the rising third force in Australian politics, but because they're too far to the left, it won't change the agenda in a meaningful way at all. It may transpire that the partnership they had with the Gillard Government in a hung Parliament was the high point of their electoral support, because as of now, you have to wonder how they're going to contribute in a meaningful way if the Palmer United Party can just put this deal together and make the whole party obsolete. 

Besides which it's not as if they managed to pull Al Gore out of a hat.