Piers Akerman: Malcolm Turnbull’s ridiculous emissions plan will see him lose power
IT ALMOST beggars belief but Malcolm Turnbull is trying to make his colleagues and the public believe that he has backed away from his commitment to the nation’s Paris Agreement 26 per cent emissions reduction target, Piers Akerman writes.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
FOOL me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
It almost beggars belief but Malcolm Turnbull is trying to make his colleagues and the public believe that he has backed away from his commitment to the nation’s Paris Agreement 26 per cent emissions reduction target.
I say it almost beggars belief because it would beggar belief if anyone but Turnbull tried to gull voters so blatantly. With this prime minister it has become second nature.
Far from walking away from a commitment to a 26 per cent carbon emission reduction, the Turnbull ploy being ardently sold by Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg actually would lock in the 26 per cent figure which is already wreaking havoc on the economy and would enable future Labor governments to increase that emission reduction percentage by regulation with the weak proviso that there was advice from the competition regulator that the increase would not further push up power prices.
Let me be perfectly clear.
The Turnbull-Frydenberg plan would permit Labor to achieve its Green goal of crippling the nation without having to take any energy bill through the democratic process.
The next Labor government, should the parliament be idiotic enough to buy this Trojan horse, would be able to simply increase the emission reduction target to whatever it and the UN bureaucrats decided, without consultation with the public or discussion and vote in the parliament, and seek advice from the ACCC before approving a hike in the emissions reduction target.
Remember that the current ACCC head Rod Sims has already said that he doesn’t think the NEG will push up power prices but an increase in renewables in the energy mix could increase the cost of electricity.
The ACCC has lost its sense of purpose. The fact that they call themselves the competition regulator shows how far they have strayed off the path of righteousness. Its predecessor, the Trade Practices Commission, understood that its purpose was to protect the competitive process (not the competitors) because it is competition that delivers benefits to the country.
What a future ACCC boss might think is anyone’s guess but you can bet the house Labor would not appoint a senior functionary whose views weren’t aligned with its own.
The staggering thing about this latest policy eructation of Turnbull’s is that neatly gives Victoria’s socialist Premier Daniel Andrews everything he wanted from an energy bill — and he has helped destroy Victoria’s energy sufficiency.
Don’t believe me? Since Hazelwood shut prices have doubled in Victoria and NSW, and increased by more than 70 per cent in South Australia, Tasmania and Queensland.
All those so-called leaders of Big Business might also reconsider their support for Turnbull given that on Tuesday they were cheering the need for the NEG on the basis of certainty of supply and that on Friday the man they saluted dumped certainty from his argument when he passed the decision on future energy security to the ACCC.
Under the new iteration of power policy there are no target safeguards whatsoever and no certainty.
Even the silliest business leader wedded to virtue signalling ecologically and politically correct fantasies (and there are plenty) must be able to see that Australian energy policy can’t be directed through the prism of reduced emissions but through the lens of price and reliability — neither of which are addressed by this Labor-lite lunacy.
I say it almost beggars belief because it would beggar belief if anyone but Turnbull tried to gull voters so blatantly. With this prime minister it has become second nature.
These are perilous times for the Coalition. The bow of its canoe is tipping over Niagara Falls and the lead paddler is still pressing ahead. It has a one-seat majority — largely due to the fact that Victorians, having experienced Andrews’ energy madness, saved two Liberal seats at the last election that were thought to have been lost.
The punters were fed up with blackouts and voted for the Coalition.
How disappointing for them to find that the government they saved has now capitulated to the government they loath? How do you think those disgruntled punters will vote at the next opportunity they’re given to voice their views at the ballot box?
The state of the Coalition is now febrile.
Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has left the door open to a challenge but has said he is a team player. Let’s see how long that lasts when the party meets tomorrow.
Other MPs are suggesting that Dutton may not be the answer and that the Liberals should make a generational leap to someone young and vibrant like Cyber Security Minister Angus Taylor.
Energy was Turnbull’s undoing in 2009 when he endorsed Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s nauseating enthusiasm for the UN, Al Gore and global warming without consulting his colleagues. He has learnt nothing.
At least Tony Abbott has the not-so-profound wisdom to acknowledge that “when circumstances change, sensible people change their opinion. What seemed reasonable where was little or no economic costs is utterly unreasonable now. It’s time to get out of Paris.”
This political crisis is entirely of Turnbull’s making. It is all so unnecessary but it’s there and it’s bleeding support for the Coalition as it has done for the past 38 Newspolls.
I would argue that the evidence that the Greens use to bray their claim that humans are responsible for global warming and that the planet is at some tipping point is based on fallacious argument and flawed modelling.
Even if there is a shed of validity to the anthropogenic argument, the Chief Scientist has admitted that no matter what measures Australia adopts, our actions will have zero effect on the world’s climate.
“When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn?” That was the refrain to Pete Seeger’s anti-war hymn last century.
It is as apt today as it was then but the kumbaya crowd hasn’t learnt a thing and while Turnbull sings in their chorus it will ensure that he and the Coalition are doomed.