I quite enjoyed this video from HBO's John Oliver on the Climate Change debate - Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Climate Change Debate. Oliver also got a lot of media attention down here recently after assembling a collection of video clips of PM Tony Abbott - Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Tony Abbott, President of the USA of Australia.

The Australian has an article on The Greens' canny exploiting of a new wedge issue for the Coalition, trying to get Tony Abbott to side with either farmers or mining companies over the impact of coal seam gas extraction on farmland - Greens dig a hole for Tony Abbott on farmers' rights. There was more today - Greens urge rethink of investment on coal seam gas; want scientific analysis of emissions and Greens question the science of gas for power generation .

THE Greens will move to give farmers veto powers over coal-seam gas operations on their land after seizing on comments from Tony Abbott, who last week backed the right of farmers to deny miners access to their properties.

After the Opposition Leader declined on Saturday to elaborate on remarks he made on Friday that farmers had "a right to say no", Greens leader Bob Brown said he would seek Mr Abbott's support for a private member's bill on the issue.

The bill, to be brought into the Senate in the next fortnight by Greens Queensland senator Larissa Waters, would require the written permission of landholders be obtained before companies could explore for, or extract, coal-seam gas.

As senior Coalition figures accused Senator Brown of trying to wedge the Coalition on the issue, which pits its rural constituency against the mining industry, Mr Abbott's spokesman said he "stands by his recent comments that the Coalition supports a vibrant coal-seam gas industry". ...

Resources Minister Martin Ferguson accused Mr Abbott of risking the $45 billion of investment in the Queensland industry through his comments on Friday and of dodging questions on the issue in Perth on Saturday.

He said Mr Abbott was a "rank opportunist" and an "economic vandal".

"Mr Abbott's comments jeopardise future investment, raise the spectre of sovereign risk and are contrary to Australia's policy of welcoming foreign investment -- a policy that has in no small way helped ensure the fundamental strength of our economy," Mr Ferguson said.

"Two of the major companies operating in the coal-seam gas industry -- Santos and Origin -- are Australian companies. Is Mr Abbott saying to other major companies in the energy sector, like British Gas or Chevron with their $43bn Gorgon project, that their investment is not welcome?"

The Greens move comes amid rising anger over coal-seam gas extraction in Queensland and NSW, where the rapid expansion of the industry has sparked protests amid concerns about the industry's impact on prime agricultural land and its effect on ground water reserves.

The Climate Spectator has a look at the issue of potential contamination of the Great Artesian Basin - A double-sided CSG dilemma.

Four years ago, fund manager John Abernethy wrote a prescient article for Business Spectator explaining how we were degrading our 'economic environment' just as much as the physical and biological environment.

Abernethy, executive director and chief investment officer of Clime Investment Management, knows plenty about money and his article, published in the throes of the initial 2007 sub-prime crisis, is worth re-reading as a reminder that we have been through the financial and economic equivalents of a Chernobyl, an Exxon Valdez and the American dustbowl of the early 1930s (Economic warming, November 2007).

Today we limp forward wondering whether the 'ecological system' of global finance and economics will collapse altogether.

Increasingly 'economics', the study of scarcity, and 'ecology', the study of the biological systems that fill our world, are different sides of the same coin.

Thus the Greens believe they are speaking great economic truths, but based on a much longer timeframe than conventional economists. If you'll bear with me for a moment, it's fair to say that in theory they are right – the fairly radical suite of policies they promote would, in theory, hand a better world to our great grandchildren than the one we inhabit. In theory. ...

The CSG majors have refined their extraction techniques in recent years to avoid the most hazardous chemicals – one, on condition of anonymity, explained to me yesterday that what is pumped down into the ground to release CSG is around 97 per cent water and sand, with the remaining 3 per cent being "essentially the kind of household chemicals you'd find in a normal home".

Sounds pretty benign, doesn't it. But the other view of that harmless mixture is this: imagine filling hundreds of water tankers with a 3 per cent chemical solution, then pouring the lot into an old quarry to create a wetland environment. It might do alright, but then again it might not.

Jim Cox, professor of hydrology at the University of Adelaide, explained to me yesterday the unique characteristics of the Great Artesian Basin that extends over much of the areas of Queensland and some of NSW where CSG extraction is occurring. (This report has a neat little map of where the water is.)

In many parts of the world, underground aquifers are quite discrete, so any pollution of one is likely to be contained. This is not necessarily true of the GAB – Cox explains that areas of heavy rainfall in the north create a long, percolating flow of water that makes its way south, taking perhaps 100 years to reach the southern regions.

And that is where the two sides of the ecology/economics coin come together. The flow of pollutants created by the 'fracking' process of extraction is either an unacceptable burden for future generations who may rely on this water to irrigate crops in an increasingly hungry world; or it is a cost that, with the right discount rate applied, is almost negligible alongside the immense benefit of the energy we extract from CSG.

Bob Brown yesterday questioned the science used by fans of CSG, who claim that as an energy source it releases 50 to 70 per cent less CO2 than coal.

The SMH has an article looking at the issue from a farmers viewpoint - Our food bowls should not be sacrificed to mining.

Australia is the driest continent on earth and as we push towards an ever increasing population we must be mindful of the fact the less than 9 per cent of our continent's surface is arable land: a far smaller portion of that is prime agricultural land, and an even smaller portion of that has underground water resources.

This limited area for producing food for the nation is under threat from coal seam gas mining and so far the pendulum has been firmly tilted towards the miners' interests. There is a way the two industries can co-exist, but it will require a moratorium on further mining exploration while a regional plan is formed.

I cannot overstate the importance to the country of our food producing areas. The Liverpool Plains in the north-west of NSW, where I am from, is an area of just 1.2 million hectares that produces about 37 per cent of the nation's cereal crops. After 185 years of working the land, locals now use some of the most advanced broad-acre farming practices in the world, while local irrigators led the state in water reform.

Many Australians have their wealth tied up in mining stocks and it is in their own interests to imagine that these companies will never affect the agricultural viability of our nation. A few well-run media campaigns have ensured that Australians hold this view. I too felt the same way until mining came into my life six years ago.

The truth is far different – pollution, damage and destruction are the norm, and water resources are being compromised and destroyed on an hourly basis. For far too long, this industry has been able to fix any problem by waving the cheque book.

The legislation in this area is totally inadequate to deal with the coal and gas rush in this nation. Farmers in the Liverpool Plains engaged in the process as set out by the Acts, but the process failed to protect our property and water rights and interrupted our ability to work our own land. We then went to NSW Supreme Court and won, only to have the NSW Labor government of the time retrospectively change the laws, with the full support of the opposition.

Yet while agricultural areas are under siege, Queensland will protect urban areas from mining. NSW and Victoria say they will not follow suit, but the issue of urban mining and the controversial extraction method of fracking is gaining prominence.

The issue of mining in agricultural areas, leading to questions of how the country will feed itself, sits alongside broader questions about how the nation will generate heat and light into the next millennium. ...

We still need a mining industry but, like other industries, it must be held accountable for the damage it inflicts. Until now, the nation has turned a blind eye – we love our wealth and we love our prosperity, and Australians have been unaware what they've been sacrificing to meet these ends.

Good fences make good neighbors, but at present the mining industry is not prepared to be fenced out of anywhere. They say they do no harm, but all around we see evidence to the contrary. Throughout the Hunter Valley wells are dry and rivers no longer run clean, while aquifers in central Queensland are predicted to drop more than 50 metres following coal seam gas extraction.

The only way agriculture and mining will be able to co-exist is if extractive industries are kept away from productive agricultural land and the precious water resources on which it relies. A regional plan is needed that sets out areas for certain land use, including agriculture, wine production, thoroughbred breeding and mining. Boundaries drawn in black are the only way to achieve a diverse regional Australia where the various industries can co-exist in peace.

Forcing the mining industry to be accountable could also serve to promote renewable energy policies and investment. We cannot eat money or coal, yet we still need light, warmth and industrial activity. Technologies to harvest energy from the sun, the wind and the ocean are advancing fast – if we cast our minds to it, who knows what wonders are ahead? The time to take action to preserve our future is now or there will be no turning back.

There is plenty more commentary on the subject with Robert Gottliebsen at The Business Spectator weighing in with Beware the CSG enfants terribles and Who'll take the CSG blame? and the ABC's "World Today" with Coal seam gas good for environment: Santos.

Crikey's Guy Rundle has a look at the latest tour of Australia by mad British aristocrat Chris Monckton to entertain the climate skeptic fringes - Rundle: will Mad Monk be brought low by madder Monckton?.

There is no doubt that times are not good for the Australian far Right — but will its troubles create real problems for the Coalition, and the mainstream Right? Will the Mad Monk be brought low by the madder Monckton?

Two days after I noted the rise of “hysterical conservatism” in the US, its Australian manifestation had exploded closer to home, with a storm over Christopher Monckton, viscount and jobbing political hack turned climatologist, and his decision, in speeches elsewhere, to label Ross Garnaut as a Nazi, juxtaposing a quote from Garnaut with a large slide of a swastika.

Monckton used the term “fascist”, a term of abuse that has lost nearly all dramatic effect — but the swastika is something else. Fascism, Italian-style, was a cruel political movement, but its frequent use as a catch-all term including Nazism obscures major differences.

Nazism was something more than merely violent — it was a radically evil movement that celebrated itself as the negation of any notion of common human being, of mercy, kindness or love. The swastika was the symbol of that — it was meant, for its enemies, to be a pure expression of despair. Originally a north Indian symbol of the wheel of life, it has become the image of death.

Monckton is not the first climate-change denialist — yes, yes, a usage I’ll return to — to use the Nazi analogy; he may not even be the hundredth. Highlights in Australia included Andrew Bolt’s incessant references to “greenshirts”, and George Brandis’s extension of the argument in the coward’s castle of the Senate. ...

Monckton’s right to say pretty much what he likes is not in dispute; the question is whether a Catholic university, and its faculty, should see itself as a glorified conference centre with a chapel, or as some other sort of thing — the sort of entity that would legitimately express some concern at the possibility that a swastika might be brandished within their institution

Indeed, you would have to say, that if a Catholic university, of all places, cannot recognise the real being of symbols such as the swastika, the bodying forth of evil, then it is more or less lost as an institution.

Monckton’s swastika act is, of course, pathetic — a ramping up of his narcissistic campaign for attention. To say his lordship is something out of Wodehouse would be an insult to the subtlety of the master. Bug-eyed (not his fault, but what can ya do?), in tweeds, claiming membership of the British “upper house” (he has lost his right to vote as a hereditary peer since the House of Lords was reformed).

Devisor of the easily solved “unsolvable” puzzle (which cost him £1 million, the prize he had promised for it, and reportedly, his castle), he is natural kin to Peter Cook’s creation, Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling, who devoted his life to teaching ravens to fly underwater (Dud: “your life Sir Arthur has been a … failure.” Pete: “Yes I think it fair to say that my life has been a complete and utter failure.”).

And Monckton’s apology is disingenuous. He has used not merely the fascist slur, but the Nazi slur so often that even planet Albrechtsen was moved to reprove him on his last visit. Most famously, at Copenhagen, he repeatedly barked “Hitler Youth!” at a young climate activist, Ben Wessel, even after Wessel had informed him he was Jewish — indeed, his family were Holocaust survivors.

The Nazi-climate change “argument” relies on a meta-version of the false syllogism by which people such as Jonah Goldberg (author of Liberal Fascism) argue the left to be Nazis. “The Nazis like bushwalking/The Greens like bushwalking/Therefore the Greens are Nazis” and so on.

The trick can be done on anything you like: freeways, anti-smoking campaigns, a sense of place and national community, state-funded economic development, and, if you like, Fanta* (short for Fantasie), the drink Coca-Cola developed to sell in Germany during WWII, when the main brand had become official sponsors of the other side.

The left for many years did it with any notion of national pride, flag or honouring military service: the Nazis were patriotic … etc, etc. It was bad then, and it’s bad now when it is almost solely coming from the Right, on other themes.

The habit is kitsch, but it has a more insidious effect, a debasement of our capacity to think about the difference between political contestation within a shared framework, and radical evil, which is intent on the annihilation the other.

The deliberate reaching for the swastika as a way of debasing politics, rather than, say the hammer and sickle — which would be more with the grain of frequent claims that Greens are crypto-communists — is because climate-change denialists recognise that the hammer and sickle, however debased by the actions of many of those wielding it, remains the symbol of a movement acting in the spirit of universal values and a common humanity.

To use the hammer and sickle would be to remind people that combating climate change is a universal cause of humanity, while opposition to it is partial and tied to nations, industries and the implicit claim by the West to deserve higher levels of consumption.

In desperation to avert what is becoming Moncktongate, the Right is repeating the false syllogism on critics of denialism. Thus the term denialism itself — which may have originated with Holocaust denialism, but has since been used elsewhere, such as AIDS denialism — becomes a mark of Nazism. It isn’t, of course — it is simply a useful term to describe politically motivated resistance to obvious and overwhelming evidence that demolished one’s position.

Moncktongate has now become a political and moral test for Tony Abbott, whose principal political action to date has been to exile climate-change denialism from the political mainstream. Does he have the courage and command to talk back to the Right fringe – in the manner indeed that John Howard reproved George Brandis for comparing the Greens to Nazis?

Does he possess that minimum level of political authority? Or is he ruled by his shifty and opportunistic side, the dimension of him that prompted a call for a plebiscite — and then a refusal to say that he would honour it, if the result went against him? Moncktongate is a test of whether he’s got the ticker, or would rather guzzle more Fantasie.

The Climate Spectator has a look at some of the glaring climate policy differences between Australian conservative leader Tony Abbott and his UK counterparts - Tony and the Tories.

Few people are expecting Opposition Leader Tony Abbott to travel the Road to Damascus on climate change and clean energy policies any time soon, but perhaps the Road to Birmingham may do the trick.

Two things might have struck Abbott as he arrived at the Tory Party annual conference being held in the Midlands city: The first, that he was among the youngest of delegates; the second, that they were all celebrating “green growth” day. And no, this was not about creating standing green armies to pick up rubbish from nature strips – this was about the transition to a low carbon economy.

He would have heard a speech from Oliver Letwin, the former shadow Chancellor and now minister of state, who vilified the UK's Labour Party for not being green enough, and for making little progress towards reducing Britain’s dependence on hydro-carbons. “We're not as green as we need to be,” he declared.

The Tories, on the other hand, have pledged that they will be the greenest government ever, and the Tory 'Green Deal' – to be introduced in Parliament before the end of the year will provide a “new, radical way of making energy efficiency affordable to all, reducing household energy bills at no upfront cost to the householder. It will hugely reduce the energy demands of Britain's households and create a whole new industry – with new jobs in every part of the country,” he said.

And he went on: “Our smart grid and the roll out of smart meters will transform the way energy is supplied and used. Our incentive for renewable heat will bring forward the generation of heat from waste and other renewable sources – a crucial part of cutting carbon and maintaining energy security.

“Our transformation of the Climate Change Levy into a proper Carbon price will pave the way for low carbon power stations, including a new generation of self-financing nuclear power. Our Green Investment Bank will support the next generation of British green technology investment – helping to re-balance the economy and generate new jobs and economic growth across the UK.

“Our system of feed-in tariffs will encourage micro-generation, stimulate diversity and decentralisation of our power supply, and turn hundreds of thousands of houses into sources of energy. Our high-speed rail network will bring Birmingham and London into the same travel-to-work area, and provide a real low carbon alternative to the aeroplane.

“Our support for electric cars and plug-in hybrids means that Britain is now the natural home-base for a new growth industry, which will begin to cut the link between cars and carbon.”

Hopefully, Abbott was listening.

Crikey's Bernard Keane has some comments on the low profile of global warming policy in the Australian election campaign - At least Abbott's honest about willful refusal to buy into global warming.

No person who seriously maintains that “the various measuring organisations” show that the planet is cooling is fit to occupy a position of leadership in public life. Such a capacity to let ideology filter out basic facts on anything, but most especially a critical area of public policy; such a willingness to balance, say Christopher Monckton and the world’s scientific community and prefer the former, is genuinely dangerous in anyone with proximity to power.

Tony Abbott maintains that his own views don’t matter because his policy is to reduce Australia’s emissions. Putting aside that therefore Abbott appears to want to accelerate global cooling, his policy – that relies on the supernatural powers of “soil carbon”, which at this point is little more than the climate change equivalent of biodynamic farming -- will oversee a substantial increase in our emissions and, better yet, spend billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money to achieve it.

Then again, at least Abbott is being honest – he is open about his willful refusal to accept basic scientific fact and prefer global conspiracy theories and rigid ideology. What is Julia Gillard’s excuse? The Prime Minister occupies an even worse position – she claims to believe in human-caused global warming, and accepts the need to address it, but proposes delay and half-baked measures drawn up to protect the interests of those responsible for pollution. Like Abbott, Gillard’s policies will oversee a rise in Australia’s emissions. Like Abbott, she’ll waste taxpayers’ money to achieve it.

The parties insist there are vast differences between them on climate change. The Liberals charge that Labor wants to introduce a big new tax. Labor charges that the Liberals don’t believe in climate change. The rhetoric hides a bipartisan policy of protecting the economic interests of polluters, which is why climate change has been almost entirely absent from the major parties’ campaigns.

Perhaps we should take the parties at their word and demand that the next debate should be held on climate change and the reform process of ending our addiction to carbon, not a debate about the economy that will merely provide the forum for repetition of the mantras of “risk to our $1.3 triliion economy” and “waste and mismanagement”.

When our kids and our grandkids demand to know why we did nothing while their planet cooked, even when we knew a relatively minor economic reform could have started the process of decarbonising our own economy and encouraged other, bigger polluters to do likewise, we can point to the 2010 election and say “because we let people like Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard run the country."

The Australian has the text of ex-opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull's latest speech to parliament on global warming - its a shame he didn't make more like this while he was leader - Why I support the ETS proposal .

CLIMATE change is the ultimate long-term problem. We have to make decisions today, bear costs today so that adverse consequences are avoided, dangerous consequences, many decades into the future.

Right now, both sides of politics are agreed that Australia should, regardless of whether any international agreement is reached, reduce our emissions by 2020 so that they equal a 5 per cent cut from 2000 levels.

But it is not enough to say you support these cuts, you must also deliver a strong, credible policy framework that will deliver them.

The transition from a high emission economy to a low emission one cannot be achieved without major changes to the way we generate and use energy and in the way we manage our landscape.

Decisions to build new power stations will involve tens of billions of dollars over the next few decades and a critical element in making those decisions is being able to form a view about the direction of carbon pricing.

This need for leadership and direction from government on carbon pricing was one that was apparent to the previous government. That is why in 2006 prime minister John Howard established the Emissions Trading Task Group, chaired by Peter Shergold, the secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. In 2007 the Howard government adopted its recommendation to establish an ETS in advance of and in order to promote a global agreement.

Plainly stated: in the absence of a clear carbon price signal either no investments will be made or investments will be made of new carbon-intensive infrastructure because they are more profitable in a world where there is no price on carbon.

The SMH thought the government wishes it could do as good a job explaining and defending the ETS - A dream Labor speech from the vanquished.

Fifteen words in we knew what sort of speech this would be. "Generations" is a great big Malcolm Turnbull word. Churchillian. "All of us here are accountable not just to our constituents but to the generations that will come after them."

He was not going to trim. Though his party made sure his audience in the chamber was small, he might have been addressing thousands.

This was the old Turnbull with his odd way of leaning forward on his desk, fists clenched in the pose of a well-dressed gorilla.

After East Anglia, the Himalayan glaciers and the holiday glow cast by Lord Monckton's tour, his message was blunt: "The planet is warming because of the growing level of greenhouse gas emissions from human activity. If this trend continues, truly catastrophic consequences are likely to ensue . . .''

The Prime Minister doesn't say that kind of thing. Nor does the leader of the opposition, Tony Abbott, who earlier in the morning dragged the press corps to a shop in Queanbeyan to watch him iron a shirt and declare: "You cannot run a dry-cleaning business without using energy."

Abbott had yet to stumble into Turnbull's Great Big Dump on Everything. It seemed the member for Wentworth would be talking to utterly deserted Coalition benches. But then Petro Georgiou, Russell Broadbent and Joe Hockey materialised. They looked impassive, stunned.

Hockey listened to Turnbull's crisp exposition of what had been party policy until 10 weeks ago, with eyes closed. Lucy Turnbull sat with a couple of members of her husband's staff in the public gallery. All through the great rabbit warren of Parliament House, the speech was being monitored on closed circuit television.

Turnbull was not delivering a great farewell. This was a working speech, a selling speech, the kind of speech Labor supporters wish their leader would deliver.

Crikey quite liked the speech as well - Turnbull takes aim at Abbott’s climate plan, and doesn’t miss.

Former Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull has demolished Tony Abbott’s climate action plan and backed the Government’s amended CPRS legislation in a long speech explaining his decision to cross the floor in support of the Government’s ETS bills.

Last week Tony Abbott launched a climate action plan that rejected any market-based emissions abatement mechanism in favour of $10b worth of handouts for businesses and farmers to reduce emissions. Turnbull rose in the chamber early this afternoon to speak on the Government’s CPRS bills, reintroduced as promised last week. Watched by colleagues Petro Georgiou, Russell Broadbent, Paul Fletcher and, interestingly, Joe Hockey, Turnbull tore apart the proposed plan as economically inefficient, environmentally ineffective and unable to meet the task of reducing Australia’s emissions by 5% by 2020.

After quickly discussing the need to address climate change, including that the 2000s had been the hottest decade ever after the 1990s and 1980s, Turnbull emphasised the similarity of the Government’s CPRS with the Howard Government’s intended CPRS, declaring that the bills were “as much the work of John Howard as it is of Kevin Rudd” and outlining why the Howard-era Shergold taskforce had rejected non-market approaches like regulation or subsidies to address climate change.

Without mentioning the new Coalition plan or Abbott by name, except with an indirect reference to “as we have seen in recent days”, Turnbull attacked a subsidies-based approach, warning it was “a recipe for fiscal recklessness on a vast scale… a slippery slope that can only result in higher taxes and less effective abatement.” As a Liberal, Turnbull said, he supported a market based solution that allowed businesses and consumers to determine the most effective means of reducing emissions. A price signal was critical in order to drive the large-scale transition of the Australian economy necessary for lower emissions.

“In the absence of a clear carbon price,” Turnbull said, “no new investment will be made or investment will be made in new carbon intensive infrastructure.”

Turnbull also took aim at soil carbon, which would under the Coalition scheme provide most of the reductions needed to ostensibly meet the 5% target. As leader he had supported soil carbon, Turnbull said, and he believed it had great potential, but much work needed to be done before it could play a significant role. Moreover, its benefits would be more easily obtained through an ETS, and he had negotiated amendments to the CPRS that would allow exactly that. He quoted one biosequestration expert who said he supported soil carbon initiatives but was “horrified by the prospect of a fund from which public servants hand out money to grow trees.”

Joe Hockey was one of the few shadow ministers to turn up to watch the speech, but his lethargic and depressed appearance has tongues wagging - Where did Joe’s mojo go?.

The contrast, as Kevin Rudd invariably says, was stark. Joe Hockey sat slumped on the seat nearby, gazing up at the Reps chamber ceiling, while Malcolm Turnbull explained why he would be voting for the Government’s CPRS bills.

The body language, surely, was deceiving. Turnbull might have appeared forthright, aggressive even, as he expertly articulated the case for the CPRS far, far better than anyone from the Government ever had – particularly when, in three short sentences about how each recent decade had been hotter than the previous one, he demolished the myth of global cooling promoted by the likes of Tony Abbott.

But Turnbull was alone, reading — if the Press Gallery commentary is correct — the last rites over a political career wrecked on a point of principle, offering only a glimpse of what might have been had he ever mastered his many faults and coupled his undoubted brilliance with a more consultative and reflective style.

But Hockey remains Shadow Treasurer, a key part of the Coalition economics team, under a leader polling better than Turnbull ever did, perhaps a mere 2-3% away from achieving his career goal of Treasurer.

So, Joe, why the long face?

It might possibly be that Hockey was envious that he could never give a speech as good as that, for Turnbull’s speech was, instantly, a classic of Australian politics. So what if it was delivered to a near-empty chamber? Its content was scintillating.

Australian politicians don’t do soaring rhetoric or great oratory and there was none of that in Turnbull’s speech, but there was an intellectual rigour and cold, hard refusal to countenance bullshit that is sadly lacking in modern politics (and, in truth, much of Turnbull’s own period as leader).

No politician, from any party, has ever nailed the case for action on climate change so succinctly, and no politician — and certainly not Kevin Rudd — has ever come close to explaining so clearly why a market-based mechanism is preferable. And in his comprehensive demolition of the Abbott plan — all delivered without mentioning Abbott or the details of the plan, or anything that could be construed as personal criticism — Turnbull has not merely provided the Government with perfect soundbites, but with perfect talking points for its own use.

In fact, it did Hockey great credit that he showed up for the speech when it might have been easier to stay away and try to ignore what was happening. Only he, Russell Broadbent and Petro Georgiou were there for all of it. But Hockey has been in a funk since the leadership spill and what was commonly agreed to be his poor handling of it.

And to close, John Quiggin has a look at the path to delusion that the Liberal Party has followed - Send in the clowns.

It’s hard to believe that, three months ago, Australian national politics was (primarily) a contest between two broadly normal political parties. The government was running well ahead, but open to criticism for having talked a lot and done relatively little. The opposition was excessively keen on the maxim ‘the first duty of an opposition is to oppose’, and the alternative policies it proposed were neither as detailed as they might be, nor entirely consistent, but that has always been true of oppositions. Although a change of government in 2010 looked unlikely, there was nothing to suggest that such an event would be a disaster if it happened.

That could not be said today. The government is much the same as before, but the opposition has become a clown show, happy to do or say whatever comes to mind, either to chase votes, secure the support of its base or simply to muddy the waters enough that they have a chance to win in the resulting confusion.

Most obviously, we have an opposition leadership that embraces delusional beliefs on climate science. That would be bad enough if delusion could be confined to denial of the validity of science, but such isolation is not possible. Instead, delusionism is pervading everything the Liberal and National parties do and say.

First up, there are the personnel changes, with the replacement of Turnbull by Abbott, the rise of Minchin to the position of kingmaker and, most absurdly, the appointment of the ‘authentic’ but innumerate Barnaby Joyce as finance spokesman. Of the leadership team, only the marginalized Julie Bishop gives any indication of being connected to the real world. In the key economics portfolios, only Joe Hockey rises to the level of mediocrity, and he’s pretty much discredited by his vacillation during the leadership spill.

Then there’s the shift from ‘scepticism’ (the belief that thousands of scientists have simply got it wrong in ways that can easily be detected by armchair critics) to the kind of full-scale conspiracy theory exemplified by Lord Monckton’s claim that NASA crashed its own satellite to prevent it revealing the data that would disprove AGW theory. While the conspiracy theory has the merit of being more coherent and plausible, it paves the road to absolute craziness (again, see Lord Monckton). Of the leading figures in the Opposition, Minchin and Joyce are overt conspiracy theorists, and Abbott is willing to go along with idea. And whereas the conspiracy theorists were willing to undermine Turnbull throughout his leadership, any remaining pro-science Liberals (with the exception of Turnbull himself and the departing Judith Troeth) are keeping very quiet.

Unsurprisingly, this combination of delusion and incompetence is reflected in the opposition’s response to the government’s climate change policy. Naturally, the ‘science’ is pure wishful thinking, based on a willingess to count highly speculative gains from increased soil carbon as the primary line of policy response. But the economics is far worse – even the advocates of soil carbon don’t claim it can be done in the zero-cost fashion claimed by the opposition. More generally, since the opposition plan amounts to picking some winners, and throwing public money at them, it’s obvious from first principles that it must be more expensive than the government’s ETS.

But of course this doesn’t matter. No one, not even the opposition themselves takes the plan seriously – it’s simply there to meet the political necessity to have a supposed plan to refer to.

Finally, and most seriously, there is the embrace of the reality-free talking point approach that characterises the delusionist commentariat as a whole. Someone like Andrew Bolt is not acting out of character when recycles discredited delusionist talking points on a daily basis. His general approach to politics is no better. And, as the blogosphere has shown (as an archetypal example, see Glenn Reynolds) the longer you are immersed in this point-scoring, talking-point approach to political debate, the more distant becomes any connection to actual reality.