Opposition Leader Tony Abbott is so addicted to negativity that he has described Australian householders and pensioners as vested interests and dumped his own policy of reducing carbon pollution by five per cent compared to 2000 levels by 2020.

In an outburst at a seniors’ forum this morning on the Gold Coast, Mr Abbott said:

“And you know the crazy thing about what the government has got in mind? They’re going to make business pay $9 billion a year, they’re going to give half of it back to business and they’re going to give half of it to the political groups that they favour.” ( 18 July 2011)

Actually the “political groups” Mr Abbott does not want to assist are low and middle income households, pensioners, and people receiving government benefits and allowances.

The Gillard Government will use more than half of the carbon price revenue to provide tax cuts, increases in family payments and increases in pensions, benefits and other allowances to help householders with moderate cost impacts from the carbon price.

“Not content with his policy of clawing back this assistance from low and middle income households, Tony Abbott is now deriding them as a vested interest group which is undeserving of support,” Mr Combet said.

Mindlessly negative as always, Mr Abbott then trashed his own climate change policy, saying:

“And the other crazy thing about this that at the same time that our country is proposing to reduce its emissions by five per cent, just five per cent, the Chinese are proposing to increase their emissions by 500 per cent.” (Tony Abbott, 18 July 2011, Gold Coast seniors’ forum)

The first problem with this statement is that it is factually wrong. The figure Mr Abbott claims for growth in China’s emissions assumes that country takes no action to reduce emissions in the 30 years from 1990 to 2020. In fact, China is already taking action to limit its carbon pollution and has adopted targets to reduce the emissions-intensity of its economy by 45 per cent by 2020.

The second problem is that Mr Abbott has directly contradicted his own remarks when he wrote on the mamamia website today, saying:

“Both the government and the opposition accept that Australia should reduce our emissions by 5 per cent by 2020.” (Tony Abbott, 18 July 2011, mamamia.com.au)

Apparently Mr Abbott is content to tell different audiences different things about his own policy – even on the same day.

The final problem is that the Opposition leader can now no longer be trusted on his pledge to reduce carbon pollution by five per cent compared to 2000 levels by 2020.

“Until this morning’s outburst, the Opposition was lending bipartisan support to the Government’s target of reducing Australia’s carbon pollution by five per cent compared to 2000 levels by 2020,” Mr Combet said.

“Now Mr Abbott has derided his own five per cent target as crazy.

“Either he has just dumped the central element of the Coalition’s policy – or he is so addicted to negativity that he has started attacking his own policy.

“Either way, we now know that Tony Abbott cannot be believed when he claims the Coalition is committed to reducing carbon pollution and that he really has no intention of doing anything to tackle climate change.”