Abbott has maths on his side even if PM has the numbers for CET legislation

MALCOLM Turnbull has the numbers to get some groundbreaking legislation through. But it would mean he loses his job.

Could the same issue bring Malcolm Turnbull down again?

SENIOR Government identities have been doing the mathematics of climate change policy and Tony Abbott has confirmed in public the urgency of the calculations.

The political equation they have drawn up says Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull could get Parliament to approval for measures to further trim carbon emissions by households and industry.

He could get groundbreaking legislation through the House of Representatives with the votes of perhaps as many as 140 of the 150 MPs.

And then he would lose his job.

Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott has made that clear in a prominent and calculated manner which was nothing short of a direct challenge to the authority of Malcolm Turnbull.

Last week news.com.au reported at least five Liberal and National back benchers, led by Mr Abbott, were prepared to cross the floor to vote against any Turnbull attempt to pass the Clean Energy Target (CET) urged by Chief Scientist Alan Finkel.

Shrugging off climate change as a “very much a third order issue”, Mr Abbott told Sky News last night it was “unconscionable, for a government that was originally elected promising to abolish the carbon tax and end Labor’s climate change obsessions to go further down the renewables path”.

“I think there is no chance that our party room will support any significant increase in the amount of renewables in our system,” he said in a grim message to Mr Turnbull.\

The basic sums are that a full-Finkel CET or a toned down version would succeed in the House of Representatives with Labor backing and that of at least four of the five cross bench MPs, with Bob Katter voting against.

It would require all but two members of the Government to cross the floor to ensure its defeat. If effect, the Government would have to present legislation and then vote it down.

So a CET would survive, but Mr Turnbull would not.

One way his job could go would be if Labor decided to not play nice, and voted alongside Mr Abbott against a CET, withdrawing its 69 votes.

The more likely challenge to Mr Turnbull would be in the Liberal Party room where any House of Representatives floor-crossing mutiny would grow to a leadership contest with Mr Abbott, who has been goading Mr Turnbull and challenging his authority since last year’s election.

Mr Abbott unleashed fighting words on Sky News last night when he shrugged off climate change as a third-rate issue.

More directly, he said it would be “unconscionable, for a government that was originally elected promising to abolish the carbon tax and end Labor’s climate change obsessions to go further down the renewables path”.

And there was “no chance” the party room would accept an expanded role for renewable energy.

A CET would be the marquee issue, but the leadership contest would be based on an accumulation of policy matters on which Mr Abbott and Mr Turnbull have diverged, at times to the point of open conflict.

Even if the House of Representatives saluted a Turnbull CET, the unrelieved burden of the Abbott offensive could lead MPs to seek piece through a leadership change.