Global warming exaggerated, former PM John Howard says

FORMER PM John Howard thinks there'll never be a worldwide climate change agreement and admits he only backed emissions trading before the 2007 election because he faced a "perfect storm" on the issue.

"I've always been agnostic about it (climate change)," Mr Howard told reporters in London before his address.

Little Johnny Howard is about as low-down, gutless, chin-less, lying, two-faced a politician you could ever have the misfortune of being governed by. He was the “conservative” choice (Liberal Party) when elected who then proceeded on to advance draconian gun control laws, ridiculous environmental laws, and, a “me too” foreign policy for his country.

So now he doesn’t really believe all of that hocus-pocus anway, eh? Screw him.

IOW, he didn't really believe in MMGW, but he was willing to impose an onerous, business crippling regulatory scheme on his country to save his political neck.

No. He was almost certainly going to retire anyway shortly after the election. He was trying to prevent the election of a socialist government. At the time, it was clear that the Australian electorate as a whole wanted action on climate change, rightly or wrongly. To have any hope of preventing the election of a Labor government, the conservative coalition needed to be seen as addressing this.

I'm about to post the text of his entire speech. You may certainly disagree with it, but it does a better job of laying out the situation than this brief summary does.

Little Johnny Howard is about as low-down, gutless, chin-less, lying, two-faced a politician you could ever have the misfortune of being governed by.

Speaking as an Australian conservative, I disagree. I think he was probably the second greatest Prime Minister, we have had. It wasn't perfect, but we don't get perfect.

He was the “conservative” choice (Liberal Party) when elected who then proceeded on to advance draconian gun control laws,

To an extent, true - although the laws are nowhere near as bad as they seem to have been painted in America, they certainly weren't good laws - but I think it's important to point out exactly what happened. When he went to the election in 1996, there was no mention of amending Australia's gun laws. But a massacre shortly after the election turned this into an issue of serious national concern. Australians, as a whole - including a lot of conservative Australians - wanted the laws changed after that - unlike the US, there is no guarantee of a right to bear arms in our constitution, so it was not considered a constitutional issue which might have changed that. But all the Howard government really did was try to get more uniform standards on gun control across Australia - the primary gun control laws were state laws, and most of them were already in place. Most gun laws in Australia are still state laws - not federal ones - so overstating the impact of Mr Howard and the federal laws actually causes issues for those of us who are trying to get more sensible laws.

ridiculous environmental laws

Which laws are these? He proposed an ETS in 2007, as this article says, to try and win an election, but it never got put into practice. He spent most of his period as Prime Minister stopping ridiculous environmental laws from gaining traction.

and, a “me too” foreign policy for his country.

Again, I'm not sure what you are talking about here. Most of Australia's foreign policy was far more independent under Howard's government than at any other time in our history.

At the time, it was clear that the Australian electorate as a whole wanted action on climate change, rightly or wrongly. To have any hope of preventing the election of a Labor government, the conservative coalition needed to be seen as addressing this.

So exactly the same argument the RINOs make for their "compromises" like amnesty, gun control, etc. Did they ever consider telling the truth and trying to change public opinion?

Did they ever consider telling the truth and trying to change public opinion?

Yes, and he'd been trying that and largely succeeding for a decade. But it wasn't working this time - and a large part of the reason for that was propaganda by one of your ex-Vice Presidents, using your mass-media/entertainment complex.

I'm sure you never cast a vote in Gore's direction, so you're not to blame for it, but Howard has called it a 'perfect storm' situation. By 2006/2007 the Australian electorate was convinced by leftwing propaganda, partly from outside, and partly from the Australian left, on this issue. Promising to introduce an ETS - that would only take effect if other major industrial nations did the same by the way - was an attempt to try and stop the rot.

It didn't work - but if it had, it still would have been better than the six years of Rudd and Gillard and Rudd again, we had to put up with.

Incidentally, after losing the election, Howard was replaced as Leader of the Liberal Party by Malcolm Turnbull - who is a conservative in name only type. And the party would have run with him as Leader, if the global warming hype hadn't eased up - and he'd probably be Prime Minister now. Fortunately, it did ease up and we've got Tony Abbott, a real conservative again - but once again, even Malcolm Turnbull would have been ten times better than continued Gillard or Rudd.

We've elected two genuinely conservative Prime Ministers out of our last four. Howard wasn't perfect (on guns especially so) and nor is Abbott (his parenting payment stands out), but I don't think we're doing too badly.

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