Conservatives Prevailed

In September 2013,the Liberal-National Coalition government won the federal election after six years of Labor government.However,from 2013 to 2019,successive party spill within the Liberal Party has resulted in three Party leaders as well as Prime Ministers(Turnbull and Morrison have both succeeded in the federal election)in just six years space.However,as leaders came from the same party,their climate policy and actions were quite different and incoherent.Tony Abbott's negative attitude toward climate policy was noteworthy;Malcolm Turnbull actively committed himself in addressing climate and energy policy issues;while the newly-elected Prime Minister Scott Morrison,like Abbott,still aligned with the conservative faction.Thus,although Australia was led by the Coalition government(dominated by LPA)for six years,it hasn't formed a coherent and steady climate policy.Moreover,the factional conflict based on ideological conflict over climate policy has become more and more severe and several Liberal Party leaders have all suffered from it.Based on this phenomenon,the thesis intends to explore the cause behind the incoherent climate policy under three Coalition governments and the climate policy shift in Australia from 2013 to 2019.The thesis tries to answer the question from a new perspective,which is,the role of ideology and ideology based factional conflict within Liberal Party.This thesis applies an integrated factionalism theory,along with historical review and process tracing method.It reviews key climate policies under Abbott,Turnbull and Morrison government respectively and focuses on two turning points of party spill that lead to Liberal Party's leadership change.By analyzing three Liberal leaders'ideological background and the ideology origin of conservative and moderate factions,the thesis finds that the entrenched ideology division of "dries" and "wets" within Liberal Party has now morphed as conservative and moderate factions that have different stances on social policies like climate change.In order to pursue the dominance of their ideology and policy,the conservative faction(Abbott and Morrison)and the moderate faction(Turnbull)took Liberal's party spill as the arena of factional conflict and eventually influenced Australia's climate policy from 2013 to 2019.