PLEA Network

20 September 2017, Renew Economy, Back to 2009: Abbott declares war on everything. Well, that turned out well didn’t it. Despite prime minister Malcolm Turnbull’s desperate attempts to appease the conservative faction of his Coalition government by compromising everything he ever stood for on climate and clean energy, it’s clearly not enough. In doing so, Abbott has done what Turnbull dared not in the past two years: jettison Abbott-era policies. While Turnbull was too afraid to make those policies more ambitious, Abbott has now come out and effectively dumped the very policies he put in place: its Paris climate commitment, and the much-reduced renewable energy target.His predecessor Tony Abbott effectively dialled back the climate and energy debate to 2009 by announcing that he would cross the floor and vote against anything that looked remotely like a climate change policy, or represented even the smallest subsidy for renewable energy. Abbott has reinforced his assertion that climate science is “crap”. In an interview on Rupert Murdoch’s Sky News with climate denier and renewables hater Alan Jones and his former chief of staff Peta Credlin, Abbott rates climate changes as “a third order” issue. Read More here