But the recent election of Abbott is good news for all conservatives. Howard was a good conservative as well...even though if I recall he supported global warming legislation. I hope Abbott is dead set against it.
Howard was, among other things, a political realist. He supported some legislation on 'climate change' because at the time that's what a lot of voters wanted, and it wasn't an important enough issue to him to spend political capital on opposing it. He wanted to fight elections on the issues thought mattered most. Abbott is in a different situation - the pressure for 'climate change' laws is a lot less now and there's also significantly more opposition to major changes (even most of those in favour of such laws, now only want minor changes not the major ones they were demanding, so while he pays a little bit of lip service to it, it's all he needs to do on that issue - but if it became a big issue politically again, I think he'd head back towards Howard's approach if he thought it was politically a good idea. The basic difference is they'd regard on getting industry to try and 'fix' any problems by giving them business incentives to do so - rather than saying it's a job for big government. The idea really is that most problems are better solved by the government getting out of the way of solutions, rather than trying to impose its own.