Piers Akerman: Climate 200 is the mega-rich telling us how to vote

The Climate 200 group targeting Liberal-held seats is a lot of super-rich disgruntled people pushing Left-green policies which will kill the Australian economy, writes Piers Akerman.

Pop star Madonna’s Material Girl hit the charts 37 years ago. Those who benefited from the material world she eulogised are now the young tycoons trying to force post-materialistic politics on the nation.

Of course, you can’t actually be post-materialist unless you have benefited mightily from materialism, a by-product of capitalism — the system which the post-materialists demonstrably abhor as they struggle to defeat so-called moderate MPs in wealthy Liberal electorates.

A good and often very expensive education is one of the serious hallmarks of materialism – think of the elite schooling enjoyed by tech billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes at Sydney’s Cranbrook or Simon Holmes à Court at America’s Ivy League Dartmouth College.

Simon Holmes is financially backing a group of independent global warming warriors to fight the next election. Picture: Aaron Francis

But it would seem that when you’re super wealthy you can afford to tell others how they should forego the perks of fortune from the security of one of your multimillion-dollar properties.

Both men were born with golden spoons in their mouths.

Holmes à Court’s father, Robert, was the nation’s best-known corporate raider in the 1980s and Australia’s first billionaire.

He died intestate in 1990, with his family dividing his $800 million assets — almost exactly the amount he was given by the then West Australian Labor government’s state-owned insurance company SGIO for worthless shares or shares that could have been purchased for less.

There were calls in federal parliament for the inheritance to be returned to Western Australians, who were later forced to pay a $50 vehicle insurance levy to compensate for the huge losses.

Holmes à Court and Cannon-Brookes are now climate activists bankrolling a slew of largely female independent global warming warriors at the next federal election.

Candidates backed by Climate 200 include (from left): Allegra Spender, Kylea Tink, Georgia Steele and Zali Steggall.

The models for their challenges are the former independent MP Cathy McGowan and her successor Helen Haines, in the Victorian seat of Indi, once held by Liberal Sophie Mirabella.

Holmes à Court started the Climate 200 (C200) activist group, which donated $450,000 to 12 independent candidates at the 2019 election, including Warringah’s Zali Steggall.

Holmes à Court says he is now on track to raise a $20 million war chest to campaign against Liberal MPs at the next election thanks to a $500,000 pledge from clothing retailer Naomi Milgrom, who controls Sussan, Sportsgirl and Suzanne Grae.

Former independent MP for Wentworth Kerryn Phelps, and former independents Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor, who betrayed their electorates and supported Julia Gillard, giving the nation a dysfunctional Labor government, plus the bitterly disaffected former Liberals John Hewson and Julia Banks sit on C200’s advisory board.

The aggrieved former PM Malcolm Turnbull is also ready to offer his advice to soft-Left independents in his unrelenting vendetta against the Morrison government.

That’s a lot of super-rich disgruntled people pushing Left-green policies which cannot possibly alter global temperatures but will kill the Australian economy and countless jobs around the nation.

Among the NSW Liberal seats targeted by the Green-Left campaigners are North Sydney, held by moderate Trent Zimmerman; Wentworth, held by first-termer and moderate Dave Sharma; Mackellar, held by moderate Jason Falinski; Hume, held by the Industry, Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor; and in Victoria, the seats of Goldstein, held by moderate Tim Wilson; Flinders, held by Health Minister Greg Hunt, who will retire at the election; and Kooyong, held by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg.

C200 is for people who no longer have to worry about their jobs or how to pay their bills but seek noble causes with which to adorn their CVs.

Make no mistake, C200 is a green-Left political body, not an environmental organisation.

If you were concerned about the quality of life in the Third World and wanted to lift populations from poverty, reliable power supplies would be foremost to mind, not windmills and solar and whining about Australian weather.

As Madonna pointed out in her song “we are living in a material world” but she should have added is that it is only those with ample materials who can afford to indulge their obsessions with the virtues of post-material politics.

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