On this day, August 16 2012, independent MP in the Australian Federal Parliament Tony Windsor has to explain the basic facts of life to Tony Abbott, then Opposition Leader
The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 392.59 ppm. Now it is 421ish- but see here for the latest.
“The issue had also erupted about 12 months earlier, on 16 August 2012…. I’d had a gutful. His hypocrisy on the so-called carbon tax, or as it was originally cast, a price on carbon, was evident as the scheme had been supported by the Coalition in the lead-up to the 2007 election. Abbott and many inside and outside the parliament seemed to have forgotten that both sides of politics shared the same target for reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. So when Abbott moved one of his many politically motivated suspensions of standing orders I gave him a spray about his hypocrisy on the matter….”
(Windsor, 2015: 212)
‘I will do anything, anything, to get this job’ – they were the comments, and people know that, and they should know it, because you are an absolute disgrace in the way in which you are wandering around on this issue. You have exactly the same target as the emissions trading scheme-pricing arrangements. You have exactly the same target in terms of the 1990 levels by 2020. And you have the audacity to actually say to people that you are going to achieve that target through a much more expensive arrangement than putting a price on carbon – particularly given the history that you have on this issue.
(Windsor, 2015: 218-9)
Why this matters.
You can be a Rhodes Scholar and dumb as a rock. That is all.
What happened next?
Abbott became Prime Minister. Of course he did. And the one thing he achieved? Repealing the carbon price that the Gillard government had shepherded through parliament.