Federal politicans are left gun-shy in the climate war

Carbon is like kryptonite for our
politicians - they go weak at the knees
and start talking utter bollocks.

There is something about carbon that acts like kryptonite for politicians. Their knees go all wobbly and they start talking utter bollocks.

And this week it’s produced the very sort of vacuous, dumb politics that Malcolm Turnbull had promised to end when he offered a different style of leadership; one that explained the challenges and seized the opportunities.

“A style of leadership that respects the people’s intelligence, that explains these complex issues and then sets out the course of action we believe we should take and makes a case for it. We need advocacy, not slogans,” Turnbull said just hours before becoming Prime Minister last September.

And yet there we were on Wednesday, just five months after the last Federal election, hearing Turnbull rehearse old sloganeering attack lines for the next election in two years time.

Read Andrew Probyn’s opinion in The Western Australian - “Federal politicans are left gun-shy in the climate war.”