Election looms as Abbott snatches Liberal leadership

Tony Abbott has defeated Malcolm Turnbull in a ballot for Liberal leadership, by a single vote.

The final vote was  42-41.

The favourite, Joe Hockey, was eliminated in a first round vote.

Abbott’s victory has important consequences for Australian politics.

It was a triumph for the party’s climate change deniers, led by the former Liberal Senate leader, Nick Minchin.

Senator Minchin has said that neither he, nor his associates, believe that human activity is causing climate change on a global scale.

Abbott’s victory has left the Liberal party without a climate change policy.

Until today, its policy, promoted by Malcolm Turnbull, was to support a deal Mr Turnbull had negotiated with the Labor party.

That would have seen a heavily amended emissions trading scheme put into law.

A senior Liberal, Ian Macfarlane, who conducted those negotiations, on Mr Turnbull’s behalf, said last night that the Liberal party could not hope to win the next election, without a clear policy on climate change.

Mr Abbott’s narrow victory means that Labor’s scheme will not pass the Senate.

It will either be defeated, or blocked there.

Mr Abbott is holding a news conference, right now, at which he will be asked what he will do about that.

Almost certainly, though, these events will give the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, the trigger for a double dissolution election.