The rejection of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) in a vote of 41 to 33 marks the culmination of a multi-day frenzy of political chaos in Australia’s capital city of Canberra.
The city was rattled on 30 November when the opposition Liberal Party voted to replace its leader, Malcolm Turnbull, with the climate-change sceptic Tony Abbott.
Under Turnbull, the opposition had decided to throw its support behind the CPRS, which includes a cap-and-trade system, after Rudd’s Labor Party promised billions of dollars in compensation to carbon-intensive sectors such as power generation and coal mining.
But
