New leader for Australian Liberal Party
Updated
Australian Liberal Party M-Ps have voted out their leader Malcolm Turnbull over the divisive issue of climate change, but may have failed to find a unifying figure after days of bloodletting. Tony Abbott was elected by the narrowest of margins .. 42 votes to 41 .. in what some have called a battle for the Liberal Party's soul.
Presenter: Linda Mottram
Speakers: Alex Somlyay, Australian Liberal Party M-P and whip. Tony Abbott, Australian Liberal Party leader. Greg Combet, Australia's assistant minister for climate change. Judith Brett, political analyst and author.
- Listen:
- Windows Media
MOTTRAM: It's hard to overstate the depth of the division in Liberal Party ranks over the issues of climate change. Malcolm Turnbull negotiated with the government winning amendments to its emissions trading legislation he hoped would satisfy all views in his ranks. They didn't. His party split asunder, fuelling acrimonious outbursts in public. By the time they met to vote on whether Mr. Turnbull should remain leader, the need for a healing gesture was paramount. Yet Liberal members of parliament have opted arguably for even more division.
SOMLYAY: Two ballots were held. Mr. Hockey was eliminated on the first ballot and the final ballot was won by Tony Abbott 42 to 41.
MOTTRAM: Tony Abbott has been 15 years in parliament, ten of them as a minister. He's closely aligned with the former prime minister, John Howard, and he's promised to be a unifier.
ABBOTT: I have said to my colleagues that I will do my best to be a consultative and colleagal leader.
MOTTRAM: Mr. Abbott sharp conservative politics includes strong opposition to the government's planned emissions trading scheme, the first and only policy issue he went to in his post-election news conference.
ABBOTT: The emissions trading scheme legislation which is really an energy taxation scheme does deserve the most rigorous scrutiny by this parliament. This is a $120 billion tax on the Australian public and that is just for starters.
MOTTRAM: It was an aggressive performance not against climate change as such, but against the style of the government's emissions trading scheme, which Mr. Abbott clearly intends to defeat.
ABBOTT: First we will seek to refer the legislation to committee for further scrutiny. If in the end, we cannot get the support of the cross benchers for that course of action, we will oppose the legislation in the Senate.
MOTTRAM: As Mr. Abbott spoke, that very legislation was being debated in extended and agonising senate session. The legislation was rejected in the Upper House last August because the government could not muster the 7 extra votes it needs to get a majority there. Now, with Tony Abbott's policy in play, supported 54 to 29 in a secret Liberal Party room ballot just after the leadership vote, the legislation looks doomed.
Some Liberals are contemplating defying the new leader, but it's unlikely there will be enough of them to save the bill. And once the legislation is rejected twice by the Senate, notwithstanding a potential constitutional challenge, the Rudd Government could take the option of going to the people, of dissolving both Houses of Parliament and calling an early election on climate change.
Tony Abbott says he is ready for that fight.
ABBOTT: I am not frightened of an election on this issue.
MOTTRAM: But if Mr. Abbott is already taking swipes, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has quickly sent out a message to.
Greg Combet is the government's Assistant Climate Change Minister.
COMBET: The extremists from the climate change deniers and the conspiracy theorists have clearly gained control of the Liberal Party, but we call on all senators of good conscious in the parliament this week to support action on climate change.
MOTTRAM: But while the Rudd Government is still urging the senators to pass the emissions trading law, there is feverish speculation that this will now end in an early federal election.
In the meantime, some say Australia is witnessing a battle for the soul of the Liberal Party.
Analyst, Judith Brett is the author of the history of the Liberal Party who says the Liberals have rarely been this divided and Tony Abbott, she says is unlikely to be the bridge they need.
BRETT: Tony is a natural sort of nay sayer, he's an opponent, he likes taking the unpopular view and attacking what he says as being the sort of political correct lazy consensus. That's a useful position I think for somebody to take in politics, but I do not know whether it is a position that is compatible with the sort of leadership that the Liberal Party now needs.
MOTTRAM: A test could soon loom over former Liberal leader, Malcolm Turnbull's warning that rejecting the government's climate change legislation could consign the Liberals to electoral oblivion.
