Turnbull fires both barrels at successor

CANBERRA - Deposed Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull has made a vitriolic attack on usurper Tony Abbott over climate change, shading the glow of electoral and opinion poll gains bathing the Liberals since last week's leadership challenge.

Confirming that anger will continue seething within the Coalition, Turnbull's extraordinary outburst on his blog site yesterday described Abbott's stand on climate change as a farce, and "bullshit".

Turnbull also said he would cross the floor to vote for the Government's greenhouse Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) when it is returned to the Senate for the third time in February.

The former leader was felled by the compromise deal he struck with the Government over the ETS, and his insistence that regardless of personal convictions and official policy to defer a vote until after the Copenhagen climate change conference, Coalition Senators toe his line.

Senators of the junior Coalition partner, the Nationals, refused to support an ETS in any form and Abbott - a former supporter of the scheme - led a rebellion within the Liberals that both ousted Turnbull and defeated the scheme in the Upper House.

The Government now has the trigger for an early election, and will return the legislation for a third vote - but has warned that if the ETS is defeated, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd could dissolve both Houses and take the nation to the polls.

Abbott has been heartened by two weekend byelections for the blue-ribbon Liberal seats vacated by former Liberal Leader Brendan Nelson and former Treasurer Peter Costello, in which an expected backlash favouring the Greens evaporated. Labor did not contest the seats.

Abbott saw the results as vindication of his stand and a rejection of the ETS. He was also handed good news in a Newspoll in the Australian yesterday, showing gains after the change in leadership.

Although the two-party preferred vote that decides Australian elections still heavily favoured Labor - by 56 per cent to 44 per cent - the Liberals' primary vote rose four points to 34 per cent. Labor's primary vote remained steady at 43 per cent.

And while Rudd's vote as preferred Prime Minister slipped five points to 60 per cent, Abbott was seen by 23 per cent as the better leader - well above the 14 per cent received by Turnbull in the previous poll.

Abbott also intends strengthening his anti-ETS forces by including National's senator and climate change sceptic Barnaby Joyce in a shadow Cabinet that will produce a new policy on the issue early next year.

Abbott has said an ETS or a carbon tax would not be included in a policy that would instead include measures such as carbon soil storage, improved land management and energy efficient buildings.

He did not deny on ABC radio yesterday a report in the Sydney Morning Herald that his shadow treasurer, Joe Hockey, had lambasted such an approach during earlier party room debate, estimating it would cost more than A$50 billion ($63.7 billion).

But Abbott said his policy would cost nothing like the A$120 billion of Labor's approach, and challenged Rudd to a debate on the issue. Rudd rebuffed the challenge, saying Abbott had no policy to debate.

Turnbull's blog supported Rudd: "It is not possible to criticise the new Coalition policy on climate change because it does not exist. Mr Abbott apparently knows what he is against, but not what he is for."

Turnbull said Abbott and his supporters did not believe that humans caused climate change - Abbott once described it as "crap" - and did not want to do anything about it.

He said in the past five months Abbott had bounced between support for the ETS and the blocking of the legislation: "We have an Opposition leader who has in the space of a few months held every possible position on the issue, each one contradicting the position he expressed earlier."

Turnbull also said that by reneging on its deal with the Government to pass the amended ETS, the Coalition had given "irrefutable, undeniable" evidence that it could not be trusted.