Former PMs Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott square off over Paris Climate Accord - Polidicks

Tony Abbott's backdown on Australia's role in a global climate agreement has attracted the ire of his successor Malcolm Turnbull, as Mr Abbott fights to retain his seat in Parliament. The outspoken climate sceptic is facing a high-profile challenge in his historically safe Liberal Sydney seat of Warringah, where climate change is one of the hottest issues. Mr Abbott had advocated for Australia to withdrawfrom the Paris Climate Accord, but reversed his position at a candidate forum, arguing the circumstances had changed since the Government ditched its "emissions obsession". But at the same time he advocated for more coal-fired power, making a claim Mr Turnbull described as "innumerate idiocy". The two men have long sparred over climate change policy, particularly during Mr Turnbull's prime ministership, when Mr Abbott called for him to back coal-fired power along with his support for renewables. Mr Turnbull replaced Mr Abbott as prime minister in 2015, only to have the party dump him as Liberal leader last year. Mr Abbott told the forum coal-fired power remained the cheapest form of baseload power, which prompted Mr Turnbull's rebuke. "We are now able to have lower emissions and lower prices, but we need to plan it using engineering [and] economics rather than ideology and innumerate idiocy," he said. "The reason the fossil fuel lobby and their apologists rail against Snowy Hydro 2.0, and have tried to stop it, is because it delivers the massive storage which does make renewables reliable and this enable (sic) our progress to lower emissions and lower energy prices." Mr Abbott signed up to the agreement in 2013, committing to a 26 per cent cut in emissions by 2030. Last year, he called on then-prime minister Mr Turnbull to withdraw from the pact. "I'm not calling for us to pull out now," Mr Abbott told a candidate forum. "Circumstances have changed … we've got a new Prime Minister and a new Energy Minister." https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-08/tony-abbott-malcolm-turnbull-paris-emissions-climate/10883864

Can we just get the carbon tax back? That was such an effective way of dealing with it but cunts bought into Tony's scaremongering bullshit.

I feel that reintroducing the carbon tax would have an even worse reception than last time. Don’t forget that they tripled the tax-free threshold for personal income tax when they introduced the carbon tax, but they didn’t revert the tax-free threshold change when the carbon tax was repealed. If they reintroduce the carbon tax, it would actually have a substantial impact on family budgets this time around - unless they messed around again with the already-generous income tax brackets and rates (unlikely) or implemented relief from GST (also unlikely considering the states want to reform the GST to increase tax collection).

With the income tax bracket already tripled shouldn't the impact be as same as it was last time (i.e. not much)?

I really hope we are experiencing the last vestiges of climate skeptics in power right now.

Well the idea last time was that the effect of the carbon tax would be an additional ~$600 in costs per year for families, so that would be offset by reducing each family’s annual income tax bill by ~$600. Families were no worse off, and in fact would be financially better off over the medium to long term if they made better spending choices and reduced their carbon footprint. But people have since become accustomed to the new income tax brackets, so if a carbon tax was reintroduced today (without any corresponding tax cuts elsewhere), families would be financially worse off from tomorrow than they were yesterday. Also, Australia is currently bordering on a recession (and is technically in a recession on a per capita basis), so now is not the time for a net increase in taxes.

Introducing more tax when wage growth has stagnated for so long is political suicide. People are working harder for less money and telling them that they are taking more money is not gonna work.

I'm a bit ignorant but why did they impose a carbon tax on personal incomes instead of keeping it strictly on the corporate side? I've never seen any proposals here for that and it doesn't seem to fit the idea of charging corporations for the carbon they dump into the atmosphere.

The carbon tax was levied on polluters. As was expected, those entities passed on the carbon tax via higher prices to consumers. Which is exactly how a carbon tax ought to work. The personal income tax changes were implemented to offset the expected carbon tax burden being passed on to consumers. The net tax burden would therefore be nil in the short term; everything was more expensive, but everyone also had more money. The alternative to cutting personal income tax would have been cutting GST, but as GST is a source of revenue for the states, they would not have been happy about that.

As climate change starts to have more and more of an obviously negative effect on peoples lives then the ability to politically survive while being a climate change skeptic will fall out. Unfortunately now we're at the stage where this is happening it may be too late to stop anything, but at least it might lead to people trying to switch to renewables. Its hard to convince people about the benefits of coal when they're living in record heatwaves all the time.

I actually would suggest that Tony Abbott isn’t a climate skeptic, at least not an American-style, flat out denier. Abbott’s argument has always been about energy security and reliability, which has actually been a substantial issue in South Australia in the past few years. But saying that, Abbott is certainly misguided about renewables, which can certainly offer security and reliability, hence Malcolm Turnbull’s justified slapdown.

Imagine if they switched gears to be anti-sustainability and anti-adaptation once the effects really start ramping up in the next 10 years At this point, all climate change deniers/delayers are just malicious contrarians or paid off by coal companies anyway. I really don't see them having a change of heart anytime soon, and knowing the discourse from their camp, they'd welcome death and suffering if it upset the other side's feelings.