Xenophon backs emissions vote delay

Senator Nick Xenophon

Politics is an ugly business at the Senate level. It all comes down to the numbers and occasionally the simple head count makes strange bed fellows.

The continuing stalling tactics from the Forces of Darkness to not address emissions trading continues to hold us back from making the changes we will have to make to help save The Great Barrier Reef.

This has led to folk like Nick Xenophon on the same side of the argument as the Climate Change Deniers, the Nationals, and the Climate Change Confused, the Liberals. No long ago we even had the Greens siding with the deniers in a bid to make changes to the legislation even though both want it moved in opposite directions.

Now here lies the problem for those who want to advance our Economy into the strange new world where the polluter pays. Delaying a start does not guarantee any improvement under the current structure of the Australian Senate. Quite the opposite in fact. Because the Government needs every other "Independent" outside the coalition camp it only takes one Senator to delay or crush any changes to the law.

Currently we have a real problem with Senator Fielding who clearly has very little idea of where he stands except for wanting to get his photo taken. Recently he even went as far as to travel to the US to enjoy the attentions of Climate Change skeptics and came back with data that was at least 2 years old and already dealt with. Apparently reading Aussie science is a bit beyond him.

It reminds me of Little Johnnie Howard. Be it the Queen or George Dubya, a little attention from "higher authorities" had him falling all over himself to curry favour. I think the same goes with Fielding. Scientists are never going to go fawning over a pollie where as Big Business is used to fluffing up pollies for their own advantage. That puts him in the same category as the Nationals. They get a lot of funding from the Mining industry so they are in lock step with their benefactors.

If Nick Xenophon thinks he can win through on Emissions Trading in the current structure then I think he is dreaming. His moral standards are not all that common in the House and the real weaklings are for sale to the highest bidder.