Australia's right-of-center opposition Liberal Party is fighting over carbon taxes. And, conservatives aren't shutting up, even challenging their leader, Malcolm Turnbull, a cap-and-tax fundamentalist.  

But there's a more divisive national issue here: freedom of speech. 

Here's Henry Ergas, from The Australian:

The hacked emails from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia show how far the rot has spread within the scientific community. I doubt the researchers involved view the issues in Hamilton's moralising terms. What is clear, however, is that these researchers regard scepticism as a dirty word.

Yet scepticism is the price knowledge pays for truth [emphasis mine].We question our theories because that questioning is the means by which they will be displaced by better theories in future. The moment scepticism is abandoned for orthodoxy, scientific inquiry degenerates into pseudo-science, as with genetics in Trofim Lysenko's Soviet Union.

Australia is leading the revolt against Al Gore's great big AGW conspiracy - just as the Aussie geologist and AGW sceptic Professor Ian Plimer predicted it would.

ABC news reports that five frontbenchers from Australia's opposition Liberal party have resigned their portfolios rather than follow their leader Malcolm Turnbull in voting with Kevin Rudd's Government on a new Emissions Trading Scheme.

The Liberal Party is in turmoil with the resignations of five frontbenchers from their portfolios this afternoon in protest against the emissions trading scheme.

Tony Abbott, Sophie Mirabella, Tony Smith and Senators Nick Minchin and Eric Abetz have all quit their portfolios because they cannot vote for the legislation.

Senate whip Stephen Parry has also relinquished his position.