Peta Credlin: Barnaby Joyce could shift Coalition to the right
Barnaby Joyce’s second coming will challenge Scott Morrison and cause tension inside the government, but it may also give conservative voters a reason to back the Coalition.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Most of the commentary around Barnaby Joyce’s second coming as deputy PM was positive about his ability to campaign but negative about his influence inside the government.
It’s true that Barnaby, on song, is a great retail politician and that his presence nicely supplements Scott Morrison, who is himself no slouch as a campaigner. And it’s also true that Joyce is a conviction conservative, or at least more of a conviction politician than most.
At times this will cause tension inside the government; no doubt about that. But tension can be creative as well as destructive.
To date, Peter Dutton aside, there’s been no check on the Prime Minister’s power; it’s his way or the highway and Barnaby’s presence, as a strong personality who can stand up to the PM where needed, could give the government the renewed policy focus it needs as it heads into the election.
Take climate change. It seems pretty obvious that the PM has been setting up the government to announce a commitment to net zero emissions by 2050 at the Glasgow conference in November. It was dropped, almost from nowhere, in a press club speech at the start of the year, more I suspect to help get Mathias Cormann over the line in his OECD job contest than something strongly pushed by colleagues or the grassroots.
In affluent electorates, like the Treasurer’s Kooyong and the half-a-dozen represented by left-leaning “modern liberals”, sure, climate change action turns up in polling because pockets are deep enough to insulate them from the economic reality. But out in the marginal seats that make-or-break government, it’s a different reality. Given the pending retirements and redistributions, meaning this is a government already starting from behind, the ‘net zero’ line is only viable if the government can convince voters that it would not hurt their cost of living or destroy their jobs. And there are two massive problems here: the first is that no one has actually explained how “net zero” would be achieved.
Presumably, all Australia’s emissions – from power generation, transport, manufacturing and agriculture – would have to be fully offset by carbon credits.
That means massive changes to almost everything we do: with power almost entirely from wind, solar or nuclear; with all cars and trucks electric and jet travel curtailed; with heavy industry largely gone; and with far less consumption of meat, given that animal ‘wind’ (at the front and back ends) is about 10 per cent of our total emissions.
But on top of that, carbon credits would need to be purchased – that consumers would ultimately have to pay for – to cover all the emissions that couldn’t be eliminated.
None of this has even been scoped out; nor has any one has worked out the area of agricultural land that would need to be lost to forestry to generate sufficient credits.
The second is the astronomical cost, that no one has yet worked out. There has, though, been an attempt to cost a far less ambitious policy: Labor’s 2019 election promise to cut emissions by 45 per cent by 2030 plus a 50 per cent renewable energy target. In modelling that was heavily cited by the government in the campaign, the respected resource economist Dr Brian Fisher said that Labor’s target would subtract more than a quarter trillion dollars from GDP by 2030 and cost the businesses required to buy carbon credits a half trillion dollars, with 167,000 fewer jobs and a three per cent reduction in real wages.
Labor disputed this modelling, of course, but it would be very hard for Scott Morrison to argue that the modelling the Libs said was right last time was wrong this time. And an un-costed promise that we’ll get to net zero via “technology not taxes”, under the scrutiny of an election campaign, is likely to look no more plausible than Labor’s former claim that the cost of inaction would always exceed the cost of action, as they tried to dodge the financial numbers.
If Barnaby’s resurrection means that net zero is going to be a contested policy area inside the Coalition, where ministers and the PM are going to come under some real pressure to make it add up, or walk away, then he may actually have saved Scott Morrison from himself and done the government a huge favour, notwithstanding the odd headline about splits.
Michael McCormack’s problem as National Party leader was that he lacked the type of conviction and personality that’s needed to stand up to a prime minister.
Yet that’s exactly what a deputy prime minister sometimes has to do, especially when he’s from the junior Coalition partner that needs to retain a distinctive party identity if it’s to hold regional seats.
Former Nationals leader Warren Truss had none of Barnaby’s political showmanship but was every bit as sure of what his party wanted and more than capable of letting the Libs know that the price of staying in government, sometimes, was giving way on policy.
The Canberra gallery thinks that Scott Morrison’s massive spending and support for state lockdowns has cut the ground from under Labor.
Another view is that it’s hard to beat Labor as Labor lite, especially when seeking a fourth term.
On some policy issues at least, a reinvigorated National Party will shift the government to the right and give conservative voters a reason to support it other than just “it’s better than the alternative”.
Watch Peta Credlin on Sky News, weeknights at 6pm
What your private school says about you
The school you went to says a lot if you ask Sydneysiders. But the private school circuit is exclusive and elusive, and we’re here to help decipher it.
Hezbollah, Houthis, Hamas: Why Israel forces could be at risk
Although Israel has a strong and well-trained army, time will tell if it can cope with fighting on several fronts, writes Middle East scholar Ian Parmeter.