On this day, November 24, 2009, the Liberals and Nationals finally decide there are more votes in rage than in the future…
The pivotal event was the Coalition party meeting of 24 November [2009] to consider the shadow cabinet recommendation to support Rudd’s amended scheme. This meeting determined the future of conservative politics for many years, and its consequences for Australia were far-reaching. The debate began at 10am with a briefing from Macfarlane who called the deal ‘exceptional’. Most backbenchers struggled with its complexity. The meeting ran for more than seven hours, with two breaks. Its disputed outcome was an insight into the arcane nature of political rituals.
Kelly, (2014:252)
The context was that, despite having gone to the 1990 Federal Election with a stronger climate target than the ALP, the Liberals and Nationals decided that the scientists were lying, physics was wrong and there was nothing to worry about. That held until 2006, when Prime Minister John Howard had been forced into another of his U-turns, and had announced the “Shergold Report” – a “limited hangout” of an emissions trading scheme. It had convinced nobody and Howard was swept from office in November 2007. The Liberals had started to backtrack on climate under the first Opposition Leader, Brendan Nelson. Once Malcolm Turnbull had taken over, things shifted back. But Turnbull, disliked by his own party and also wounded by a shoot-self-in-foot scandal earlier, was in a weak position…
What we can learn is that big events don’t need big causes. It can all go horribly wrong for no particular reason (though by this time the Australian Coal Association had properly got itself going on the anti-carbon pricing campaigning. Again.
What happened next
Turnbull was sacked. His replacement was not, as many expected, Joe Hockey, but thugchild Tony Abbott. And the climate wars properly kicked off…