Amazing what the threat of losing your sinecure can do, at Domain:
Tony Abbott has backflipped on his call for Australia to withdraw from the landmark Paris agreement, saying the federal government has lost the “emissions obsession” it held under former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.
Mr Turnbull swiftly returned fire on Twitter, suggesting Mr Abbott’s claim that coal-fired power is the cheapest form of baseload energy was “innumerate idiocy”.
Mr Abbott was speaking at a debate of candidates for his blue ribbon seat of Warringah, where he faces a stiff challenge from high-profile independent hopeful Zali Steggall who is campaigning for bold action on climate change.
Do-nothing Malcolm sniffs revenge, at The Australian:
Mr Turnbull waded in as Mr Abbott faced off with his independent rival Zali Steggall over coal-fired power. After Mr Abbott called for the Snowy Hydro Corporation to look at purchasing a coal-fired power station, claiming coal-fired power remains the cheapest form of baseload power, Mr Turnbull tweeted: “But it isn’t.”
He went on to attack the “ideology and innumerate idiocy” that was stopping progress.
“Today the cheapest form of new dispatchable or base load energy is renewables plus storage. We are now able to have lower emissions and lower prices but we need to plan it using engineering & economics rather than ideology and innumerate idiocy,” he said.
Quite right. Shame he did nothing to promote it, either.
