Tony Abbott is the most selfish, destructive politician Australia has ever endured.
In an astonishing display of hubris, he informed Ray Hadley that dumping the clean energy target would help the Coalition win the next election.
Did he speak about climate change and the need for emissions reduction? No. Did he speak about energy reliability? No. Did he speak about jobs? No. Did he speak about affordability? No. Did he speak about investment? No.
“This is an opportunity for us to sharpen the difference with Labor on an issue which is of deep concern to the public, on a hip-pocket issue, where we can be on the side of voters and Labor is on the side of green extremists,” Abbott told Hadley. “We’ve got to change the debate. Let Labor be the party of renewable energy and us the party of reliable energy”.
Ignoring the increasingly desperate cries from industry for some sort of certainty in energy policy, Abbott wants to play political games. He doesn’t want consensus, he doesn’t want solutions. He wants to run the same dishonest campaign that he did about the carbon price where even his own chief of staff admitted they deliberately lied for the sake of “brutal retail politics”.
Abbott contends that Australia risks de-industrialising our country “in our obsession to drive down emissions”.
He said he would have liked to scrap the RET altogether “but I had to deal with the Senate and I had to deal within a cabinet and, when you are the party leader, as opposed to a backbencher, you are inevitably a little more constrained.”
This pusillanimous pugilist wants us to renege on an international agreement that he himself signed up to and why? So he can make it as hard as possible for Malcolm Turnbull and so he can attack Labor. The best interests of the country don’t get a look in.
Abbott told Hadley his government was the only government in recent history to lower power prices when it repealed Labor’s carbon price. He conveniently omits the fact that his government put up the price of everything, including power, by 10% when they introduced the GST, and that his Treasurer, Joe Hockey, wanted to increase it further to 15%.
For ten years, Tony Abbott has caused chaos in this country and business groups have had enough. Everybody – business leaders, climate groups, investors, state governments – have pleaded for the Finkel review to be adopted to halt the freeze on investment in energy that continuing uncertainty has imposed.
Turnbull and Frydenberg’s impotence in implementing the expert advice that everyone except Abbott and his small but vocal band of bastards agree must happen, indicates that they too are more interested in politics than good governance.
People who are prepared to lie, to break international agreements, to put the country in jeopardy from increasingly frequent and severe climate and weather events, to freeze investment because they can’t stick to their word, to put their political survival in front of the best interests of the country and the world, deserve our contempt.
Tell Tony Abbott to f*** off and get on with the job of transitioning to a carbon free future or face the condemnation of future generations for your incredible selfishness in passing on a burden to our children that you were too gutless to tackle.
