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.

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Turnbull, Hockey – and Abbott – seek Liberal leadership

A three way contest for leadership of the deeply divided Liberal party is likely in Canberra this morning.

Malcolm Turnbull has declared that he will defend his position.  Joe Hockey says he will stand, if there is a spill of present positions.

But he has named a price.  That is a free vote for all Liberals, on the climate change bills that are now before the Senate. That would be the first free vote for the party since the Republic debate , a decade ago.

If the party agrees, the bills could well pass Parliament.

Tony Abbott had been saying that he would not stand, if Joe Hockey did.

However, Mr Abbott changed his stance, late yesterday, declaring that he would be a candidate after all, even if Mr Hockey stands.

So  Mr Abbott, effectively, will be the candidate of the climate change deniers, who rebelled against Mr Turnbull’s leadership.

The stakes in this battle are very high.

Ian Macfarlane, who negotiated the a climate change deal with the Federal government, declared in a television interview last night, that the Liberal party could not be a credible force in Australian politics, without a policy to tackle threats associated with climate change.

The former Liberal leader in the Senate, Nick Minchin, has led the campaign against the government’s proposed emissions trading scheme.

Senator Minchin, who is known by some of his colleagues as “the dark prince,” has declared that neither he, nor his friends in parliament, believe that human activity is producing global warming.

The Senate debated the government’s ETS bills, over an extended period, yesterday.

But it was still far from a final vote, late last night.

Liberal party MPs met, informally, throughout the day.

It was still unclear late last night, though, which of the three candidates will win today’s ballot.

The haggling, though, did raise at least some hope, on the government side, that the bills would pass parliament, after all.

If they are rejected, or blocked, for a second time, though, the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, could order a double dissolution – and take the nation to an early election that the Coalition would, almost certainly, lose.

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