Its wall to wall Abbott in the press

Terry McCrann’s argument makes sense – The Liberal Party adopting the same catastrophic AGW narrative and same CO2 reduction targets as Labor, but only differing in ways of achieving them may be nearing the end of its useful life:

…No, what Abbott must do is lead the opposition to walk away from all this; to build a sustained narrative against the entire climate change orthodoxy, to go back to his core belief that “climate change is crap”, but this time based on substance…..The functional case is easy, logical and unanswerable. An Abbott government would make any move to a mandatory cut of our emissions conditional on a global agreement. But that forces him to abandon the absurdity of the 5 per cent emissions cut target, and the 20 per cent mandatory renewable one.,,,,Lawyer Fergus Green has argued on the Inside Story blog that the repeal of the carbon tax would not trigger a compensation obligation to the holder of carbon units. Provided, simply, the government itself did not take them back.

Dennis Shanahan in Friday’s opinion piece, on the other hand, cools up a feast of climate politics nonsense.

He slavishly repeats all the Labor mantras against Abbott:

Abbot opposes everything just to get into government

Abbott is responsible for the asylum mess due to his s intransigence on Malaysia

Abbott is responsible for uncertainty in Energy industry due to his s promise to repeal the carbon tax

Abbott will be responsible for electricity price rises by inducing uncertainty

Hard to know where to start:

That determination to destroy the Gillard government is costing the Coalition credibility as an alternative government.

Where is the evidence for this. This is the most hated PM and most hated government. The feeling out the I see is that Australians will kiss the feet of anyone who will rid them of this abomination, before they ruin our country.

His success in forcing a humiliating defeat on to Julia Gillard over the offshore processing of asylum-seekers was a short-term political victory blinded to the longer-term consequences by the desire to force an election.

Forcing a humiliating deaf? Gillard’s has a majority in both the House and the Senate with her Green partner. Gillard’s humiliation is 100% her own doing – in insisting on inhumane Malaysian legislation that was denounced by both houses of the parliament, that Abbott  said from the beginning he was not in support of, that most Australians disdain and that the Greens and even her own party rejects, all the while rejecting a perfect Nauru solution lying on the table before her.

But the real anger about the carbon tax, particularly among workers fearful of job losses in manufacturing and mining, and that includes unionists and Labor supporters, is directed against Gillard for going back on her promise there would be no carbon tax….

Sorry, does this even make sense? The workers only hate the lie, they don’t mind the tax so much, that is killing their jobs? I don;t think so, the majority clearly want to ditch the tax.

Abbott now faces two difficulties: convincing people he can rescind the tax and the danger of a devastating loss of face if he can’t.

Why does he have to convince people? Are they likely to not vote for him if he fails to convince them – get real, Abbott is the only game in town to rescind the tax.  And if he fails to disarm the poison pills, is that a reflection on Abbott, or is that the result of a monstrously anti-democratic act of the Labor Party, in purposefully creating a law against people’s mandate and wishes that the people cannot later democratically vote to rescind? Where do irreversible laws fit into our democracy?

[Abbott] Destroying confidence in the carbon market before the election is a destructive way to frustrate the government’s implementation of its legislation….Greens deputy leader Christine Milne has declared Abbott’s warning to business not to buy emissions permits will drive up the cost of electricity.

It is not Abbott who is destroying confidence. Gillard has legislated a hated tax based on delusional assumptions of a global trading system, without bipartisan support, that the opposition has, on good economic grounds, popularly committed to rescind on their likely election to office. So now, who created the uncertainty in this clearly temporary tax?

After obstructing and frustrating Labor policy in an effort to force an early election, the argument that a Coalition victory would give Labor a moral imperative to support the end of the tax is a bit of a stretch. The argument that it is not the job of the opposition to help implement government policy is as valid for the ALP as it is for the Coalition.

Abbott is not obstructing policy just for the sake of forcing an early election – if they were good policies, he would be punished by the electorate; he opposes them because they are the worst policies in our political history.

Dennis Shanahan sees the Labor-reconstructed Abbott, not the real Abbott, the electorate is slowly discovering.