New Liberal party leader



Note for American readers. In Australia, the Liberal party is the major conservative party. The new leader is only slightly right of center -- but he does have a "Sarah Palin" as his deputy. He has been rather "Green" in the past but there are signs he is wavering on climate change

Malcolm Turnbull says his leadership of the Liberal Party will promote opportunity and fairness. Mr Turnbull toppled Brendan Nelson as Liberal leader in a ballot in Canberra this morning after the former leader last night sprung a surprise leadership spill. "It's a great honour and privilege (and) humbling to be elected to the leadership of the Federal Liberal Party," Mr Turnbull said at his first press conference as leader.

The millionaire lawyer turned merchant banker said he had been raised by a single parent, renting flats and struggling to earn money. "I don't come to the position of the leader of the Liberal Party with a lifetime of privilege behind me," Mr Turnbull said. "I know some Australians are doing it tough ... even in times of prosperity people are doing it tough. "We are a party of opportunity and ... this is a land of opportunity. "But we need to have confidence, we need to have leadership, we need above all to have the opportunities to do well.

"And that is the great difference between our side of politics and Labor, because we believe that government's role is to enable each and every Australian to do their best, to exercise their freedom of choice to do their best.''

Mr Turnbull also welcomed his partnership with Deputy Leader Julie Bishop. "Julie Bishop is a very dear friend of mine, we have worked together over many years, we know and trust each other very, very well indeed.''

Mr Turnbull won this morning's ballot by 45 votes to 41, Chief Opposition Whip Alex Somlyay said. Mr Turnbull - who was the party's treasury spokesman - lost a leadership ballot by just three votes to Dr Nelson late last year.

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Muslim politics come to Australia

("Moselmane" means "Muslim")

A family restaurant in Sydney's south was peppered with bullets overnight less than two weeks after vandals targeted it for displaying council election posters. Witnesses say up to four detectives and five police cars were near Hijazi's Falafel restaurant in Arncliffe this morning. "It was about 1am this morning [when] someone pulled up in a car and a couple of them got out and sprayed shots all over there," Mark, a co-owner of nearby Wollongong Road newsagency, said. "There's all bullet holes everywhere," he said. St George police said the shop had damage "consistent with gunfire".

No one was injured in the attack. Police were canvassing the area for witnesses, a spokesman said. It is the fourth time in a month the restaurant, owned by the Hijazi family, has been targeted. Vandals pelted the premises with eggs and threw a brick into its front window on September 3 in protest at the restaurant's owners displaying Rockdale council election posters supporting the incumbent Labor candidate, Shaoquett Moselmane.

Vandals also painted the name "Nagi" over the restaurant's windows on September 1 and August 27. Incumbent independent candidate Michael Nagi, a councillor in the same ward as Mr Moselmane, said at the time he had nothing to do with the incidents and called on whoever was responsible to stop. Both men condemned today's attack.

Restaurant owner Faissal Hijazi said he was worried that vandals had struck again and done so after Saturday's local poll. "I'm father for seven kids. I'm not worried about myself. I have to be worried about my family. Me and my wife and son and daughter and my kids are working in the shop," Mr Hijazi said. "It's happening four times and still police doesn't do nothing, doesn't catch anything.

"Now I think I can't even support football or soccer. I can't support anyone," he said. Mr Hijazi said he believed the attack was related to last month's incidents. "It's the third or fourth time I vote for [Mr Moselmane]. I always put his picture in the shop. Maybe other people from the area like the independent person from the area," he said.

The results of Saturday's local council polls have not been finalised. In Rockdale, Mr Moselmane was at the top of the ALP's ticket in Second Ward. His group has received 30 per cent of the primary vote. Mr Nagi was listed at the top of a ticket for a group of independents contesting the same ward. Their group has received 18 per cent.

The owner of the newsagent, Mark, who did not want his surname published, said the Hijazis were "nice people" who came in to his store every day to get their papers and magazines.

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Far-Leftist professor under fire over his attack on free speech for a conservative professor

STUART Macintyre can run from one prestigious appointment to another, but he just can't hide from the Blainey affair. Macintyre, who is at a conference in Canada, will return to Melbourne University and a post on the new National Curriculum Board later this month, after a 12-month stint at Harvard University as chair of Australian studies.

Awaiting him are damaging allegations that he played a role in destroying historian Geoffrey Blainey's academic career. The event, which some regard as the most squalid in Australian intellectual history, if not the opening shot in the history wars, is reprised in a forthcoming essay by Quadrant editor Keith Windschuttle. It relates how Macintyre and fellow academic staff at Melbourne University's history department turned on Blainey in 1984, after he had made public statements about the high volume of Asian immigration amid a bruising economic recession.

Blainey made the comments at a Rotary International meeting in Warrnambool, Victoria, and they were quoted in the Melbourne press. A mild-mannered scholar and elegant writer, Blainey became a controversialist overnight. A fortnight later, 23 staff, including Macintyre, signed a letter of protest against Blainey, then the Ernest Scott Professor of History. This set in train a series of events, including student protests and pickets, that led to Blainey's resignation from his tenured post: an extraordinary move for a mid-career scholar of high repute. Macintyre succeeded him in the post.

The letter of protest began: "As historians at the University of Melbourne, we wish to dissociate ourselves entirely from the widely publicised attacks which Professor Geoffrey Blainey, an eminent member of our profession, and a professor in our department, has recently made on the Government's immigration policy with regard to Asians."

In his forthcoming essay on the history wars, Windschuttle alleges Blainey was the victim of a "calculated move to make him feel as uncomfortable as possible within his own department, to generate hostility towards him among the wider university community, and to sanction the actions the signatories expected students to take". "In short, it was done to get rid of him," Windschuttle writes. He points out that Macintyre was the "greatest beneficiary" of Blainey's resignation.

Soon after the staff letter was published in Melbourne's The Age newspaper in May 1984, Blainey ceased teaching. He became dean of the arts faculty and retired officially four years later.

Macintyre has discussed the events in his book The History Wars, in the guise of an observer rather than a participant.

In an email conversation with The Weekend Australian yesterday, he said: "The claim that I led the attack on Geoff out of malice or ambition was propagated by (former publisher at Melbourne University Press) Peter Ryan, who repeatedly elided four years that passed between the Warrnambool speech and Geoff's decision to retire after his second term as dean."

In a 2006 interview, Blainey, who went on to a successful career as a freelance historian, said he would have stayed at Melbourne University if not for the hostility on campus. "Why should you leave an institution you've been in for a long time, where you are close to a very good library, are well paid and have a lot of time to write after doing your teaching and administration?" Blainey said. "Compared with writing as a freelancer, the university is infinitely preferable. It was a great disappointment having to leave but there was no future for me there."

Windschuttle describes the protest letter as an authoritarian action and its signatories as enemies of free speech. The event was a crux moment in Australian intellectual history, helping to shape the identities of Left and Right.

Former Treasury secretary John Stone regarded Blainey as "a brave man set upon by various political and intellectual thugs", while former prime minister John Howard thought for a time that Blainey, who became his administration's favourite historian, had been hounded out of office.

Left-wing historian Henry Reynolds has argued that Blainey "lost the respect of practically the whole profession" through his intervention in the immigration debate.

In Macintyre's view, the letter's primary purpose was "to declare that he (Blainey) spoke for himself and not for us". "Over the preceding two months he had been regularly identified as a professor of history at Melbourne University and dean of the faculty of arts," he said. "There is a loose convention that academics should reserve use of their university title to commentary on matters of professional expertise and our letter therefore said that he spoke as an individual."

Windschuttle describes this as "dissembling ... the members of his own staff sent a very clear message that they found him unwelcome ... It certainly ended his university career."

Gerard Henderson, executive director of the Sydney Institute and former Howard speech writer, said the impression he had gained from conversations with Blainey was that he resigned not because he was hounded out but because he wanted to go. He also pointed out that Macintyre had declined to join Blainey's critics in a subsequent book on the events of 1984, titled Surrender Australia.

Historian Ross Fitzgerald said the history wars of recent years began with Blainey's 1984 speech and the reaction of his colleagues, who later "slammed his academic work as a way of slamming him". He added that recent criticism of Macintyre, including references to his past as a Communist Party member, amounted to a campaign of vilification "almost as reprehensible" as the attacks on Blainey. Blainey could not be contacted for comment.

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THE CLIMATE DEBATE ROLLS ON

Three current articles below:

"The Green Paper? Almost Legless"

Press release from Viv Forbes, Chairman of Australia's Carbon Sense Coalition

The Carbon Sense Coalition today claimed that Penny Wong's Green Paper on the Carbon Reduction Scheme had been overtaken by scientific and political developments and was now almost legless.

The Chairman of "Carbon Sense" Mr Viv Forbes said that of the three pillars of the government's climate change policy, only one was sensible - "Adapting to Climate change that we cannot avoid".

Politicians living in the Canberra hot house seem to think that controlling the climate is as simple as adjusting the thermostat in their air-conditioned offices. Man cannot control the weather and the only feasible climate policy is to make sure we have the brains, the freedom, the flexibility, the funds and the machinery to cope with whatever surprises the climate has in store for us. "Adapt or die" has been the guiding rule for every species since life began on this ever-changing earth.

The first pillar of the policy, "reducing greenhouse gas emissions" is based on flawed science and promoted by scare stories with no evidence to support them. The science shows clearly that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere cannot be a significant driver of global warming. Moreover, records going back 10,000 years confirm that CO2 does not drive temperature. Thus any attempts to reduce carbon emissions will be "pain for no gain".

The third pillar of government climate change policy aims to "shape a global solution". This policy is also flawed and should be abandoned. India, China and Russia do not believe that CO2 drives global temperatures and will only join a global agreement if it costs them nothing or, even better, they get paid "carbon sin dispensation money" by silly western nations. Russia has already banked huge carbon credit receipts and other nations are hoping to jump on this gravy train.

Moreover, anyone with a sensitive political antenna can see that in places like Britain, Germany, Canada and the US, the rising costs of food and energy, and the Green destruction of jobs, are worrying electors far more than a mythical global warming bogey-man that never arrives.

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Too green is no good

Rudd's Warmist policies are unwise even from an environmental viewpoint

It is too risky for the environment and the economy for Australia to take up calls to commit to cutting our greenhouse gas emissions by up to 40 per cent in little more than a decade. It could be even more dangerous in the unlikely event that Kevin Rudd convinced the rest of the industrialised world to sign on to such ambitious targets in the name of saving the planet.

Although this would be Nobel prize-winning form, such promises simply would not be credible. It may feel good to hope otherwise, but too much of the industrialised world has broken its Kyoto Protocol promises. It quickly would become clear that the rich world would not deliver on even more onerous vows. The ensuing disrepute and disillusion would provoke global political fractiousness, economic tit for tat and even raw aggression, particularly if a warmer planet became increasingly uncomfortable.

By going it alone, Australia could even make things worse for the global environment by sending its emission-intensive industries offshore to dirtier regimes. Unilateral steep cuts could be achieved only at an economic cost too large for Australia's political system to digest. The likelier outcome of missing the target by a wide margin would trash Rudd's hopes for Australia to lead the world on tackling climate change.

This has been evident enough for long enough to predict that Ross Garnaut eventually would reject steep unilateral targets for reducing Australian emissions. It is similarly predictable that Rudd will broadly follow suit. Australia's political class has spent the past generation locking in economic reforms that finally allowed Australia to exploit its comparative advantage in mining and energy. Just like John Howard, Rudd will not risk junking this.

Just as predictably, climate scientists and activists are dismayed by Garnaut's proposed targets, instead calling for Australia to commit to cutting emissions by 25 per cent to 40per cent below 2000 levels by 2020. But such targets would not have the credibility needed for creating durable new property rights - the right to emit carbon into the atmosphere - that can be traded between countries. Business will not invest in less carbon-intensive production if it does not believe the system for pricing carbon will stand up as advertised over decades. Without investment in cleaner capacity, the economic costs of meeting the targets will increase, along with the potential political backlash. And developing countries such as China and India will not buy into a global scheme if the developed nations assuage Western guilt by making promises they patently won't keep.

So far, the most industrialised economies have broken their Koyoto promises to cut emissions by 5 per cent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. The former Soviet bloc looks good because of the post-Cold War collapse of its dirty industries, although Russia's emissions are rising on the back of its oil and gas boom. In lower-growth Europe, France will meet its target because it has gone nuclear. Britain is on track because it closed its uneconomic coalmines. But others will exceed their Kyoto targets by embarrassing margins. Japan hasn't developed its nuclear industry as foreshadowed and hasn't got the expected returns from technology investment.

Canada has abandoned its Kyoto target because higher crude oil prices have encouraged emission-intensive extraction from its vast northern deposits of tar sands. New Zealand won't be within cooee because East Asian income growth has boosted demand for its methane-rich meat and dairy production. Australia remains on target, but only because of a special deal allowing us to increase emissions to 108 per cent of 1990 levels and to include land clearing. On that basis, Australia's 2006 emissions were 4 per cent higher than in 1990. But excluding the one-off land clearing concession, Australia's 2006 emissions are 40 per cent higher, fuelled in part by the economy's China boom. That's the emissions trajectory we now aim to turn around.

As it is, Garnaut's proposal to commit Australia to reducing emissions by 10 per cent over 2000 levels by 2020 (and 80 per cent by 2050) will take a big effort. As Garnaut tells his scientific and environmental critics, a 10 per cent cut by 2020 amounts to a challenging 30 per cent reduction in per capita terms. And given our emissions are still rising, this would require Australia to cut absolute emissions by 17 per cent from 2012. A bigger, 25 per cent reductions target would amount to a 40 per cent cut in per capita terms and 35 per cent in absolute terms from 2012. Garnaut suggests that his 10 per cent target will require "significant structural change" and reduce national income growth by something approaching 0.2 percentage points a year. While this sounds small, it is a significant income loss in the context of issues such as the ageing of the population.

Even then, Garnaut's numbers assume Australia will spend big on planting forests in Indonesia or Papua New Guinea so we can, for instance, keep on smelting aluminium with coal-fired electricity. If the world doesn't set up a trading scheme to achieve a credible reductions target, the cost of achieving Australia's 10 per cent cut would escalate significantly. In this world, Garnaut lowers his 2020 target to a 5per cent emissions cut.

Garnaut's latest report encourages the idea that a full-blown global emissions trading scheme simply won't fly. Australia's other leading climate change economist, Warwick McKibbin, suggests that any such scheme would soon collapse because it would be too difficult to monitor and enforce each country's emissions targets, thus devaluing emissions permits. Leading US economist Jeffrey Sachs describes such schemes as an administrative mess.

Australians may feel good when telling pollsters they are prepared to sacrifice, but neither Rudd nor Brendan Nelson is game enough to test this by exposing motorists to climate change costs before 2013. Until the weekend, the Government of Australia's resources boom state banned the mining of uranium that could help other countries curb their emissions. That's hardly credible for a nation claiming it is prepared to wear the economic costs of leading the world in tackling climate change.

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Rudd's Warmist policies threaten healthcare with $100m power bill

HOSPITALS and nursing homes face a $100 million jump in powerbills under a national emissions trading scheme, threatening to compromise future levels of service unless they are includedin government plans for compensation.

Most debate has focused on the appropriateness and scale of compensation for major emitters such as power stations, trade-exposed, energy-intense industries and low-income households. Australia's biggest not-for-profit health service provider, Catholic Health Australia, is concerned it has been overlooked in the debate, and says it is unable to pass on higher energy costs. Research by the CHA estimates the greenhouse footprint of each of the nation's 83,000 hospital beds is about 28 tonnes a year - double the emissions from an average household. When combined with the emissions from 170,000 nursing home beds and other aged-care services, the health sector accounts for about five million tonnes of CO2 a year.

CHA chief executive Martin Laverty said there was growing concern that not-for-profit organisations operating in this and other sectors would be forced to cut services as a result of an emissions trading scheme.

CHA manages about 9500 hospital beds, 19,000 aged-care beds and 6000 retirement units, and would face an increase in its energy bill of about $10 million a year at a starting price of $20 a tonne for CO2.

In CHA's submission to the Government's green paper, it has recommended all commonwealth or state healthcare funding mechanisms be indexed to compensate for the flow-on effects of a carbon price. "You must factor in a cap and trade indexation component of funding to aged care and public hospitals and private hospitals so the healthcare and aged-care sectors in Australia can play their role and not be a roadblock to climate change," Mr Laverty said yesterday.

"Any service provided by federal or local government operated by not-for-profit organisations will be in exactly the same boat. "I am concerned the green paper spent a long time arguing the science. What it should have done is look at the proper structural impacts across the entire economy, and given the start of the solution."

A coalition of civil society, representing unions, charities, churches and environment groups, yesterday called on the Rudd Government to spend up to half of all revenue from the sale of permits to assist households and vulnerable communities to cut energy consumption and adapt to higher prices. A research paper by left-wing think tank the Australia Institute has warned that the community sector has been overlooked for compensation payments, and could face increased costs in excess of $822 million under the scheme.

A spokeswoman for Climate Change Minister Penny Wong said the Rudd Government welcomed constructive feedback from the not-for-profit sector. The Government is plannning to finalise the design of the national emissions trading scheme by December.

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