WA Libs want ETS talks delayed

West Australian Liberals have called on the party's leadership not to finalise any
arrangements with the Rudd government on amendments to the bill for an emissions
trading scheme.
At its state conference in Perth on Saturday, the party watered down a motion from
its WA rural policy committee that had sought to delay any negotiations between the
federal parliamentary party and the government until after global climate change
talks in December.
But overwhelming support for a motion to "not conclude any negotiations" until after
the Copenhagen summit was another rebuff to Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull in
his attempts to take the party with him on the formulation of a climate change
policy.
Mr Turnbull, in the opening address to the conference, had earlier tried to persuade
Liberal Party dissenters to toe the shadow cabinet's line on an emissions trading
scheme and support negotiations with the government.
Five WA federal Liberal MPs - Wilson Tuckey, Don Randall, climate change sceptic
Dennis Jensen and senators Mathias Cormann and Michaelia Cash - are among a group of
backbenchers who have called on Mr Turnbull not to negotiate with the government
until after the Copenhagen talks.
Senator Cormann was one of the MPs who rose to support the amended motion at
Saturday's conference, along with Senator Alan Eggleston and the motion's proposer,
rural committee chairman Brian Mayfield.
No one spoke against it and discussion was curtailed before Mr Tuckey, who had risen
to take a microphone, could speak to the motion.
Without being named, Mr Tuckey and others were roundly criticised by former WA
Liberal Party director Chilla Porter for damage they are doing to the party "in the
way they are conducting themselves".
"Some people at a senior level need to be speaking people about the damage they are
causing," Mr Porter said.
Mr Tuckey told reporters outside the meeting he was delighted with the outcome of
the motion, which he said had been opposed by only two delegates.
He said that in criticising his approach to the issue, Mr Porter did not realise he
was simply sticking with party policy on an ETS scheme.
"(Mr Porter) was very autocratic in his day in the top job in this state," he said.
"If he was more across the subject, which he obviously is not, he would know my
remarks are consistent with policy and (that) other people who try and float off
other ideas - we get offered to swim with the little fish and two days later it
becomes a shark."
Mr Turnbull, who this week faced some of his worst days as Liberal leader amid
admissions by shadow treasurer Joe Hockey he had been approached to take on the top
job, told the conference the party must formulate amendments to the government's ETS
bill.
He said the opposition could simply not afford to be wrong-footed by the government
by failing to have a policy in place before the Copenhagen talks.
He said while the Labor government should be condemned for trying to finalise
Australia's policy on greenhouse gases before the summit, the opposition must have
its own response to the "diabolical challenge" of climate change.
"As a major political party we have to have a positive policy to respond to climate
change," he said.
"We cannot oppose action from the government unless we have an alternative.
"In politics you can be the man or the woman with a plan; you cannot be the man or
the woman with no plan, and that is why the amendments are absolutely vital."
Mr Turnbull said although the opinion polls were running against the opposition,
"the wheels of fortune" could change rapidly.