Vikki Campion: Teal independents are two-trick ponies with only one trick left to play

Teal independents are about to realise their own irrelevance. They are the second spare tyre in the car, because Labor has numbers. Actually, they’re eight spare tyres, writes Vikki Campion.

No matter how much we were told the Teals would be the hunters, they have arrived in Parliament looking more like prey.

Even with the best efforts of the Labor Party telling us they are the sly fox, this week’s climate bill action was simply orchestrated support for the Labor Party.

Why did they need all those extra staffers when all they do is walk into the chamber, find where the Labor Party are, and sit with them?

The Climate Bill showed the insignificance of those who talk a big game but disappear in detail.

Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen gave a flowery oration of their inherent good, allowing most Teals to each move amendments Mr Bowen would have put up himself.

Teal independent MPs, from left, Kate Chaney, Zoe Daniels, Monique Ryan, Allegra Spender and Zali Steggall speak during debate in the House of Representatives at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: AAP Image/Lukas Coch

He handed out Tim Tams to the Teals and congratulated them for eating them.

Not one amendment strengthened the bill beyond Labor’s policy into Teal territory.

Teal independents spoke to media in Parliament House in Canberra. Left to right: Sophie Scamps, Kylea Tink, Zali Steggall, Zoe Daniel, Allegra Spender and Monique Ryan. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

The whole BYO legislation exercise was a nearly three-hour mutual-pleasuring event with so many divisions that it ground the Federation Chamber to a complete halt, with no substantial difference gained.

The Teals are two-trick pony — ICAC and climate, and now they only have one left.

Their problem is that because there are so many of them, there is no real focus on any one of them, and they will slowly realise that it is the cabinet where substantive policy is made and not in the chamber.

They are the second spare tyre in the car, because Labor has the numbers. Correction, they are eight spare tyres.

Minister for Climate Change and Energy (but not Tim Tams) — Chris Bowen. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

They are wishful but irrelevant, and no more was that evident than with the climate bill, which showed that the best they can hope for is minor amendments on peripheral issues as highly-seasoned Labor ministers threw them a bone.

They have one major purpose for a Labor Government that has the numbers — to keep the Coalition out of their seats. This week, they showed they are in solid training to do just, and only, that.

One of their campaigning points was socially progressive but fiscally conservative policy.

They just voted for a policy that will bring in a new tax on the last two oil refineries in Australia, put up the pressure on inflation, and substantive pressure on our major export products, which puts downward pressure on our dollar, and increases the cost of living for the whole country right when we can least afford it.

They have endorsed the proliferation of wind towers and solar panels, but predominantly not in their own seats, turning sections of the environment into an industrial park with fully-imported, overwhelmingly foreign-owned renewables.

The Greens did move their nutcase amendment for 70 per cent emissions reduction, which the Teals spruiked in the election campaign, which would have changed the hammer that Labor is belting the economy with to a stick of dynamite, and it was lost.

TABLING TRANSPARENCY

One Teal amendment was to table emissions reports in the Parliament in the “name of transparency”.

There is no better way to pretend to be transparent than tabling reports — the equivalent of putting a lousy dinner on the table knowing no one will touch it.

In this sitting, a suite of reports were tabled and subsequently ignored, including a $64.4 million office fit-out for the ATO.

Did you hear that Foreign Minister Penny Wong told Senator Lidia Thorpe, who hates the Queen but enjoys Parliamentary arson, that Labor would establish a Makarrata Commission? Another forgotten tabled document.

The climate bill is legislation for the sake of legislation and a bad sign for the future.

Facilitation of the 43 per cent emissions target would imply a mechanism and a process, such as turning the former Coalition’s glossy 2050 document into an act of Parliament, but Labor’s act has even less substance than that.

It tells a raft of agencies that they have to meet the government’s targets — when the detail written into the laws that created them decades ago already assumed maximum renewables.

It changes nothing for ARENA, already tasked with funding renewable energy projects, spending $1.86 billion on 600 projects, or for the Clean Energy Finance Corporation Act, designed to splash billions into renewables.

THE POWER OF REALITY

The one thing about Canberra is that it is as predictable as ever. Labor’s $275 reduction in power bill promise has been put aside, and replaced by reality. The PM has already developed the arrogant dismissiveness at the dispatch box, gesturing to people to sit down with a flick of his hand. Hyper-environmentalists continue to fly in on planes. The coffee shops in Parliament were full of people with letters on their arms that ended in U — and these union types all have vastly more power than the Teals.

There is no Gandhi among them. No Winston Churchill of Wentworth, just a raft of new Teal politicians whose main job is to parochially attend to the philosophical issue du jours of their seat without hope of progressing them without Labor’s support.

Meanwhile, learned Labor tribal warriors are showing off their sharpened-trade skills by ensuring they keep the Teals in their seats and the Coalition out.