Australian Prime Minister and world-leading climate denier Tony Abbott survived a caucus revolt and leadership challenge Monday morning, after a motion to declare the positions of party leader and deputy leader vacant was defeated 61-39 in a secret ballot.
(But that’s hardly an excuse to pass up a cheap headline pun that first showed up in the Wizard of Id comic strip nearly 50 years ago.)
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“Despite having survived the vote, a consensus was forming across Australian media that the large number of votes against Abbott indicated a lack of support so damaging as to potentially render him a lame duck,” CBC reports.
While the leadership vote had little to do with Abbott’s defunding of Australian climate change initiatives and active opposition to a global climate agreement, his most likely successor, Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull, is less doctrinaire on climate policy. “Opinion polls have consistently shown voters prefer Turnbull to lead the party but his views on a carbon trading scheme, marriage equality, and support for an Australian republic have made him unpopular with the right wing of his party,” Thomson Reuters reports.
