A significant shift in the ETS debate will result from this week's Federal Opposition leadership spill, says University of Melbourne's Dr Les Coleman
 
 "The major issue to come out of Abbott 's  leadership is the fact that all bets are off now. Where there was consensus before about the ETS as being a good way forward, I think it will go right back to basics now and that there will be a complete reassesment of it."

"Whatever Abbott does in terms of his policies, I think it will open up this debate and allow a lot more opportunity to look for better and more productive solutions to climate change."

Dr Coleman says it's a shame that the Liberal leadership spill has further politicised an already confused debate.

"We really need to bring about behavioural change but we seem to have gone the other way to politicise it.  We've got discussions happening amongst diplomats and their track record in achieving change isn't very strong - look at the World Trade agreement which has taken decades to resolve."

"So it seems a great pity to me that the whole issue has become so politicised and we've lost sight of the need to get tangible behavioural change by consumers of energy and we need to implement a simple basic scheme."