Ex-PMs’ war of words on climate

Malcolm Turnbull has reignited his long feud with Tony Abbott with a slapdown over talk of a new coal-fired power station.

Former PM Malcolm Turnbull used an interview on the BBC to claim the push to oust him as the nation’s leader came from MPs who were worried he was going to win the election. Picture: BBC

Malcolm Turnbull has reignited his long-running feud with Tony Abbott, slapping down the man he deposed as prime minister for arguin­g that the government-owned Snowy Hydro company should build a coal-fired power station.

The war of words between the two former prime ministers came as Mr Abbott performed a stunning backflip on his demand for Australia to leave the Paris climate accord, saying he now supports the international agreement to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr Turnbull, the architect of the Snowy 2.0 pumped-hydro projec­t, used social media to accuse­ Mr Abbott of “ideology and idiocy” for saying coal was the cheapest source of baseload power generation. “But it isn’t. Today the cheapest form of new dispatchable or base load energy is renewables plus storage,” he tweeted.

“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.

“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 enables our progress to lower emissions and lower energy prices.”

Conservative Liberal MPs yesterday expressed their fury after Mr Turnbull claimed the push to oust him as the nation’s leader came from MPs who were worried he was going to win the election.

The former prime minister said his removal was a “peculiarly Aust­ralian form of madness”, as he batted back counter-arguments from the BBC’s Andrew Neil that he had lost 40 consecutive Newspolls. “We had … essentially drawn equal … and in our own polling in the marginal seats, which is obviousl­y the only ones that matter, you know, in terms of determining government, we were ahead,” Mr Turnbull said.

“The party on any of the object­ive indications … is in a worse position than it was in August. I mean you can’t deny that that’s a fact.”

One MP expressed disbelief at Mr Turnbull‘s claims given the former prime minister lost 14 seats at the 2016 election and was behind in every subsequent Newspoll.

Meanwhile, Mr Abbott respon­d­­ed to a pro-climate-change push against him in his electorate by reversing­ his position on the Paris Agreement for a second time.

He signed the climate change deal while prime minister but then demand­ed his successor quit it.

But yesterday he said he was back on the Paris bandwagon, declaring Australia no longer needed to leave the treaty because Scott Morrison did not have an “emissions obsession”. “I certainly don’t think we should be putting emissions targets­ ahead of the economy,” Mr Abbott told a Warringah electorate debate with independent challenger Zali Steggall.

“I am confident … we can meet our Paris targets without substantially damaging our economy.”

He also claimed he had never called for the government to fund the construction of a coal-fired power station, despite it being a demand­ of the Monash Forum ginger group he was a member of.

Bill Shorten ridiculed Mr Abbott­ for changing his position on the Paris Agreement. “He’s under pressure in his own seat so all of a sudden he’s a born-again leftie on climate change? Spare me,” the Opposition Leader said.