The 'weightless' flight of Mister Abbott

 

Courtesy of the perceptive pen of Annabel Crabb:

“Once you've severed the guy ropes of obeisance to empirical evidence, many happy hours of ballooning lie ahead. Mr Abbott's liberation from such constraints allows him to lead a free-market party while advocating a carbon reduction scheme that is interventionist to its core. Or to deplore, for instance, a goal of reducing Australian emissions by 5 per cent over the next nine years as "crazy", while simultaneously holding that goal as sworn Coalition policy. Last week, when the Leader of the Opposition assured a group of Victorian voters that carbon dioxide was a tricky gas on account of being "weightless", it seemed for a glorious moment as if he was hedging his bets even on the work of Newton.”