It’s becoming increasingly apparent that Tony Abbott and the Prime Minister’s Office are complete pains in the arse to work with, even if you’re a card carrying member of the Coalition front bench.
See, there’s about to be a huge international conference in Lima, Peru on the subject of climate change. The conference will be attended by 190 or so nations, and is being held with the sole purpose of beginning to form the framework for a new international treaty on carbon emissions that will be ratified at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris next year. In essence, it’s the first step towards drawing up the successor to the Kyoto Treaty, whose limitations expire in 2020.
Way back before the utter debacle that was the Australian Government‘s stubborn refusal to make climate change a priority topic at November’s G20 summit – ergo making it a dominant issue by virtue of their attempted ignorance – Foreign Minister Julie Bishop submitted travel plans to the Prime Minister’s Office, which included a trip to Peru for this conference. The Prime Minister’s Office denied it without reason.
Let’s just take a moment to reiterate that here.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott, his Chief of Staff Peta Credlin, and the rest of his office, did not want to send anyone to the Climate Conference in Peru that will set global framework on carbon emissions.
To put that another way, of the 196 countries in the ENTIRE WORLD, Australia would have been one of maybe 6 without an official delegate at the conference, if the Prime Minister’s Office had their way.
Julie Bishop, being a politician who actually realises things, correctly realised that the opposition party, the media, and just about every-fucking-one else in the country would’ve made something of a big deal out of that. So she made the request again, only this time going around the PM’s office to put the issue to the Federal Cabinet who, also being in possession of common sense, found no problem with that whatsoever.
With the weight of that behind it, Abbott and the PM’s office acquiesced to Bishop’s request. But far from being happy to simply admit the mistake and leave it at that, the Office tacked on one last little caveat – if Jules has to go, then Trade Minister Andrew Robb – a noted climate sceptic – has to go with her.
Why? Because reasons, that’s why.
Robb, who was already scheduled to be in South America – but not Peru – at the time, was forced to change his travel plans at the last minute to accommodate the conference.
This leaves Australia with two very pissed off delegates in Lima today – one because her boss thinks she can’t be trusted alone, and one because he’s been forced to switch plans at the last minute to go play second fiddle at a conference he truly doesn’t give a shit about.
And for the record here, Australia – as a nation – just got ranked 57th out of 58 developed nations on their performance vis-a-vis climate change action by a non-Government organisation based in Europe.
The only nation currently performing worse than us on the issue? Saudi Arabia.
Yeah.
Photo: Stefan Postles via Getty Images.
via SMH.
