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Abbott vows to cross the floor against any new renewables subsidies — most of Parliament should be with him.

Democracy in action.

Fully 62% of Australians don’t want to pay a pitiful $10 a month for renewables. They are already paying more, therefore at least two-thirds of our parliament should be voting “No” on this. Why is Turnbull even toying with this?

Former prime minister Tony Abbott has threatened to cross the floor of Parliament and vote against any move to introduce a clean-energy target, describing as “unconscionable” any move to wind back support for coal in favour of renewables.

In his first interview with his former chief of staff Peta Credlin on Sky News’ Jones & Co on Tuesday night, Mr Abbott described climate change as “very much a third order issue”.

He suggested Liberal MPs had “extremely serious reservations” about the government’s clean energy target, and said last year’s power blackouts in South Australia had influenced the attitude of Liberal MPs to renewable energy.

“I think there is no chance that our party room will support any significant increase in the amount of renewables in our system.”

Asked whether he would support an attempt by Mr Turnbull to legislate for a clean-energy target, Mr Abbott replied: “It would be unconscionable, I underline that word unconscionable, for a government that was originally elected promising to abolish the carbon tax and end Labor’s climate change obsessions to go further down the renewables path,” he said.

The Turnbull government has a one-seat majority in Parliament, underscoring the potential of Mr Abbott’s threat to do real damage to the government.

Limit the damage ASAP:

Asked by Ms Credlin if he would scrap subsidies for renewable forms of energy, Mr Abbott said: “We have to respect people who have made investments in the existing system. We don’t want additional sovereign risk factors bedevilling our economy.”

But he said there should be no further subsidies: “There should be no subsidies for further solar and wind because this is inherently unreliable.”

At this point our market is so screwed the government may have to build a coal plant, because the subsidies and weather-alchemy-rules have made it impossible for the private sector to do what they have done for most of the last century.

Mr Abbott also suggested governments should build coal-fired power stations.

“Power generation is an essential service and if the market won’t build coal-fired power stations, if the market won’t build base load power, the government has got to,” he said.

The unspoken problem here is how to unscrew the market so the government can get out of the generation business.

Let’s let people tick “green energy” or “coal” on their personal power bills and adjust their electricity prices accordingly. Then we’d find out how many Australians really want a renewable energy target. That’s true democracy where people vote with their wallet.

Send a message to your rep.

h/t Dave B

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