Nurse Myra and Tony Abbott...

...Mr Abbott (right) the new Australian opposition leader and next Prime Minister is, according to this morning's NZ Herald...an outspoken, two fisted conservative. M.A. (Oxon.) Rhodes scholar, ex boxer...

...obviously then a man to be reckoned with...“It’s hard to take climate alarmists all that seriously...when they’re as ferociously against the one proven technology that could reduce electricity emissions to zero, nuclear power, as they are in favour of urgent reduction in emissions. For many, reducing emissions is a means to achieving a political objective they could not otherwise gain.”...and "As opposition leader I am not frightened of an election, and I am not frightened of an election on this (climate change) issue...as far as many, many millions of Australians are concerned, what the Rudd government's ETS looks like is a great big tax to create a great big slush fund to provide politicised handouts, run by a giant bureaucracy..."

Abbott's ascendancy is another major blow for the left, (what a week !) particularly the extreme statists. The 2010 election will be a de facto referendum on climate change, this from the Australian...

...Tony Abbott will steer the Liberal Party back to its conservative roots with a 2010 election campaign portraying Kevin Rudd as a Whitlamesque big spender whose climate change policies will smash Australian jobs...more here...

...and while in public Abbott hedges his bets over AGW, (as does John Key ), the Australian electorate is generally as cynical over Al Gore's climatastrophe as their Kiwi cousins...Abbott said he believed climate change was real and humans did make a contribution, but that the extent of that contribution and the measures needed were in dispute, as were the merits of an ETS. "We will have a strong and effective climate change policy, but one thing we are not going to do is damage Australia's export industries, put ourselves at a competitive disadvantage against the world, and we are not going to have the conceit of thinking we can save the world on our own."

And Nurse Myra ? Well, she reminds me of someone I knew well many years ago at St. Vincent's Hospital in Darlinghust. Our paths crossed recently in cyberspace when I stumbled upon her enthralling and edgy blog; Gimcrack Hospital. Nurse also knows a fair bit more than I do about Mr Abbott's past. (An ex paramour maybe ?) as her comment to yesterday's posting showed. Pay her a visit and say hello...

...and quote of the day..."Leute wie Sie standen auf den Mauer-Wachtürmen der roten Sozialisten, Sie überwachten die Wachtürme der braunen Sozialisten. Und, ..., Leute Ihres Schlages werden auf den Wachtürmen der grünen Sozialisten stehen und deren Umerziehungslagern zu klimatologisch korrekten Staatsbürgern."("People like you stood in the guard towers of the red socialists' wall, they stood in the brown[shirt] socialists' guard towers. And people of your stripe will stand in the guard towers of the green socialists and their re-education camps for climatologically correct citizens.")
- Commenter Frank39, who appears to have lived in East Germany, responding on a post on Climategate from the German "Science Skeptical" blog...H/T Samizdata...