It's reminiscent of that old joke in the USSR, you know:

'One day Tass tells us the West stands on the brink of a precipice, the next we are informed that any time now we are due to overtake the West.'

Reminds me of the Tarot card, The Fool.

Mr. Rudd is clearly a fan of the 'leap of faith' bit in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Shows just how dangerous it is to mix your metaphors.

You fall face first in the cactus.

That was funny.

These people are such morons. They can't even do manipulation right.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is a former professional diplomat - I hope he has a better grasp of Chinese than he does of English.

The whole thing is absurd.

If Mr Rudd really believed that human C02 emissions cause dangerious globel warming (and not only liars say that believe that - many honest and intelligent people believe it also) then he would be horrified by the outcome of these talks. China sunk any possibility of a real agreement by (amongst other things) refusing to have independent checks on C02 emissions in China.

But then if Mr Rudd (and the other politicians) really believed in this danger there would not have been this vast two week conference at all - with endless jet aircraft arriving and limos having to be imported from Germany (because Denmark ran out) to carry the conference critters about. Tens of thousands of tonnes of C02 produced.

The whole thing would have been done via video conferenceing.

So we have a man, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, lying his head off about a conference that (if he believes that C02 is a danger) he should have been passionatly against anyway.

The whole thing just makes no sense.

Perhaps even the Australians round here will be saying "come back John Howard" or, if not, at least "come on Tony".

"China sunk any possibility of a real agreement by (amongst other things) refusing to have independent checks on C02 emissions in China."

Well, of course they did! The Chinese are pragmatists. They don't make plans based on fantasies.

"(The Chinese)..don't make plans based on fantasies."
Erm, the Cultural Revolution?

How can you make cheap jokes at a time like this? Santa is going to drown because those bastards wouldn't sign a ETS! Who will give presents to the little kiddies now?
Hey, what great publicity! Be the first country to grant refuge to Santa! Grow herds of flying reindeer- and cut down on jet fuel! The possibilities are endless!!! (Possibilities always are... probabilities are another thing.)

Paul: Sadly, Tony Abbott has about the intellectual capacity and the sophistication of a retarded flea. Australian conservatives are astonishingly depressing. That Malcolm Turnbull managed to lose the leadership by being a bit too Eastern Suburbs over global warming is soemthing of a tragedy, as he was the first vaguely decent Liberal leader since John Hewson, whose loss in 1993 gave us the ghastliness of John Howard for more than a decade.

Australian conservatives are astonishingly depressing

Thanks.

[For the record, I edited my previous comment after posting it. It initially only consisted of the first two sentences, and I think this is what CC responded to].

I was brought up to be a good leftist, and to despise conservatives. I broke with the left long ago, and at this point I think I despise the modern left most of all, but I am yet to find a good reason to stop despising conservatives.

In this particular instance, my comment was mainly intended as a continued disagreement with Paul Marks' praise for the government of John Howard. Seriously, this is the man who purged any actual liberals from the Liberal Party, and who once introduced a hypothecated income tax to fund the compulsory acquisition of people's firearms. And don't even get me started on the "First homeowners grant". And sadly, the party has chosen to continue down that route.

The real tragedy is that this moron remains so popular with the vast majority of KANGAROOS...

Two Aussies are having their piss in the pub.
"When our PM, Kevin Rudd wins the next election, we're gonna have a full socialism in three years here in Australia" - says one bloke.
"Luckily, it won't catch up with me. I have a cancer" - responds the other one.

Whilst I have no time for John Howard, the nasty little gun grabbing garden gnome, John Hewson is a barking mad lefty and Malcolm Turnbull would be a better fit in the Labor Party except that they have more sense than that. Turnbull was determined to deliver Australians into the hands of his bankster mates at Goldman Sachs so they could make money out of the carbon scam, only he's an inept politician and couldn't deliver.

Which leaves the Libs with a choice between the insipid buffoon Joe Hockey and Tony Abbott, the least worst choice I think.

One quails at what stared back at Rudd from the Abyss, all the demons in hell were already accredited to the conference...

Steve P, mass murdering millions of people in slave labor camps (i.e. the Cultural Revolution) was not a fantasy, they had every bullet purchased, inventoried, and pre-billed in triplicate fill in the blanks forms to be issued to the next of kin.

Conversely the bunch in Copenhagen couldn't plan their way out of a paper bag. They are expecting the rest of us to pick up the tab for taking care of all that for them, as if its just on their personal, taxpayer paid, expense account

Well, at least he didn't say it "lacked detailed programmatic specificity" like he did once before, in Germany, when he was banging on about emissions.

This nonsensical jargon completely stumped the English-German interpreters. The guy's an absolute twat.

Michael: let's add the ridiculous Baby/plasma Bonus, the further undermining of the federal system by accelerating Canberra's centralisation of power, and doubling or tripling (can't remember which...both are pretty abysmal either which way) the size of the tax code to Howard's list of crimes. However, I don't (yet) share your assessment of Abbott, who I think should be given a chance to prove that he isn't the moron he came over as in the past.

Mike Lorrey: I wasn't suggesting that the tragic consequences of the Cultural Revolution were a fantasy. The fantasy was the "glorious" Utopian society it was supposed to produce.

Yep I am fully aware of the sins (and the crimes) of Mr Howard.

However, the gun grabbing (and so on) views of Mr Rudd are no different.

And Mr Rudd lacks things like trying to keep government spending under control - "But Howard did not do that" - by British and American standards he did (indeed he was what would be known as an "extremist" in Britain and America).

However, on Mr M.T, - my old friend Jeff Taylor has the same view.

And Jeff tends to have a sound grasp of the politically possible in the Australian context I would have to agree as well. So I would have voted for M.T. over T.A.

Of course Jeff supported Howard as well (even though it was often "hold your nose" and support).

He has two rules - "will this man stop the economy from being wreaked" and "can this man win an election".

If the result is "yes" on both questions then he supports.

Limited I know - but not without merit.

by British and American standards he did

Nah. He was merely very fortunate to have huge and easily collected tax revenues due to a resources boom. It wasn't that spending was kept under control. It was simply that revenues rose unexpectedly and this had nothing to do with him. Amd demographics are far more favourable than they are anywhere European, too. Canada is exactly the same, and Canadian government finances are very similar.

Don't get me wrong I have no time for Kevin Rudd but Malcolm Turnbull was not electable as he had totally pissed off the conservative core in Australia. He was trying to be Rudd Lite and was making zero traction with the electorate and was the bloke who deposed Brendan Nelson who was probably the best choice but the press was trying to destroy him.

It was also Turnbull as Howard's environment minister who gave us our incandescent light bulb ban. The man is a really nasty piece of work and an utter fool as he seems to believe the AGW scam completely.

Either I trust Mr Jennings' judgement or I do not - and in our conversations he has never given me a reason not to trust his judgement.

Rather the reverse - and I am hardly a trusting person by nature.

So I must concede defeat on this one.

For example I do not know the demographic background (Australia may have a small fraction of the population in the older age bracket - leading to less government spending) and the Canadian point is a sound one.

Canada did get a grip on wild spending some time ago - but the Liberals and P.Cs. who did get a grip on it were hardly free market hardliners, so perhaps they just had a less difficult job to do.