Friday 26th of April 2024

environmental sainthood

environmental sainthood...

Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott is going after the environmental votes that have traditionally gone to the left side of politics.

Mr Abbott will stake out his environmental credentials in a speech he will give at the New South Wales Liberal Party's Millennium Forum in Sydney this morning.

He also outlines some decidedly un-Liberal links in his past - one of his grandfathers was a unionist, and his father says he attended a communist Sunday school and sang The Red Flag instead of hymns.

Mr Abbott spends a fair part of the speech talking about the environment and emissions trading.

He has told the ABC's chief political correspondent Lyndal Curtis that he is a "fair dinkum environmentalist".

"I have always done my best to ensure that I can never be outflanked on environmental issues because we only have one planet," he said.

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Meet the new Bob Brown... Tony wallows in any trough as long as there is a vote in it... Very eceumenical of him...

the environmental spiv...

If you trust Abbott on his new green-pants policy, you're likely to be a mug who buys a set of rolexes from a spiv, with an upturned umbrella full of them, at a street corner, for ten bucks...

tony's climatic control...

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has ruled out funding the Coalition's new climate change policy with any new tax increases.

There is speculation today that the Coalition's alternative climate change plan will be funded in part by hiking the cost of cigarettes.

The new shadow cabinet is meeting for the first time this year to finalise the new policy before Parliament resumes next week.

But Mr Abbott says there will not be any new taxes or tax increases.

"I don't much like smoking, I never have, I never will, but I want to reiterate that our climate change policy will not involve any new taxes," he said.

"Unlike Mr Rudd we believe in lower, simpler, fairer taxes.

"We certainly don't believe in a great big new tax masquerading as an environmental policy."

After he became Opposition Leader late last year, Mr Abbott immediately ruled out Coalition support for an emissions trading scheme or a carbon tax.

He says the Coalition's alternative policy will include direct action measures to reduce emissions and meet a 5 per cent reduction target, but is yet to spell out the details.

The full policy will be released next week.

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Methink the policy will be akin to encourage every australian to buy an air conditioning unit and turn it on full bore... See toon at top.