Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd warned there was no “magic pudding” solution to climate change yesterday as he lashed out over the defeat of his flagship carbon-trading scheme.
Rudd mocked the opposition Liberal Party’s reported plan to slash pollution with energy efficiency measures as a “bit of fairy dust” and called for “wiser heads” to pass the bill at the third attempt.
The defeat of the legislation, aiming to cut carbon emissions by between 5 percent and 25 percent of 2000 levels by 2020, leaves Rudd empty-handed as he heads to next week’s UN climate talks in Copenhagen.
“For the Liberals now to say that there is a magic pudding solution on climate change, that somehow if you throw a bit of fairy dust at it and say that bang, it all happens, without any adjustment challenges, I don’t think that’s being fair dinkum,” he told reporters.
Rudd’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) was voted down 41 to 33 on Wednesday in the upper-house Senate, where neither the government or opposition Coalition holds a majority.
The prime minister, who passed up the chance to call snap polls after the bill’s second defeat, said he had “always” wanted to serve a full three-year term and urged an opposition re-think over the Christmas break.
Climate change skeptic Tony Abbott, who ousted Malcolm Turnbull as Liberal Party leader during the turbulent debate, has said he will oppose the third reading of the bill, which he describes as a “great big new tax.”
Rudd also took a humorous swipe at his new sparring partner’s choice of swimwear, after Abbott was pictured wearing only “budgie-smuggler” Speedo trunks and a lifesaver’s cap in Monday’s newspapers.
“If there was a referendum tomorrow between budgie-smugglers and boardies [board shorts], I think I would be voting for boardies,” he said. “There should be certain things the Australian people are protected from, and that’s national political leaders so attired.”
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