Dear Tony. We need to talk about your flip flopping. It’s just not reasonable to have every single position on an issue and present yourself to voters as a conviction politician. These two conditions are, fundamentally, irreconcilable.
Let’s lay this out.
When Tony Abbott was prime minister, he took the decision to sign Australia up to the Paris climate treaty. When Malcolm Turnbull took over the Liberal leadership, Turnbull went on to ratify the agreement.
In 2015, when Abbott signed Australia up to Paris, he said we were making a “definite commitment” to a 26% reduction in emissions and “with the circumstances that we think will apply ... we can go up to 28%”.
When that position became inconvenient, because he was waging war on Turnbull during the vicious internal proxy war over the national energy guarantee, Abbott then declared he didn’t anticipate, as prime minister, “how the aspirational targets we agreed to at Paris would, in different hands, become binding commitments”.
In July 2018, Abbott argued Australia needed to pull out of the treaty (that he took the decision to sign up to) because: “I didn’t anticipate how agreeing to emissions that were 26% lower in 2030 than in 2005 would subsequently become a linear progression of roughly equal cuts every year over the next decade”.
How Abbott didn’t anticipate this at the time was entirely unclear, given that’s how targets often work, and he was the prime minister who took the decision to adopt the target, presumably with extensive advice from his advisers and officials and the portfolio minister – but let’s not digress.
Experience shows there’s not much utility in unpacking Abbott’s essential reasoning on climate change because another position will soon be taken, just as sure as night follows day.
And so it was on Friday. Abbott was asked during a candidates’ forum broadcast by Sky News whether he still wanted to get out of Paris.
Given the independent Zali Steggall is attempting to blast Abbott out of his seat of Warringah using climate change as the sharp end of her offensive, presumably it has become more difficult for Abbott politically to keep arguing Australia needs to get out of the treaty he signed the country up to.
So Tony has shifted again. We don’t need to get out of Paris any more, the former prime minister said on Friday, because circumstances have changed.
Well, yes, they have changed.
Last July, Abbott was coming after Turnbull, because Turnbull had come after him, and he was coming after any policy that could have led to emissions reduction, because he’d made that deeply strange and corrosive crusade an article of faith with so-called fellow conservatives. The media bobble heads amplified their nonsense because conflict, however manufactured and bone-headed, is the new media currency.
Now Steggall is coming after him. That is a change of circumstances.
These weren’t, however the changed circumstances referenced by Abbott in Friday’s debate. The changed circumstances were the Coalition had now shaken off its “emissions obsession”.
“We had an emissions obsession that needed to be broken,” Abbott reported like the duty doctor. “And it has now changed.”
It’s not clear to me whether “emissions obsession” EO™ is a recognised medical condition or psychological disorder, perhaps someone could Google that if they get a minute, but in any case, Abbott noted that the terrible fever had broken.
Tony’s pronouncement is somewhat inconvenient to the current prime minister’s efforts to convince progressive, centre-right voters that the Coalition can do something other than wreck on climate change.
But never mind that, we were in good hands, Abbott told his interlocutor David Speers, because Angus Taylor was now the energy minister, and presumably is not in the grip of EO™.
Good man, Angus.
What is unclear though, is how Angus being a good man with EO™ immunity makes the Paris target any less than it was when Abbott signed up to it, recanted, then clambered back on board it again – but this way lies madness.
Instead of getting frustrated with a performance that could be fairly categorised perhaps as the last stand of the political opportunist, perhaps we should just look on the bright side and celebrate the backflip on the backflip.
