Labor, Greens challenge Tony Abbott to call for double dissolution
Labor and the Greens have challenged the government to call a double dissolution election after the Senate defeated a bill to abolish the Clean Energy Finance Corporation for a second time.
The Senate voted down the bill on Wednesday 35 votes to 28, with the opposition, Greens and Independent senator Nick Xenophon all opposed to the scrapping of the profitable $10 billion corporation, which invests in renewable energy technology.
Rejection of the bill for a second time sets up the government’s first trigger for a double-dissolution election.
But Treasurer Joe Hockey has instead lashed out at Labor and the Greens for ”defying” the judgment made by voters at the last election and said the government would introduce the repeal bill for a third time next week.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said Australians would prefer to see Mr Abbott keep the budget promises he made before the election and dared him to pull the trigger on a double dissolution election.
”Tony Abbott is all talk – if he wants an election, he should bring it on,” Mr Shorten said.
”He won’t even talk to people in the street about how much this budget is hurting them, let alone face their anger at the ballot box.”
Of course the Liberals won’t call an early election, because they know they’d suffer a humiliating defeat that would be the end of their radical ideological assault on the Australian people. They need at least a couple more years in power to deepen the damage and to allow time for voters to forget their wanton betrayals. Even if an election was called and the government defeated, it’s far too late to do anything about the F-35/Super Hornet mess, but at least it would put an end to this pie-in-the-sky nonsense about F-35Bs and other military spending fantasies.
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