Senator Eric Abetz

TRANSCRIPT

Report by Alexandra Kirk
Radio National World Today

ALEXANDRA KIRK: Political pragmatist or political coward? The Prime Minister's decision to shelve his emissions trading scheme for the foreseeable future is being read two ways.

Critics say he isn't willing to put up a fight on something that's become very difficult.

Rudd supporters say taking the emissions trading scheme out of the budget is simply an acknowledgement of political reality. The Senate's already blocked the ETS twice and Tony Abbott's ascendancy to the Coalition leadership put an end to the Senate passing the bipartisan climate deal Kevin Rudd struck with Malcolm Turnbull last year.

The chance of stitching up a compromise with the Greens, Family First's Steve Fielding and Independent Senator Nick Xenophon is also negligible.

Kevin Rudd campaigned hard on climate change in the lead up to the 2007 election.

KEVIN RUDD (March, 2007): Climate change is the great moral challenge of our generation. Climate change is not just an environmental challenge. Climate change is an economic challenge, a social challenge and actually represents a deep challenge on the overall question of national security.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: After dispatching John Howard he spent a lot of time and energy designing his so called Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

KEVIN RUDD (2008): To delay any longer would be reckless and irresponsible for our economy and for our environment.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: A government source says Mr Rudd decided last week to put his ETS in the deep freeze, taking it out of the budget till at least 2013. Another senior source told The World Today the Government needed to resolve the uncertainty.

One of the Opposition's key emissions trading critics, Senator Eric Abetz was instrumental in elevating Tony Abbott to the leadership. He warns Kevin Rudd's emissions back down may only be temporary.

ERIC ABETZ: It does need to be taken off the agenda but Kevin Rudd is the type of man that can never say that he has made a mistake or that it was ill-considered policy so he, in a sneaky way, tries to flip it off the agenda.

Well we are going to remind him and the Australian people that if Labor get re-elected they will bring in this job destroying, economy destroying proposal again and we will be fighting Labor on it in the election even if Kevin Rudd tries to take it off the parliamentary agenda.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: Senator Abetz says for now at least the Australian people have had a victory.

ERIC ABETZ: The political reality is not the numbers in the Senate. It is the adverse reaction of the Australian people to this disastrous scheme and Kevin Rudd's embarrassment that having referred to this matter as the greatest moral challenge of our time, 22 times might I add, before the last election, 22 times he used that extravagant language, and now to let it slip off the agenda so quietly exposes Kevin Rudd as the fraud that he is. That he will use extravagant language.

He will try to use moral type turns to justify his disastrous policy and then when he is exposed, he simply walks away from it like he has done with the insulation debacle, like he has done with FuelWatch, GroceryChoice and everything else.

Basically Kevin Rudd has got the opposite of the Midas touch. Everything that he touches turns to dust, turns to nothing and the Australian people are waking up to that and of course the biggest element in that litany of disasters is his emissions trading scheme.