Sydney - Australia's incoming prime minister Malcolm Turnbull is set to become Australia's fourth prime minister in two years when he is sworn in later tdoay after securing the leadership of the Liberal Party, the senior partner in the ruling conservative coalition, in a vote yesterday. Australia is one of the largest carbon emitters on a per capita basis due to its reliance on coal-fired power plants. Turnbull reaffirmed shortly after ousting former leader Tony Abbott his commitment to continuing the government's carbon emission targets and climate change policy. However, analysts and academics said they expect him to make some amendments, albeit slowly and in a manner more acceptable to his coalition colleagues. "I have no doubt that Malcolm Turnbull will be wanting to move the party in a different direction on climate change but he will also be remembering with some tenderness that this was the issue that saw him ousted as opposition leader," said Sarah Maddison, associate professor in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne.
Abbott toppled Turnbull in a party-room coup in late 2009, when the coalition was in opposition, primarily amid discontent over Turnbull's support for an emissions trading scheme. "I imagine that he will attempt to sell changes in government policy on economic terms rather than environmental terms," Maddison said. Turnbull has made improving Australia's faltering economy the focus of his leadership. Analysts expect him to sell a more aggressive climate change policy as a tool in managing the end of Australia's once-in-a-century mining boom. Turnbull may have better success in bringing often sceptical Liberal colleagues with him by dressing climate change policies as a tool to offset a slowing Australian economy, analysts said.
He would likely attempt to tie climate change policies to Australia's future economic security, analysts said, particularly as a tool to address an unemployment rate that is lingering near a 13-year high amid a mining slowdown.(FA)
