Malcolm Turnbull coughed on live TV when asked if his bitter Liberal Party rival Tony Abbott should shut up about his government’s new energy policy.
The prime minister’s interview on Sunrise got off to an awkward start when he had to explain his plan to save Australian households $2 a week on their electricity bills from 2020.
Samantha Armytage opened by asking him if the saving was really a ‘game changer’.
Malcolm Turnbull coughed mid sentence when asked if Tony Abbott should ‘shut the hell up’
Mr Turnbull awkwardly stuck to the line he had used to promise Australian household power bills would fall by an average of $110 to $115 a year in the decade from 2020.
‘Well, this plan is a game changer, Sam, because it goes well beyond that,’ he told the Seven Network on Wednesday morning.
The interview took a comical turn when David Koch asked the prime minister if Mr Abbott, his climate change skeptic predecessor, should ‘just shut the hell up’.
Mr Turnbull responded with an awkward laugh before coughing mid-sentence as he did a live cross from the prime ministerial courtyard at Parliament House in Canberra, flanked by two Australian flags.
The prime minister did an awkward live cross from his special courtyard at Parliament House
Malcolm Turnbull could have used a bottle of water when he coughed during a Sunrise cross
‘You know Kochie … I’m not distracted … by that sort of thing,’ he said.
‘I’m focused on looking after the household budgets of all of your viewers.’
Mr Abbott has actually praised the Turnbull Government’s plan to phase out Clean Energy Target subsidies for solar and wind renewable energy from 2020.
‘Progress at today’s party room. The Clean Energy Target has been definitively dropped,’ he tweeted on Tuesday.
In three years’ time, the government will stop subsidising solar and wind renewable energy over coal or gas power.
Former Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott hailed the scrapping of the clean energy subsidies
Tony Abbott is continuing to be a distraction for Malcolm Turnbull over climate change policy
It’s a repudiation of Labor’s policy of a 20 per cent renewable energy target by 2020, which it introduced in 2009.
However, the change will not require new legislation.
The federal government’s new Energy Security Board recommended a new National Energy Guarantee be brought in to replace Clean Energy Target subsidies.
Mr Turnbull insists the phasing out of green subsidies would not hinder Australia’s international commitments to reducing carbon emissions, including the 2015 Paris Agreement on tackling climate change.
Green energy subsidies for solar and wind will be unpacked from 2020 to reduce power bills
The Liberal Party room in Canberra has agreed to replace the Clean Energy Target from 2020, which would affect this Bungendore wind farm a short drive outside Canberra
Mr Turnbull and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg released a joint statement on Tuesday which said the scrapping of renewable energy subsidies would provide certainty to investors and therefore encourage investment.
The decision came a day after the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission released a report which said electricity prices had risen by 63 per cent since 2007.
However green subsidies made up just seven per cent of overall electricity bills, with an over investment in new poles and wires by power companies by far the biggest factor in rising costs.
Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg (left) and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull (right) announced the end of green energy subsidies
Malcolm Turnbull will scrap solar and wind subsidies from 2020 if he is still prime minister