This article makes me want to smack my head against a brick wall... Heres a snippet: Leader of the government in the Senate and former climate change minister Penny Wong said repealing the bills meant “this nation will have walked away from a credible and efficient response to climate change”. Wong said the prime minister Tony Abbott had “staked his political career … on fearmongering and scaremongering and that is what this debate has been about for years”. “I think future generations will look back on these bills and they will be appalled … at the short-sighted, opportunistic selfish politics of those opposite and Mr Abbott will go down as one of the most short-sighted, selfish and small people ever to occupy the office of prime minister.” Government backbencher Ian Macdonald accused opposition parties of being hypocrites for refusing to accept the will of the voters and said that while he had “an open mind”, he would like to point out that Brisbane had recently had its coldest day in 113 years. Greens leader Christine Milne said it was “a vote for failure” amid interjections from government backbenchers that she should “get over it” because the parliament was “respecting the will of the Australian people”. The bills passed 39:32. There was none of the jubilation that accompanied their passage in the lower house, but the leader of the government in the Senate, Eric Abetz, shook hands with backbench senator Cory Bernardi, who led the revolt against Malcolm Turnbull when, as leader of the opposition, he backed Labor’s carbon pricing scheme. theguardian/environment/2014/jul/17/australia-kills-off-carbon-tax
Posted on: Thu, 17 Jul 2014 02:48:13 +0000