Posted on 11/26/2009 3:04:31 PM PST by naturalman1975
MALCOLM Turnbull's arrogant decision to declare the party that has rebelled against him as being in favour of the Emissions Trading Scheme has created a crisis that may see the Liberals join him in the political wilderness.
Unprecedented scenes in Parliament last night saw not only the Coalition in turmoil with a growing tide of shadow ministers resigning from the frontbench to allow themselves to oppose the ETS, but the Rudd Government seeking ways to ram the amendments the Opposition leader agreed to through the Senate before Mr Turnbull goes.
For now, he remains defiant and is still seen by his supporters as trying to modernise the Liberal Party into a political force for the 21st century.
More likely, he will end on the scrapheap of history.
Simply put, the Liberal Party will not stand for his stand-alone style. "I am the leader" is still his mantra after declaring that the Coalition Party room was in favour of the amendments that would allow Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's plan to cut Australia's greenhouse gas emissions to pass the Senate. But the party remains bitterly divided as the numbers against the Opposition leader grow. While no one has put themselves forward as a leadership candidate, it is only a matter of them calling for a spill.
Mr Turnbull has gambled all on an impossible throw of the dice to pull a reluctant party behind him.
(Excerpt) Read more at heraldsun.com.au ...
Since this editorial was written, Tony Abbott (who was number three in the Liberal Party of Australia (once again, bear in mind that the Australian Liberals are conservatives) under John Howard, has made it clear he will be a candidate for the leadership.
Abbott is a socially conservative Roman Catholic - he even entered a seminary as a young man. Malcolm Turnbull on the other hand... while I won't go so far as to say he's not a conservative, he's a much more moderate one, and largely holds the leadership because elements of the party were looking towards the centre.
Revolution the new spirit of the Libs’ true fightback
Andrew Bolt From: Herald Sun November 27, 2009 12:00AM
MALCOLM Turnbull is gone and all but buried. In a stunning revolt, the Liberals grassroots are reclaiming a party hijacked by a leader of the Left.
snips:
Last month came the flame, with warming sceptic Lord Monckton, a gifted mathematician, receiving lots of talkback air time after revealing unreported clauses in the draft global warming treaty Kevin Rudd hopes to get signed at Copenhagen next month.
One such clause, as I’ve reported, commits Australia to hand over $7 billion a year to the United Nations as its “climate debt”, sparking claims of a new “world government”...
...And on the weekend came the final incitement of the grassroots - the leaking of thousands of emails from the world’s leading warmist scientists showing they’d tricked up data and suppressed sceptical scientists, even though, as IPCC co-author Kevin Trenberth, privately admitted: “The fact is that we cannot account for the lack of warming at the moment.”
To: Fred Nerks — posted this to you on another thread, but going to put it here -— on the Aussie thread. (Exciting to see a real slugfest.)
~~~~~~~
More here (have to admit Aussie politics is all new to me):
It’s time to step aside (refers to Australia’s conservative opposition leader)
Herald Sun ^ | 27th November 2009
Posted on Thursday, November 26, 2009 6:04:31 PM by naturalman1975
MALCOLM Turnbull’s arrogant decision to declare the party that has rebelled against him as being in favour of the Emissions Trading Scheme has created a crisis that may see the Liberals join him in the political wilderness.
Unprecedented scenes in Parliament last night saw not only the Coalition in turmoil with a growing tide of shadow ministers resigning from the frontbench to allow themselves to oppose the ETS, but the Rudd Government seeking ways to ram the amendments the Opposition leader agreed to through the Senate before Mr Turnbull goes.
For now, he remains defiant and is still seen by his supporters as trying to modernise the Liberal Party into a political force for the 21st century.
More likely, he will end on the scrapheap of history.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2395127/posts
lol; sorry naturalman; didn’t notice; exact source
Is the Liberal Party of Australia the most conservative of all of the present political parties of Australia?
Of 'significant' parties, the National Party tends to be slightly more conservative than the Liberal Party, but they normally operate in coalition - differences are minor.
Of less significant parties, Family First has one Federal Senator, and a few members of State Parliaments - they are a socially conservative party, and closely linked to some Christian groups. The Christian Democrats have one member of a state Parliament.
Basically the Liberals are the only conservative party that can realistically give us a Prime Minister, the Liberals and Nationals the only conservative parties that can give us state Premiers. None of the others can do more than put a few people into Parliaments.
No, it is moderate/conservative. But it is in a coalition with the National Party which is very conservative.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Party_of_Australia
How did a noxious person like Turnbull get to be leader of the Liberal Party? It now looks like there are multiple issues on which he disagrees with the base of the party and the party’s coalition partners?
He seems less of a fit with the Liberals nationally than Rudy Guliani was with the national Republican party in the US.
In essence, he looked electable. None of the other contenders did and to be honest, they still don’t. We’re most likely going to end up with Tony Abott, Joe Hockey, or Kevin Andrews as leader of the party and of the Opposition out of this. It’s quite hard to see any of them winning the next election.
Conservative members of the party were, to an extent, willing to support Turnbull on the grounds, they’d rather have him as Prime Minister at the end of 2010 than Labor going into a second term. The lesser of two evils. At this point, it’s become pretty clear that Turnbull can’t win. So why not give a genuine conservative a chance.
Australia has compulsory voting - everybody has to vote. So capturing the ‘centre’ is important to winning. Turnbull has become so focused on that, he’s lost the base.
What it comes down to - I’d probably vote for Rudd over Turnbull - because I’d rather have a Prime Minister who stands for something (even if I disagree with it) than one who doesn’t stand for anything except winning.
I’d vote for the Nats (agrarian socialists though they inclined to be at times) before voting for the Libs under Turnbull or Hockey.
If I was unable to go Nat or a conservative independent, which likely since I live in Canberra (for my American brethren, Canberra is like Washington DC in that they are both the purpose built national capital and that they vote heavily to the left), then I will be forced to write ‘None of the Above’ on the House of Reps ballot and drop it in the box.
Is John Howard termed out? What is he doing these days?
Howard was voted out at the last election (he became only the second sitting PM to loose his seat in an election).
From what I can see he’s spending a fair bit of time in the US (one of his children is married to someone in the Republican establishment IIRC).
Basically, Mr Howard is retired. He goes around making speeches.
Australia doesn’t have term limits. There’s no legal impediment to him running again for Parliament if he chose to and becoming leader of the party and if they win the election being Prime Minister and some people have raised the possibility. But he’s seventy years old now and though he seems very healthy, it’d be a big thing to ask him to do unless you could just about guarantee the result.
“Australia has compulsory voting - everybody has to vote.”
what is the penalty?
A fine - it’s not large. About $60, I think.
“I’d probably vote for Rudd over Turnbull - because I’d rather have a Prime Minister who stands for something (even if I disagree with it) than one who doesn’t stand for anything except winning.”
It’s worse than I thought. I’m assuming that Turnbull couldn’t pour water out of a shoe with instructions written on the heel?
If I thought he believed global warming was real, and he was supporting the government out of a sincere conviction, I'd respect that. But the fact is, he's doing it because he thinks it will win votes.
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