The Shadow Treasurer, Joe Hockey, has displayed the Coalition’s true colours on climate change.

Mr Hockey announced on ABC TV’s Lateline last night that a Coalition government would abolish the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency.

We have always known that the Opposition Leader Tony Abbott is sceptical about the advice of scientists on the risks of climate change and rejects the advice of economists on how to reduce carbon pollution at the lowest cost to the economy.

Now his shadow Treasurer has revealed that he would scrap the Climate Change Department, sacking more than 1000 public sector employees.

This shows that the Opposition’s plan is to do nothing to tackle climate change.

It is an unjustified attack on public servants from a shadow Treasurer whose knee-jerk response to advice about problems with his policy is to threaten the public service.

And it opens up a new hole in Mr Abbott’s discredited subsidies-for-polluters policy.

Under the policy the Coalition says it will conduct a tender-based grants scheme to award subsidies to polluters who promise to clean up their acts.

But with no Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, the Coalition would have no public servants to draw up grant guidelines, to administer the tender process, to negotiate grant agreements and contracts and to monitor whether the polluters were fulfilling their obligations.

Direct Action would be a giant, no-strings-attached, handout scheme for big polluters with Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey personally selecting firms to be rewarded with billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded subsidies.