Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 12/01/2009 5:18:39 PM PST by Pontiac
Australia's parliament is poised to reject the government's plan to cut carbon emissions on Wednesday, handing Prime Minister Kevin Rudd a constitutional trigger to call snap elections that could come as soon as March.
Opponents of the cap-and-trade scheme are set to vote it down in the Senate after a climate-change skeptic seized the opposition leadership on Tuesday, reducing the chance that it might pass with the support of opposition rebels.
"There is no bigger reform at this time in our lives and reforms of this type are never easily won," Climate Change Minister Penny Wong told Australian radio ahead of a vote expected anytime from 2300 GMT (6 p.m. EST).
The scheme would be the biggest outside Europe, covering 75 percent of Australian emissions and starting in July 2011. It would effectively force polluters to pay for their emissions, requiring them to purchase emission permits from a carbon market.
Failure of the laws would hand Rudd a legal trigger to allow him to call an early election on climate change, and to then ram his laws through a special joint sitting of both houses of parliament if he is returned to power.
Senior opposition lawmaker and frontbencher Christopher Pyne said he expected a double dissolution election early in the new year, ahead of polls due around late November.
Wong said defeat would be a setback to global climate negotiations next week in Copenhagen, with developing countries possibly seeing it as a sign that wealthy countries were unwilling to curb greenhouse emissions blamed for global warming.
Opponents of the cap-and-trade scheme are set to vote it down in the Senate after a climate-change skeptic seized the opposition leadership on Tuesday, reducing the chance that it might pass with the support of opposition rebels.
(Excerpt) Read more at scientificamerican.com ...
Ping
Perhaps some of our Aussie brothers or sisters can explain. Does this mean a call for a no confidence vote or is there another mechanism for early elections being discussed here.
What, if any, affect did ClimateGate have on the vote?
And congratulations to the Australians for doing the sensible thing.
The way I read this is that it could easily backfire on Rudd. If there is soneone out there who understands Australian politics, please inform what’s happening here. Good or Bad?
I think here and Australia that with the down turn in the economy the idea that the Carbon Credit scemes is hitting home.
When you don’t have a job or your wife or kid doesn’t have a job the notion of Global Warming becomes a secondary issue to getting the economy moving and not throwing a wrench in the works.
If I can’t pay my mortgage I don’t want someone tripling my heating bill.
I think I see your problem.
Always making CHANGE with the WONG PENNY.
Our agent of CHANGE Barak Obama would understand however.
It's called a 'Double-Dissolution' election and it's explicity allowed for under Section 57 of the Australian Constitution.
Australia has two Houses of Parliament - the House of Representatives and the Senate (Australia's Constitution was mostly based on British law, but some elements of US law were incorporated as well). For a law to pass, just as in the US, it must pass both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Kevin Rudd's Labor party controls the House of Representatives which is why they are the government. The Senate however is currenly 32 Labor, 37 Liberal/National coalition, 5 Greens, 1 Family First, and 1 Independent - so Labor can't get a bill through the Senate without support from somebody else. Support they tried to get in the case of the ETS by getting Malcolm Turnbull to get the Liberals to vote with them.
Now - Members of the House of Representatives sit non-fixed terms of up to just over three years. Senators however has fixed terms of six years. Half-Senate elections (when half the Senators are up for re-election) are normally held with House of Representative elections as a matter of convenience, but they still serve their fixed terms (after the October 2007 election, when Kevin Rudd took power, the new Senators elected at that election had to wait until July 2008 to take office).
So - got that - a typical Australian election occurs roughly every three years and involves the entire House and half the Senate being up for election.
And to pass a law, it must pass both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Now - under certain specific circumstances (basically if the Senate rejects a law passed by the House twice over a more than three month period, and as long as there are more than six months remaining until the end of the House of Reps maximum term), the Prime Minister may ask the Governor General to call a 'double dissolution' election. If the Governor General agrees (and normally they would unless the government was acting outrageously), both Houses of Parliament are immediately dissolved, and all members of the House and Senate go up for re-election.
The purpose of this is to allow a government a chance to break a deadlock where it keeps passing a law and the Senate keeps blocking it.
After a double dissolution election, the Government can reintroduce the law they want to pass. If it is again blocked by the Senate, then the Governor General may convene a joint sitting of both Houses together and the bill can be voted on by them together to pass it. As there are (under the Constitution) approximately twice as many Members of the House, as there are Senators, this will normally give a government an advantage. For example, with the current numbers where there are 32 Labor senators versus 45 others, and there are 83 Labor MHRs versus 65 others, in a joint sitting Labor would have 115 votes versus 110.
Double Dissolution elections are rare - there have been six in our history. And only one of those resulted in a joint sitting.
Are they risky for a government - yes, they could lose office. They generally only call them if they are very confident they will win. 32 Senators versus 45 '
What is the Harlot factor? From my brief experience in OZ back in the Sixties people in your country are rather stubborn when it comes to politics, in other words who can be bought?
Thanks for the education.
At least on this issue (judging from this one article) it would seem that the public in Autralia is against this particular legislation.
So it would seem that unless the public otherwise agrees with how Labor is running the country it would not be a wise move for Rudd to call for a 'double dissolution' election.
If Rudd goes to the polls, he'll be trying to paint the Liberal and Nationals as 'climate change deniers'. Whereas I think Abbott will be attacking this particular approach.
John Howard took an ETS to the last election. A much smaller, much more modest proposal that focused on pollution and waste of energy in general, rather than on climate change specifically. I think Abbott would probably resurrect that scheme in some form.
At the moment it would be political suicide to completely reject the idea. That might change with ClimateGate, but it hasn't changed yet. It's OK to talk about reasonable doubt, or the science not being complete yet, or I'm not yet convinced, but Abbott can't really come out and say "I don't believe in climate change" in an election campaign. "I'm not sure" is OK. "Not real" could kill him.
Just shows how thoroughly the general public has been brainwashed by the MSM and the public education system.
Man caused Global Warming has become the secular religion of the age.
To deny that it exists is the modern blasphemy.
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