Of backflips, and conservative perversion

The Liberal Party's repudiation of their previous agreement to pass the Federal Government's ETS scheme is [apart from being treacherous in terms of breaking a negotiated settlement] both perverse and cycnical.

Perverse, because this deal - while possibly too generous to big polluters - was probably the best scheme that big business could ever hope for, and cynical because, to satisfy a core conservative constituency [ie the Liberal heartland] in the short term, they are dealing a blow to Australia's and the Liberal's long-term interests.

And the irony is that the Labour Govt's ETS is not that much different from John Howard's ETS policy at the 2007 election. As George Megalogenis writes in today's Australian, "no mainstream political party has ever obstructed the government on an issue that it itself had promised at the ballot box... no party has ever tried to double-cross the electorate in this way before".

The Liberal backflip is a perverse reaction, to keep conservatives and grumpy old men happy. They don't deserve to win an election for a long time, and certainly not under Tony Abbott.