Andrew Bolt: Federal Liberals defending net zero policy are fighting for last prize
The federal Libs still fighting for net zero haven’t realised the only thing they’ll win is for their party to look like lying, hypocritical, shifty losers who’d backstab climate-fretting voters.
Talk about flogging a dead and rotting horse. The federal Liberal politicians still fighting to save their party’s net zero emissions target haven’t worked out they lost months ago.
I’ve never seen such self-delusion.
How tragic to see them on Wednesday going into the first of four – four! – meetings of Liberal politicians over five days to finally decide whether their party should scrap its disastrous emissions target for 2050, and still bleating “but, but, but”.
See how they straggled in, in dribs and drabs, while anti-net zero Liberals marched in a pack down the corridor, surrounding leadership contenders Angus Taylor and Andrew Hastie, shoulder to chummy shoulder, and led by Liberal star Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.
But forget the numbers. How dumb are the net zero defenders not to realise they were already stuffed, cooked, destroyed, hung, drawn and butchered?
Hello, Andrew Bragg. Wakey wakey, Maria Kovacic. Smell the stink, Andrew McLachlan, Anne Ruston, Tim Wilson and the rest.
Fact: you’re now only fighting for last prize. The only thing you can win is for your party to look like lying, hypocritical, shifty losers who’d backstab climate-fretting voters, given half an excuse.
It’s almost comic to hear holdouts like McLachlan moan that “if we retreat from achieving net zero, we will pay dearly in city electorates”. To hear Kovacic warn that without net zero, the Liberals wouldn’t win Sydney seats like Bradfield, Bennelong, Reid, Parramatta, Mackellar, Warringah, Banks and Hughes.
It’s the only argument these people have. ‘Oh, no! Voters will hate us if we don’t promise net zero’ – the slogan that’s actually forcing up power bills and destroying heavy industry.
Spoiler alert! The voters hate you already! They’ve smashed you in two elections already, and booted you out of all those seats Kovacic listed.
And – ha! ha! ha! – they did all this to you when you were PROMISING net zero. And when you were even BOASTING that you’d imposed that target on Australia when last in government.
But here’s the kicker, that the Liberals’ zero zombies seem not to realise.
Imagine, guys, if you persuaded your hapless party to stick with this target that will cost trillions and make no measurable difference to the climate. Imagine also that voters really are panting for net zero.
Why those voters would ever trust the Liberals to give it to them?
Why would a net zero fan choose the Liberals above Labor or the Greens, when they’ve heard half the Liberal politicians say net zero is a disaster; when the Liberal’s Coalition partner – the Nationals – is dead against it; and when state Liberal branches have voted to dump it?
Why would they chose the Liberals to deliver net zero when the best that even Liberal net zero fans can say about it is that it’s popular? None can say it’s sane, affordable and guaranteed to make the climate better.
One shift in the polls, and net zero Liberals will abandon ship, rats down the hawser.
And guess what? The polls are already shifting. Two thirds of voters already won’t vote for the net zero Labor government that’s given them a cost of living crisis, driven by electricity prices that rocketed by more than 24 per cent in a year. This week’s Resolve poll shows only a quarter of Australians now want to stick to the net zero by 2050 target, whatever the insane cost or utter uselessness.
No, the penny is dropping with voters that spending trillions on doing something that makes no difference is actually insane – and that’s even before the Liberals dare officially to say they’re right.
No wonder Labor is freaking. How many minds would the Liberals change when they’re finally free to point out the truth – that net zero won’t stop a climate crisis, even if there was one.
Now imagine the opposite – how few voters would believe a bitterly divided Liberal Party that swore they really, really believed in net zero, and would fight like stink to slash our emissions from our power stations, cars, mines, planes, businesses and farms. Whatever it takes!
Do these last holdout Liberals seriously believe that would work? Do they think such a Liberal Party would convince its members to donate their dollars and sweat? Would win back the 25 per cent of Coalition voters at the last election who have since deserted to One Nation, to judge from Newspoll?
As if. They should stop embarrassing themselves and end this circus. The Liberals are ridiculous enough without the clowns.
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Originally published as Andrew Bolt: Federal Liberals defending net zero policy are fighting for last prize
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