Tag Archives: Palmer United Party

Saturday salon 4/4

April 4, 2015 Brian 9 Comments

An open thread where, at your leisure, you can discuss anything you like, well, within reason and the Comments Policy. Include here news and views, plus any notable personal experiences from the week and the weekend.

For climate topics please use the most recent Climate clippings.

The gentleman in the image is Voltaire, who for a time graced the court of Frederick II of Prussia, known as Frederick the Great. King Fred loved to talk about the universe and everything at the end of a day’s work. He also used the salons of Berlin to get feedback in the development of public policy.

Fred would only talk in French; he regarded German as barbaric. Here we’ll use English.

The thread will be a stoush-free zone. The Comments Policy says:

The aim [of this site] is to provide a venue for people to contribute and to engage in a civil and respectful manner.

Here are a few bits and pieces that came to my attention last week.

1. Birthdays!

Three birthdays to mention.

Larvatus Prodeo was born at Easter 2005, so would be 10 years old if still alive. I started blogging there about three months later.

Secondly, I turned 75 just over a week ago.

I usually don’t make a fuss over birthdays, reasoning that I’m just one day older than the day before. So every day is new. My cardiologist is very happy with me, and I can tell you that since my triple bypass in 2000 he’s the main man!

Third, Climate Plus was born a year ago tomorrow. Some 318 posts later we are still here. It has been an experience – some surprises, some disappointments.

For the foreseeable future I plan to carry on. Political posts are more than twice as popular as climate posts, but our main reason for being here is climate. My aim is to keep the lay reader abreast of important developments in a brief and digestible form.

Feedback is more than welcome.

2. Vale Betty Churcher (1931-2015)

Betty Churcher died during the week, aged 1984. As an artist, as a teacher, as an arts administrator, and as a human being she excelled and attracted nothing but praise.

As a woman she had several firsts, most notably in 1990 she became the first woman at the helm of the National Gallery of Australia, where she was director for 7 years.

While there she earned the nickname “Betty Blockbuster” for presiding over 12 international blockbuster exhibitions, which in turn led to a corresponding growth in the gallery’s attendance numbers and revenue. She also initiated the construction of new galleries for large-scale temporary exhibitions, gave the gallery its current name after dropping “Australian National Gallery” and acquired Arthur Streeton’s Golden Summer, Eaglemont, 1889, for $3.5 million.

Image courtesy of the ABC.

3. Selling ugly produce at low prices

Every year Canadians waste some 40% of their food. A large part of the problem is that “ugly” food, misshapen or marked, is thrown out. Now one large retailer is selling this food at a discount in Ontario and Quebec.

Should happen here.

4. UK elections

The UK election campaign started in earnest. Here’s a prediction of the outcome.

According to that it could be a coalition of Labour, the Scottish National Party and what’s left of the Liberal Democrats.

Ed Miliband seems to have come through the leaders debate OK.

5. Jacqui Lambie starts her own party

Jacqui Lambie has applied to register The Jacqui Lambie Network as a political party.

She’s also got something else to think about.

A PUP statement released on Wednesday threatened to spend up to $3 million on legal fees in a bid to recover $2 million and $7 million from Senator Lambie and Senator Lazarus respectively.

Senator Glenn Lazarus quit the Palmer United Party earlier this year.

Senator Glenn Lazarus quit the Palmer United Party earlier this year.

PUP claims those are the amounts spent helping Senator Lazarus and Lambie get elected under the party’s banner at the 2013 election.
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Both senators have since abandoned PUP and are now sitting as independents.

Lambie says he promised not to sue.

6. Goodnight Goodluck Jonathon

President-elect of Nigeria Muhammadu Buhari told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that he plans to aggressively fight corruption that has long plagued Nigeria and go after the root of the nation’s unrest.

For the first time in Nigeria’s history, the opposition defeated the ruling party in democratic elections.

Buhari defeated incumbent Goodluck Jonathan by about 2 million votes, according to Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission.

The win comes after a long history of military rule, coups and botched attempts at democracy in Africa’s most populous nation.

Jonathon’s main contribution seemed to be making many billions of oil revenue due to the state magically disappear.

Life, Sundries

Saturday salon 22/11

November 22, 2014 Brian 2 Comments

For climate topics please use the most recent Climate clippings.

Fred would only talk in French; he regarded German as barbaric. Here we’ll use English.

The thread will be a stoush-free zone. The Comments Policy says:

The aim [of this site] is to provide a venue for people to contribute and to engage in a civil and respectful manner.

Here are a few bits and pieces that came to my attention last week.

1. PUP politics

Unless you were under a rock you’d know that PUP politics got worse.

After PUP expelled Jacqui Lambie’s chief of staff Rob Messenger from party Lambie and Ricky Muir broke ranks to join a ‘coalition of common sense’ against the financial advice laws.

Then Lambie was removed as deputy Senate leader and deputy whip of the party for failing to attend three party meetings.

The slanging match continued with Palmer calling Lambie a liar.

Now the ABC says Clive Palmer stormed out of an interview with Emma Alberici when she got onto the Chinese court matter. I watched the interview and would say Palmer terminated it rather that stormed out. As Palmer says, wait for the court judgement.

The bottom line is that it looks as though Jacqui Lambie is on her way out, but this still leaves PUP with the balance of power in the senate if the arrangement with Ricky Muir hold up.

2. Authorisms

‘Authorisms’ are neologisms coined by authors which have entered the wider language. Did you know that Billy Shakespeare invented words like bump, hurry, critical, and road? Now Paul Dickson chooses his top 10.

Banana Republic

Beatnik

Bedazzled

Taming of the shrew

Catch-22

Cyberspace

Freelance

Ivanhoe

Hard-Boiled

Malapropism

Serendipity

Whodunit

3. The LNP government shoots itself in the foot, and the ABC

Also SBS, of course. The cuts to the ABC amount to around 5% over four years. Barrie Cassidy points out that big C conservatives will be pleased, but they’ll thank Abbott rather than Turnbull.

Turnbull looks a goose on two counts. Firstly, he defends Abbott for saying very directly before the election that there would be no cuts to the ABC and SBS. So he’s defending the indefensible.

Secondly, he says the cuts won’t amount to anything that matters.

And in any case collectively, they only had in mind cuts that would not reduce services. Clean cuts. Nice cuts. Cuts that can’t be seen with the naked eye.

If you believe that I’ve got a bridge you might like to buy.

Mark at The Monthly writes that any leftie love of Turnbull will now be over.

It should have been when Turnbull dicovered Godwin Grech. I’ll say more when we have the ABC response.

Ben Eltham says it’s revenge, pure and simple.

4. Anthony Albanese said it in 1996

Courtesy of Mark’s Facebook:

5. Remembering Wayne Goss

Hundreds of people have turned out to pay tribute to former ‘hero’ Queensland Labor premier Wayne Goss at a public memorial service in Brisbane.

Mr Goss was known as ‘Mr 70 Per Cent’ for his high public approval rating during his time as Queensland premier.

He died at the age of 63 at home in Brisbane in the early hours of November 10 from a recurrent brain tumour.

David Barbagallo pays tribute.

6. ALP competitive in two states

Galaxy poll has the ALP and the LNP at 50-50 in Queensland, 52-48 in Victoria.

Life, Sundries

Saturday salon 15/11

November 15, 2014 Brian 16 Comments

For climate topics please use the most recent Climate clippings.

Fred would only talk in French; he regarded German as barbaric. Here we’ll use English.

The thread will be a stoush-free zone. The Comments Policy says:

The aim [of this site] is to provide a venue for people to contribute and to engage in a civil and respectful manner.

Here are a few bits and pieces that came to my attention last week.

1. Abbott puts his foot in his mouth

Yesterday David Cameron made a speech in Parliament about freedom and democracy. At an international business breakfast attended by David Cameron Abbott said there was ‘nothing but bush’ in Australia before white settlement.

The self-appointed “Prime Minister for Aboriginal Affairs” Tony Abbott has reiterated the legal fiction of “terra nullius” stating that Australia was “nothing but bush” before British invasion and called pre-colonisation civilisation “extraordinarily basic and raw”.

Will someone please take this embarrassing man away and give us a real prime minister?

2. Palmer DisUnited Party

Clive Palmer and Jacqui Lambie have been engaging in a colourful slanging match. Lambie says she won’t resign unless she’s kicked out, but she might have to distance herself from the party. Palmer says she won’t answer the phone or return his calls and that she raises no issues when the party meets. It’s hard to see this fracture being patched up.

According to a vox pop conducted in Tasmania, she has a bit of support, but many are scathing and find her embarrassing. Her attitude may make things harder for the LNP to get legislation through the senate, but will reduce Palmer’s leverage.

3. Rundle on Palmer

Meanwhile Guy Rundle has been studying the mercurial Clive Palmer’s politics. He finds the politics of Clive Palmer:

a mildly centre-right politics, grounded in Australian Catholic traditions and social movement doctrine, and tracing their lineage back to the party whose name he wanted to adopt, the United Australia Party.

Rundle identifies a doctrine on which the Australian political and social settlement is based.

Because the arbitration system and the Harvester judgement that inaugurated it took their moral language from Rerum Novarum, the 1891 encyclical that sparked off the Catholic social movements, we can say that it is this doctrine, and its secular variants, that sits at the very centre of Australian political values, and major parties depart too far from it at their peril. It consists not merely of a set of social rules, but of an idea of what it is to be human, an idea of depth, and of selfhood as achieved in the exercise of mutual obligation.

Such a doctrine, drawing also from nineteenth-century social liberalism and classical and Christian notions of freedom as flourishing within communal life, is a world away from the atomised and content-less self of classical liberal doctrine, and the neoliberal political-economic movement that derives from it.

He locates Palmer’s politics within this tradition. Abbott promised to govern within this tradition, but he lied.

4. Wayne Goss in memoriam

Former Queensland premier Wayne Goss died during the week. Goss is noted for bringing the ALP back to power after 32 years of conservative rule and implementing the reforms recommended by Tony Fitzgerald in his inquiry into police corruption which flourished under Joh Bjelke Petersen. Fitzgerald described Goss as a man of “uncompromising integrity”.

The other Fitzgerald, Professor Ross Fitzgerald, described Goss as a “steady hand, but he really wasn’t a radical reformer”.

There was nothing steady about the way Goss’s government turned the public service inside out. In fact I left in 1991 in large measure because of the hypocrisy the Education Department displayed in ‘valuing people’. Ironically schooling in Queensland was modernised and humanised in the 1970s and 1980s under Joh, possibly because Joh himself took little direct interest in it and always handed education to a junior minister.

It’s astonishing to think that the magnificent Cultural Centre complex was built during the Joh years.

Still, the joint certainly needed cleaning up and Goss certainly did it.

5. Remembering the Berlin wall

“Die Mauer muss weg!” (“Away with the wall!”)

We also had the 25th anniversary of the destruction of the Berlin Wall during the week.

Originally it was assumed that the West would take over the East. Der Spiegel suggests that in fact there has been movement the other way and what has happened is that a genuinely new Germany has emerged.

6. WA plans to close Aboriginal communities

I couldn’t believe this when I heard it. The West Australian Government will close as many as 150 remote Aboriginal communities in the next three years.

Climate Policy & Planning, Politics & Government

Keeping the score on PUP

July 21, 2014 Brian

In an earlier thread, I linked to Lenore Taylor’s article, which holds that the pattern with Palmer is to cause maximum drama then support government. Robert Merkel also linked to Taylor as well as to Ben Eltham who sees Palmer as following self interest.

For both of these to be true, the government must always act in Palmer’s interest, which seems unlikely.

According to Laura Tingle the Taylor view has become orthodoxy in the major parties:

Having sussed out the Palmer United Party, both sides of politics made pragmatic assessments that, for now at least, the PUP should be regarded as a noisy nuisance but one which would support the Coalition in most things.

She says this does not accord with the experience of the past two weeks:

Yes, the PUP ultimately supported the government’s carbon tax repeal bill with amendments. But it opposes the Coalition’s Climate Change Authority Abolition Bill, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (Abolition) Bill and the bill to repeal the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.

It is also opposing moves to stop tax cuts associated with the carbon package, as well as opposing the abolition of the renewable energy target.

While it is supporting the repeal of the mining tax, it is opposing the repeal of the schoolkids bonus, an income support bonus and the low income superannuation contribution, which are all in the same bill.

It eventually supported changes to the Future of Financial Advice laws, but opposes a $435 million cut to higher education through an efficiency dividend, as well as the reintroduction of fuel excise indexation. It also supported Labor amendments to the asset recycling fund.

The net result is a cost to the budget of just over $13 billion before we even get to the contentious budget cuts.

To the casual observer Palmer’s back flip on the Future of Financial Advice (FoFA) looked capricious. In fact considerable work was put in by Cormann and Malcolm Turnbull who brokered the discussions at Cormann’s request.

Mr Turnbull’s involvement in the Future of Financial Advice (FoFA) matter was at the request of Senator Cormann, who did not know Mr Palmer very well. So he rang Mr Turnbull on Friday night last week asking him for help to convince Mr Palmer to talk and to set up a meeting.

Mr Turnbull spoke to Mr Palmer several times over the weekend and presented him with a briefing paper on the Coalition’s changes to the FoFA laws which Senator Cormann had his department prepare.

I understand Cormann and Palmer met five times in a short space of time. Presumably both gave some ground.

I think it’s too early to call a pattern in PUP voting. As to ideology, I think PUP would see itself as seeking a fair go for ordinary people. Beyond that we also have to wait and see.

Tingle’s article was mainly about pre-election positioning and selling the budget. Labor has definitely revealed its hand as supporting emissions trading. Shorten made clear that he meant an ETS rather than a tax.

Abbott is going to keep banging on about it’s really a tax and continue the scare campaign.

Labor may propose a much more modest scheme, more in line with business thinking. Business, Tingle says, is troubled by the current vacuum in real climate policy. They know the vacuum must be filled, but by what?

As to the budget, Tingle says it will need a fundamental rethink if voters are to change their opinion. Short of resolving the conflicting messages involved in, for example, plugging pensioner austerity while promoting a generous paid parental scheme, it’s hard to see what they might do.

But unless they do engage in a fundamental rethink we can expect more mayhem from PUP.

Climate Action, Climate Policy & Planning, Politics & Government

The future of emissions trading

July 16, 2014 Brian 33 Comments

While the Senate has not yet passed the bill to repeal the ETS the question arises as to when if ever carbon pricing will return. I’m not a psephologist but I suspect that the Palmer United Party are going to be in a similar position after the next election of having a stake in the balance of power, perhaps more so! Given that Labor appear set on retaining carbon pricing as part of their policy platform and the Greens will sign up to a reasonable scheme, the introduction of carbon pricing appears to depend on either the Liberals growing up or PUP.

Assuming PUP don’t change their mind they have said we won’t have emissions trading until India, China, the USA, Europe, Japan and South Korea do it. So the prospects of carbon pricing appear to depend on the US Tea Party losing a controlling position in the US Senate, or the Australian Tea Party turning into a mature modern party that respects the science.

The most likely to give I think is the PUP. Recall what Bernard Keane said at Crikey:

The key to understanding Palmer is that he’s always about what’s ahead. What’s in the past is irrelevant. The issue of consistency simply doesn’t arise, because Palmer eternally moves forward, toward the next announcement, the next stunt.

Palmer has said that PUP are going to be on the right side of history. The international scene is likely to be somewhat fluid leading up to the UNFCCC Conference of Parties in Paris in December 2015 where a legally binding post Kyoto deal will be attempted. Negotiations under the UNFCCC are almost continuous but the next big event is in September 2014 when UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has invited world leaders to a Climate Summit Catalyzing Action:

This Summit will be a different kind of Climate Summit. It is aimed at catalyzing action by governments, business, finance, industry, and civil society in areas for new commitments and substantial, scalable and replicable contributions to the Summit that will help the world shift toward a low-carbon economy.

In preparation for the summit economist Jeffrey Sachs’s Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project has produced an interim report plotting specific measures for the world’s 15 largest economies “to cut their emissions quickly and deeply enough to meet an international agreed goal of limiting warming to two degrees above pre-industrial levels.”

The 15 economies are, in alphabetical order, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, France, Germany, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, the UK, the USA.

I’ve highlighted the ones nominated by Palmer.

The report

found that it’s technically possible for Australia to get almost all of its electricity from renewable sources by 2050 and to offset the rest by storing carbon in soil or planting more trees.

We can do this while growing our GDP at 2.4% pa.

The importance of Australia’s role in New York in September is possibly two-fold.

Firstly, will Abbott be embarrassing? Will he be negative and disruptive or just irrelevant? It’s extremely unlikely that he will show any vision or learn anything.

I did hear that he was going to be too busy at home destroying Labor’s legacy in climate change to attend. No doubt Julie Bishop will fill in since Greg Hunt is not allowed out alone.

Secondly, and of greater importance, will Palmer as a result of what other leaders say decide that Australia should ride at the head of the peloton and show a bit of leadership without breaking away?

Palmer saves the world!

Meanwhile here on the local scene PUP are planning to introduce their ETS on trainer wheels as an amendment to the legislation proposing the demise of the Climate Change Authority.

Politics & Government

Senate wrangling as the budget gets mangled

July 14, 2014 Brian 21 Comments

Palmer spoiling Abbott’s party

That was the headline of the sensible Dennis Atkins’ opinion piece in the Courier Mail on Saturday.

Abbott now has to wait until next week and cede the centre stage in the House of Representatives to Clive Palmer, the pest who has become a nemesis while also being the guy the PM cannot ignore.

Tony Wright in the SMH describes Palmer as the emperor in the check shirt holding court upon a leather chaise longue at the entrance to the Senate chamber. There “the formerly mighty paid obeisance, begging his mercy”:

Here came Eric Abetz, leader of the government in the Senate; Mitch Fifield, manager of government business in the Senate; Simon Birmingham, parliamentary secretary to the Minister for Environment; all of them very nearly falling to their knees. A swirl of harried government advisers circled and whispered, knowing there was no escape for their masters.

Clive Palmer had no pity to dispense.

His eyes were dead to the presence of the supplicants, his ears closed to their pleading.

Repeal the carbon tax today? No chance.

He drew around him his little band of senators, instructing them on their duty.

And so on.

There is plenty at stake. Atkins article identifies the following:

Stopping Newstart for the young for 6 months – $2.1b
Changes to family tax benefit B – $1.9b
Axing seniors supplement $1.2b
Co-payment for pharmaceuticals – $1.2b
Higher education cuts – $5b
CPI petrol excise rise $4.1b
Medicare co-payments $3.6b
Freezing family tax benefit indexation – $2.6b
Axing family tax supplements $1.2b
Other measures – at least $2b.

Right there is $25 billion I assume over forward estimates. Surely Hockey will need a mini-budget to effect repairs, but I hate to think what he might cut in the process assuming he won’t increase taxes.

It’s important to remember, however, that Palmer only becomes potent when Labor and the Greens line up in opposition to the Abbottistas.

And then Palmer only controls three votes whereas Abbott needs six of the eight cross-benchers to line up.

Ricky Muir is stressing his autonomy. Again from the SMH:

Ricky Muir is moving out of the shadow of Clive Palmer, describing his agreement with the Palmer United Party as nothing more than a “loose alliance” and warning the government not to assume he will vote with PUP.

Senator Muir stressed his agreement with the bloc boiled down to being “together but autonomous”.

“The memorandum of understanding [signed with PUP] did say, and I stand by it, we will work together where practical. But we’re going to need to do our own research on every different topic and then work together where practical.”

Topics that interest Muir are:

The so-called ”rev-head senator” outlined personal passions that include organic food, which he grows and eats from his garden in rural Victoria, preventive healthcare, which he is interested in championing at a political level, and renewable energy, following his surprise intervention last week to protect the Australian Renewable Energy Agency from the government’s budget knife.

Giles Parkinson says Muir decided to make his mark in rescuing ARENA after the famous ‘brain freeze’ interview with Mike Willisee.

We’ll have to see whether that means the Government will stop playing hardball. The Guardian reported earlier that industry minister, Ian MacFarlane, had been refusing to renew the contracts of ARENA board members meaning that within a few weeks the secretary of the industry department would be the only remaining board member of the authority. Parkinson emphasises that no investment will flow until confidence is restored.

In this as with the senate generally the Government is struggling to appear in control. Abbott assured the faithful in Brisbane that all was “normal” which Shorten thought delusional. Greg Hunt huffed and puffed and said:

he was “sending a very, very, very clear message” to any crossbenchers who voted against repeal that they would have to “explain themselves” to the Australian people, saying he was “firming up [his] approach from diplomacy to send a very clear message”.

He only said that because he thinks he has PUP, Muir, David Leyonhjelm and Bob Day on board. There’s just one small problem. Clive has been relaxing in New Zealand:

The PUP leader, Clive Palmer, told Guardian Australia that he was on holidays and “oblivious” to any deal, the PUP senators are not scheduled to meet to consider any changes until Monday morning, and four other Senate crossbenchers refuse to guarantee their vote until they see the final form of the agreement.

Still the Government says they are going to call Palmer’s bluff and bring on the vote. I thought that was where they went wrong last week. That included them accepting Palmer’s amendment with all of 15 minutes consideration. Then it all fell apart again. Xenephon:

“I think if the government was asked to put red underpants on their heads in the Senate chamber, I reckon they probably would have done it.”

Still it might all go smoothly and the Government will succeed in stripping another $9 billion off the bottom line!

Last week Tony Wright says:

It was as if Labor’s 36 faceless men of 1963 had been revisited in reverse.

And while all around wore serious suits and smart little business frocks, the big man lounged in chinos and a checked shirt unbuttoned halfway to his belly. An emperor in clothes of his own choosing.

Here’s Palmer at a press conference looking relaxed:

We wait to see whether the soapie continues!

Se also Disorder in the house.

Climate Policy & Planning, Politics & Government

Disorder in the house

July 11, 2014 Brian 20 Comments

Mark Thursday 10 July as the day the Abbott government achieved the trifecta. They gagged discussion on the carbon price repeal legislation while filibustering so that negotiations could proceed with Clive Palmer’s PUP in the corridor. Then the legislation was voted down.

Why did the Government trip up and score an own goal?

To meet Abbott’s media schedule, that’s why. Penny Wong to the cross-bench:

“We are already having backgrounded to media…what the Senate will be doing. Media are already being told to prepare for the Prime Minister’s announcement, because gag-and-guillotine will be moved, here in this Chamber, to get the bills on and voted on. So I want the crossbench to be clear on what you are being asked to do — you are being asked to run this Chamber so as to accord with Mr Abbott’s media schedule.

Later she called it “a special blend of arrogance and incompetence”.

Apparently it was pre-ordained on Monday that the bills would be passed today, to fit in with Abbott’s media schedule.

As far as I can make out, the problem arose when the PUP looked at the latest amendment overnight and decided it didn’t go far enough. So they came up with a new one, the third version, essentially mandating a 250% penalty for firms and other entities not passing on to customers savings from the repeal of the carbon tax.

When this was sprung in the morning Palmer reckons there was a “violent reaction” from LNP pollies with lots of angry phone calls. Nevertheless the LNP leadership acceded to the new version, but it ran into trouble because it was deemed a money bill which must originate in the House of Representatives.

Somewhere along the line the Government decided to press on with the Mark 2 amendment without telling PUP. That’s according to Palmer:

It doesn’t look like the carbon tax is going to go through in the Senate today, right, because our party will most likely vote against the bill, right.

Of course, this morning at 8.30 we had an amendment which we discussed with the Government and we left with the clerk’s office. It was to be circulated by the time Parliament came down and it hadn’t been circulated.

And our senators hadn’t been told and they were left in the dark so when the gag motion was brought, their old amendment was in there, which they thought was the new amendment, and they would have voted for that and not the critical amendment which is critical in getting electricity and gas prices back to consumers, and then under the misapprehension they would have voted to repeal the carbon tax, right.

But fortunately we discovered that and they were able to become aware of it, so I just met with them down there and their view was that in no circumstances they wouldn’t be voting today for the carbon tax repeal.

Now, of course the matter may be sorted out, I don’t know, but that’s how it stands at the moment. I think you call it double-crossing people.

We went to lodge our amendment at the clerk’s office at 8.30 and we asked that it be distributed and we had a violent reaction from the Government and our amendment nearly…

Then in the final scramble, the LNP promised to originate Palmer’s desired changes next week in the HoR if the PUP would kindly pass the existing defective version. Palmer told the 7.30 Report that he simply didn’t trust them.

The bill will now go back to the HoR and could be back in the Senate on Monday. But will it be passed?

PUP’s amendment is actually problematic and there is no certainty that six cross-benchers will approve it.

Palmer sees the amendment as applying to entities selling electricity and gas:

The list proposed by PUP includes “an individual, a body corporate, a body politics, a partnership, any other incorporated association or body of entities, a trust or any party or entity which can or does buy or sell electricity or gas”.

There is concern that other entities may be drawn in. There is concern that some firms have absorbed the cost of the carbon tax in whole or in part.

There is concern as to whether the Commonwealth can legislate to control firms in the specific manner proposed.

But it seems the Abbott Government will do anything to axe the tax.

People are wondering what the politics of it all means.

Laura Tingle says it’s karma rather than Palmer. Abbott is getting his own medicine back in spades. But

The all or nothing Abbott modus operandi is simply not going to work any more.

Whatever Palmer’s unpredictability, the Coalition team has been exposed as woefully unprepared to deal with what it faces in the upper house.

This is true in both a tactical and strategic sense. Tony Abbott has to reconsider whether his Senate team is up to the job of handling Palmer.

Bernard Keane at Crikey says:

The key to understanding Palmer is that he’s always about what’s ahead. What’s in the past is irrelevant. The issue of consistency simply doesn’t arise, because Palmer eternally moves forward, toward the next announcement, the next stunt. Clive only ever stops moving so he can momentarily bask in the media spotlight. Then it’s onward again.

The Courier Mail has a biographical article on Palmer that everyone should read.

They say he plays a long game and he understands the media. He grew up on the Gold Coast where Russ Hinze was big. Already wealthy he became media director for the National Party in 1986. So he was there in the last days of Joh and during the Fitzgerald inquiry.

I think on the current issue he is genuinely concerned for consumers. But he doesn’t mind making the LNP look chaotic and shambolic. Abbott is going to have to, as Tingle suggests, look for 80% and 90% solutions.

Meanwhile Xenephon thinks the gaggle of cross-bench senators are part of the solution rather than the problem. I’m not sure Eric Abetz is up to handling the situation.

Climate Policy & Planning, Politics & Government

Palmer does climate change

June 26, 2014 Brian 8 Comments

And how!

As noted on another thread Clive Palmer has announced the PUP policies on climate change with Al Gore on board.

In case you were wondering, Gore wasn’t specially imported, he was in Australia Gore is for the Climate Reality Project, hosted by the Australian Conservation Foundation.

The central point is that PUP will support the Government’s legislation to repeal the carbon ‘tax’ on condition of an amendment that companies be required by law to pass on the savings to consumers.

Two additional votes from the other four swinging senators will be required.

Secondly, PUP will vote against the Government’s bid to abolish the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the Renewable Energy Target and the Climate Change Authority.

Palmer pointed out that while in opposition the Abbott had promised that Australia would retain its renewable energy target. He will make them keep the promise. There were fears that the RET could be shut down as soon as January.

No mention was made of ARENA, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, which already has a budget of $3 billion “to fund renewable energy projects, support research and development activities, and support activities to capture and share knowledge.” Presumably it stays.

Third, PUP will give the thumbs down to ‘Direct Action’. Direct Action is:

“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”. (From the SMH)

Instead, Mr Palmer says his party will move another amendment to set up an emissions trading scheme similar to the one proposed by former Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd.

But this version will “only become effective once Australia’s main trading partners also take action to establish such a scheme”, Mr Palmer said.

“Climate change is a global problem and it must have a global solution,” he said.

“Air moves around the world.”

The price will initially be set at zero.

My interpretation is that the PUP ETS is not linked to repealing the carbon ‘tax’, but to the proposed Direct Action.

This policy mimics what Abbott has been spruiking, so the might just go for it.

Greg Hunt must be happy. He won’t have anything to do and won’t have to fight his recalcitrant colleagues every step of the way.

The Guardian notes:

As recently as April Palmer indicated he did not accept the findings of the latest intergovernmental panel on climate change report and thought countries should be concentrating on reducing “the 97% of carbon dioxide emissions that come from nature”.

Perhaps Palmer has been reading some recent opinion surveys, where Australians are increasingly looking for action on climate change. According to Giles Parkinson, Palmer said:

“The world is constantly changing, and our ability to adapt to change and keep open open mind is what really matters.”

Any way he’s now going to “deliver hope to mankind”.

The Guardian also notes:

Palmer wholly owns a nickel refinery in Queensland that is liable to pay the carbon tax. He has now paid its outstanding carbon tax bill in full, and abstained from the vote on the carbon tax repeal in the lower house because of his conflict of interest.

Moreover:

Under existing law, the fixed carbon price is set to rise to $25.40 next week. A floating price would mirror the international price which is about $8.

Elsewhere there’s Michelle Grattan at The Conversation, and Laura Tingle at the AFR.

Tingle sees palmer as a populist who has outplayed Abbott and wedged Labor and The Greens. After Clive the ETS lives on as a viable policy notion with anyone but Abbott at the helm.

There’s an interesting piece at The Drum by Peter Lewis and Jackie Woods Palmer: top dog or annoying PUP? Voters see Palmer as above all arrogant, aggressive, erratic, out of touch with ordinary people and superficial. This is how the four leaders stack up overall, according to Essential Media Communications:

Climate change, sustainability, plus sundry other stuff