From Climate Spectator (which will no doubt wind up now):
With the announcement yesterday from the AEC that Palmer United candidate Zhenya Wang has likely won a Senate seat, the carbon price now appears doomed.
The latest count has the Coalition with 33 seats, requiring another six votes to achieve a majority.
The Palmer United Party gives them a further three votes for repeal.
The Tasmanian Palmer United senator-elect Jacqui Lambie had said: “There still needs to be a carbon tax, but it just needs to be a lot lower than it is”. But subsequently recanted, falling into line with Clive Palmer’s overtly hostile opposition to a carbon price (not surprising, given Clive’s interests in developing a huge new coal mine in Queensland).
In addition, Zhenya Wang, (who is managing director of Australasian Resources, majority owned by Palmer) said during his campaign that his priority was abolition of the carbon price.
Another two unambiguous votes for repeal come from the Liberal Democrats’ David Leyonhjelm and South Australia’s Family First Senator, Bob Day.
Leyonhjelm told news.com.au that: “We wouldn’t stop him [Abbott] from getting rid of the carbon tax.”
Meanwhile, Family First are overtly hostile to the proposition that rising levels of greenhouse gases could influence the climate, even though the earth would be frozen solid without them and Venus is 475 degrees for a reason (CO2 makes up 96.5 per cent of Venus’ atmosphere).
The government, then, only needs to convince one of either the DLP’s John Madigan or Australian Motoring Enthusiasts’ Ricky Muir for repeal to succeed, which seems pretty much a given.
I’m all out of indignation this week.
