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. 

Torpedo Clive

Sinking Abbott's Boats

If yesterday was eventful and humiliating for the Coalition government, then today must have been a gourmet meal built around a shit sandwich from Clive Palmer. Essentially, the Palmer United Party thwarted the government's third attempt to repeal the Carbon Tax.

The Pulse during the day made for interesting reading as things went awry for the Abbott Government. Reading the entires it seems really clear that the Coalition promised to word it in a particular way, and then in classic sophist-fashion, welshed on the deal by changing the wording which got the ire of Clive Palmer.

Late in the day Pleiades gave me a heads up about how Clive Palmer was on 702 later in the afternoon, talking to Richard Glover. The interesting thing is that Palmer says he was double-crossed by the Coalition in the wording and so he simply wouldn't support the Carbon Tax repeal bill that was so important to the Coalition. He then went onto say he won't support the co-payment to doctors, and h would rather cut the 45billion off the NBN, 20billion off the Paid Parental Leave being proposed, and 37billion dollars ear-marked for Japanese submarines, than have the Co-Payment.

Here's an interesting article on the day's proceedings from Tony Wright. Tony Abbott has a huge problem on his hands and he can't control it. He can now call a double dissolution but his polls are so dire he dare not. What threadbare preposterous notions the Coalition might have had as policy is being torn asunder. It's well-deserved, but it's going to cripple his government. He's not going to be able to game Clive Palmer out of the game quickly.

Pleiades had an interesting observation. He thinks Clive Palmer probably sees the end of coal fire and fossil fuels around the globe and wants to get into renewables; but to do so, he wants there to be a market for him to function within and that means retaining the outlines for an ETS. From that angle you can begin to understand the how and why of his road to Damascus conversion on an ETS and not removing the emissions target. In any case, things are only going to get more interesting for the Abbott Government. The inability of the Coalition to negotiate anything is starting to look like a major stumbling block in them getting their policies through.

Give The New Guys A Chance

Surprise! Not Your Villain du Jour

Ricky Muir - he of the Roo-Poo flinging Youtube videos and much media ridicule - entered Parliament House as a new Senator this week. By 10:30am this morning he had made news, first by not letting the Abbott Government have its way by steam-rolling the Carbon tax repeal. In a surprise move, Muir broke ranks with the Palmer United to defeat the government's motion to force a vote on the the Carbon Price repeal. After lunch, he sided with Palmer United and voted to preserve ARENA, which, surprised most onlookers.

Maybe Mr. Muir was going to surprise everybody any way. The way he had been portrayed by the media made him look like a dimwit yokel, but I felt at the time it was a beat up. By hook or crook, we in the electorate seem to have managed to send a totally ordinary citizen into the Senate. If our chief complaint is professionalised politicians, then surely we have to leave some ground open for rank outsiders to come in and have a look for themselves. While Mr. Muir didn't look promising going in, partly because of the immense vagueness of his party's platform, this week so far shows that he may yet turn out to be a reasonable, centrist man to have in the senate to balance views. So far his two major contributions don't seem to be those of an ideological extremist or a radicalised desperado.

The other surprising tidbit that emerged during the week was how Glenn Lazarus - aka The Brick with Eyes - was instrumental in bringing Clive Palmer to the middle of the debate so that the emissions target would be kept. This was remarkable in as much as it showed the Palmer United Party is not Clive Palmer's puppet show, and that in turn he was somebody who was going to be persuaded by his new senators.

Again, it's hard to imagine just what would bring a retired Rugby League great into politics in this way - especially after Mal Meninga made a famously bad attempt at it - but it is clearly evident we can't be dismissing him on the basis of his previous career or his current party affiliation. The fact of the matter is we don't know much about the policy position of the Palmer United Party simply because the party is so new and everything seems to be made up on the fly. They can conjure Al Gore from a hat, so who are we to judge what they can accomplish? The PUP Senators represent an open end, rather than a closed, conservative alternative.

The silver lining on the generally angry black storm cloud that is the Abbott Government is that the Senate is so fractured that it's just going to have to fight out every policy morsel on its merits. This means that it can't bundle together things hoping for a horse trade. This Senate is fractious enough already that if anything it's going to be more parsing and demanding than previous Senates. This means that while the Carbon Pricing will likely be repealed, it is going to get replaced with an ETS of some description - even if it is priced to zero until certain conditions are met. It's quite the circus, but the point is that the Abbott government will find out just how little an endorsement it got from the electorate for it to be able to claim any kind of mandate. Our hopes actually rest with Ricky Muir and Glenn Lazarus being centrist, reasonable people. It's a far cry from the Democrats but they may well turn out to be more credible and laudable in the history books than Meg Lees and Natasha Stott-Despoja.

Today's WTF Moment

The Clive Palmer & Al Gore Double Act (Is-This-Even-Allowed?-Edition)

Man, this is really weird. Al Gore, he of the uncomfortable truth, is in Canberra, standing should to shoulder with none other than windbag millionaire Clive Palmer selling an ETS. Clive Palmer's pitch is pretty whacked out and boils down to 2 things: PUP will voe to repeal the carbon tax if the energy producers are mandated to return that money to households. PUP will then want an ETS in place to replace the carbon price, and this ETS should be contingent upon other nations namely America and China undertaking a version of their own.

It's creepy because  Clive Palmer is essentially using Al Gore's post-VP star to cast his repealing in a climate-friendly direction. It's very odd because I can't imagine the flipside scenario where say, Paul Keating would stand shoulder to shoulder with Nancy Pelosi in the US Congress, talking about things in the US polity. Doesn't this sort of break a bunch of diplomatic protocols? How do we know the CIA isn't trying to influence Clive (or that they already haven't) who we know is given to conspiracy theories that feature the CIA? You also sort of wonder where Al Gore's head is at, making this appearance. Since when is he a friend of the crackpot wing of Australian politics?

Pardon me while I try to wrap my head around this bizarre spectacle.

The PUP leader said the government's Direct Action policy was "a waste of money, at a time when families, pensioners, young Australians, stay at home mums and single parents and indigenous communities are facing unfair measures in the budget, to increase excise and indexation is not the answer".

Climate change was a global problem, he said, and Australia had to play its part.

He said the Palmer United senators would move, while supporting the repeal of the carbon tax, to establish an emissions trading scheme.

The scheme would only come into effect when Australia's major trading partners established similar schemes.

"This measure cannot be defined as a financial measure, it will have a carbon price [of] zero,'' he said.

A price on carbon would then be introduced down the track.

Mr Gore said Mr Palmer's announcement was an "extraordinary moment in which Australia, the US and the rest of the world is finally beginning to confront the climate crisis in a meaningful way".

He cited President Barack Obama's recent moves to reduce emissions in the US and pilot programs of cap and trade schemes in China as evidence the world was moving to tackle climate change.

"All of these developments add up to the world moving to solve the climate crisis and that is why it is so significant that Clive Palmer has announced that his party will support the continuation of the renewable energy target, and the continuation of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation," he said.

"While I will be disappointed if the immediate price on carbon is removed because it is a policy which I believe to be ultimately critical to solving the climate crisis, I am extremely hopeful that Australia will continue to play a global leadership role on this most pressing issue."

The event comes ahead of Mr Palmer's meeting with the Prime Minister on Thursday morning.

Well, that's pretty nutty, but a good kind of nutty. Like a Marvel comic book movie moment when two unlikely characters turn to one another and work for the common good. The villain in all this is now Tony Abbott, he of the abysmal popular support. He can't possibly be enjoying this turn of events. 1st of July is going to bring in a bunch of people who are going to toe this Palmer United Party line, endorsed by Al Gore. If Tony Abbott's going to get to keep his promise of 'repealing the Carbon Tax' (just typing that makes my eyes hurt), it's going to cost him a pound of flesh from inside his skull. He can no longer count on the conspiracy-nut Palmer to play along with the climate change sceptic script. It turns out Palmer is a conservative nutbar, but clearly not the same brand of conservative nutbar as those in the Coalition government.

What worries me is how the SMH editor (yes, that fool) is busily talking up the Palmer United position. It can't be that good if it impresses that little mind.

These Guys Can't Do Diplomacy Either

That sucking, gurgler sound you're hearing from Canberra, that would be the Abbott government just sucking up the joint.

A few weeks ago, The Abbott government started disputing the terminology 'occupied' in reference to East Jerusalem. It's hard to fathom why the Australian Government would want to break ranks with the rest of the world and come down hard in favour of Israel and against the Palestinians, but that's what they did. And the world heard about it - especially the Arab speaking world - and took notice.

Pleiades gave me a heads up and it seems Bob Ellis seems to think that the jailing of the Australian Journalist Peter Greste was a reprisal for this moving of the terms by Australia. No wonder our pleas to have Greste released ave fallen on deaf ears- and our government is too stupid to understand just what has happened.

What's amazing is that just as with the budget, this government has kicked an own goal in the diplomacy stakes; and the joke is on us because they weren't even asked to offer up an opinion. They just blurted out something that has ended up boomeranging right back.