Coalition's chutzpah cloaks short memories

CHUTZPAH is something more than the occasional politician in this country has in spades. They need it, politics is a fluid business. What they wake up on Monday defending can become the very issue they spend their Friday attacking.

We saw plenty of chutzpah on display this week as opposition MPs lined up to pick over the divisions in the Labor Party, sparked by Kevin Rudd's revelation that senior members of cabinet wanted him to junk the emissions trading scheme altogether at the beginning of last year when he announced Labor would delay its implementation.

The speculation is that Julia Gillard was one of the ones making such urgings. She is refusing to divulge cabinet discussions, Rudd is refusing to "name names", but Gillard has already been tried and found guilty in the court of public opinion. However, a cabinet minister told me he believes Rudd was specifically talking about Wayne Swan, not Gillard.

What to do about climate change - and Rudd's continuing presence in parliament - is certainly messy for Labor, and it is hard to see how the situation will improve.

To be sure, Rudd is a spent force in politics (although they said that about John Howard in the early 1990s) after the way in which he was removed as PM during his first term. But he remains a significant figure who attracts the media's attention. Rudd can't be reprimanded by Gillard because her minority government needs him more than he needs her, and a by-election in his Brisbane electorate of Griffith could easily deliver the seat to the LNP.

Unless the opposition turns itself into the issue (always a possibility for the Coalition when it isn't in power) it is hard to see a way out of this quagmire for Labor.

While the opposition might not be making itself the issue at the moment, it's nonetheless worth looking at its divisions concerning what action should be taken on climate change. The divisions are real and they haven't gone away, even if political success has forced disagreements out of view.

It is understandable that Coalition MPs are delighting in Labor's woes on the topic of climate change action after the way Labor exploited opposition divisions in late 2009, when Malcolm Turnbull lost the Liberal leadership because he was prepared to follow Rudd over the top of the trench to pass the ETS ahead of the Copenhagen conference.

But the chutzpah is something to behold.

Climate change spokesman Greg Hunt, manager of opposition business in the House of Representatives Christopher Pyne, deputy leader of the opposition in the Senate George Brandis, shadow immigration minister Scott Morrison and countless other Coalition MPs are getting their media fix gloating about Labor's climate change woes in the here and now.

But they would do well to remember that in late 2009 each of them were arguing till they were blue in the face - with colleagues and through the media - that Turnbull should be backed in his efforts to pass the ETS. "You must price carbon if you want action on climate change" some bellowed. "If we don't pass the ETS we will be comprehensively routed at the polls," others exclaimed.

Abbott may have flipped and flopped on what to do about the ETS - including writing an opinion piece on the need to pass it to get it off the agenda midway through 2009 - but at least by the time Turnbull's leadership was on the line he had joined the Nick Minchin camp.

Minchin's camp made loud soundings in late 2009 that no one should forget the Turnbull lieutenants who were prepared to lead the party down a path that would put a price on carbon before the rest of the world had acted. In the name of Coalition unity, however, forget is exactly what conservatives have done: attaining power is more important than principles.

There should be an unofficial rule that only those Coalition MPs who realised the value in opposing the ETS before Turnbull lost the leadership are now allowed to gloat in the media about how right they were.

That of course would make it hard for the likes of Hunt to do his job as climate change spokesman. But he would be better served by a change of portfolio anyway.

Hunt is a genuine option to join the leadership team one day, and Abbott should give him a chance to grow by moving him into a portfolio area where he isn't so compromised.

His Sydney Institute speech during the week demonstrated that he has things to say on matters other than climate change.

I can't see any circumstances in which the same person should be expected to sell the Coalition's plan for climate change action when it involved pricing carbon under Turnbull, but now involves so-called direct action under Abbott.

On the government side Penny Wong was shuffled out of the portfolio to avoid being compromised merely because of a delay in implementation. The Coalition's policy response has completely changed yet Hunt continues to carry the can.

The issue of what to do about climate change is a problem for both sides of politics. Right now the ebb and flow of the debate has put Labor under pressure.

Ever since Rudd declared that it was the greatest moral and economic challenge of our time, discussion about what action should be taken has been elevated to a crusade, which is neither helpful nor accurate.

Surely there are greater moral and economic challenges? Like starvation in the Third World, genocide in non-democracies, sexism in radical Islamic states or even youth unemployment and its perverse impact on society right here in Australia.

Granted some assessments suggest climate change will affect a number of these issues. But not immediately.

Rudd's overblown language made it harder for Labor to win Greens support for the original ETS because the model didn't match the rhetoric.

It made it harder for Labor to back down from its original plan without appearing weak (which ultimately cost Rudd his job).

And it emboldened climate change opponents who weren't prepared to sit idly by and be typecast as the modern day equivalents of heretics because they simply held a different point of view.

Whether it's the alarmists who treat science like a tool for a cause, the deniers who search for dissent from scientific consensus to suit a preconceived world view, Labor MPs who allowed their former leader to whip up a frenzy for climate change action because doing so looked like a political winner, or half the Liberal Party room who voted to price carbon under Turnbull but now cowardly sit silent while Abbott argues doing so will wreck the economy, everyone involved in this debate has something to be ashamed of.

The problem is that there is so much chutzpah on display most participants wouldn't even realise it.

Peter van Onselen is a Winthrop Professor at The University of Western Australia.