By Phillip Coorey and Jacqueline Maley
INDEPENDENT MP Tony Windsor said it is unlikely the Gillard government will win the next election, but he stands by his decision to support her, saying at least Labor was trying to achieve something.
Speaking to the Herald from London yesterday, where he is on a fact-finding trip on climate change policy, Mr Windsor did not resile from comments he made to Tamworth radio station 2TM on Monday, when he asserted the petrol exemptions he won as part of the carbon price package would never be unwound.
Tony Windsor ... "unlikely the Labor Party will get re-elected".Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
''It's probably unlikely that the Labor Party will get re-elected at the next election,'' he said. ''I couldn't see Tony Abbott introducing a carbon price on the heavy vehicle fuel users.''
The Nationals leapt on the statement, saying Mr Windsor, who holds the seat of New England, should abandon Labor.
''If he continues to support the carbon tax he is complicit in the misleading statement uttered by the Prime Minister prior to the election that there would be no carbon tax under the government she leads,'' Senator John Williams said.
But Mr Windsor told the Herald he was sticking by the government until the election. He said as he travelled abroad, he was struck by how people in Australia were still arguing the science of climate change, while abroad the focus was on how to solve the problem.
This only confirmed in his mind that he made the right decision to back Labor and negotiate a climate change policy, even if it meant Labor had put its political future at risk.
''I'd rather be supporting someone who's trying to do something rather than Tony Abbott, who's trying to wreck everything,'' he said.
''Regardless of what happens [at the election], I have no self-doubt about the choices I made.''
As Ms Gillard visited coalminers in the Hunter Valley yesterday to assure them their jobs would not be wiped out because of her carbon scheme, Mr Abbott was recalibrating his argument after he rubbished as
''crazy'' his own policy goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 5 per cent by 2020.
In Canberra yesterday, international climate change sceptic Christopher Monckton urged Mr Abbott to jettison his policy because climate change was a ''non-problem''.
''Yes, the Coalition should, in my opinion, ditch it, because there is no need to take any action about carbon dioxide at all,'' he said.
''It is not good enough merely to recite that there is a consensus of thousands of climate scientists … it is not acceptable to say the science is settled.''
Unlike Labor's carbon price, Mr Abbott's direct action policy would pay polluters from the budget to cut emissions, costing at least $10 billion by 2020.
Despite the policy differences, Labor and the Coalition share the goal of reducing emissions by 5 per cent by 2020.
On Monday, Mr Abbott described this target as ''crazy'' because any reductions made by Australia would be more than made up for emission increases from China. Yesterday, he claimed he was calling Labor's policy ''crazy''.
Ms Gillard said he had abandoned any last pretence of belief in climate change.
''Tony Abbott apparently decided that cutting carbon pollution is crap,'' she said. ''He's going to bandwagon with Lord Monckton and say this nation should do nothing about cutting carbon pollution.''