Bernardi about Turnbull's climate change policy review: ‘One of the dumbest things I’ve heard’

Senator Cory Bernardi, who is back from the United Nations after three months, recently said that he has been flooded with emails from Liberals about how the government is on the wrong track to have announced climate change policy review.

The Liberal backbencher said that debating about the carbon trading scheme will only “cause division” within the party. “The problem we have is when everything was on the table, that's code for we are going to put taxes up,” he told Sky News, adding, “This I think is one of the dumbest things I've heard in politics in recent times.”

His statement came after the government released terms for climate change policy review on Monday wherein it did not rule out putting emissions intensity scheme under consideration for electricity generators.

Turnbull said that the planned climate policy review in 2017 was supported by his predecessors. “The review of the climate policy which will be undertaken next year has been part of the Coalition's policy for many years, long before I was Prime Minister,” he said in Sydney today.

Furthermore, Turnbull stated that he was never in favour of carbon tax. He added that the decisions being made will help fulfilling our commitments to the Paris Protocol. “In fact we're going to outdo it,” he said.

On the contrary, in 2010, Turnbull lost the Liberal leadership for supporting Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading scheme. At that time he said, “We have to put a price on carbon. We can do it via a carbon tax if you like.” In the same year later, he asserted in another statement that Australia “cannot cost-effectively achieve a substantial cut in emissions without putting a price on carbon.”