Andrew Bolt: Sussan Ley paying the price for the cowardice of everyone around her

Opposition Leader Sussan Ley is paying the price for the cowardice of everyone around her as the Liberal Party’s promise to cut emissions to net zero by 2050 continues to torment them.

I feel so sorry for Opposition Leader Sussan Ley, having to read in almost every paper that she’s a no-good leader with no authority.

But that’s just one more strike against her. No one wants a leader they pity.

One of the many reasons I’m sorry for Ley is that she’s paying the price for the cowardice of everyone around her.

It is no wonder, in a way, the Liberals chose Ley after their election smash-up under Peter Dutton, who dodged the big fights he should have picked – to really slash taxes and immigration, and end the net zero catastrophe.

Liberals who no longer stood for anything now chose a leader who in more than 20 years in politics never proved she stood for anything, either.

The best that was said for her – other than that’s she’s nice and inoffensive – was that she was the first woman to lead the Liberals.

Sussan Ley is paying the price for the cowardice of everyone around her. Picture: Martin Ollman

All gender but no agenda, and look how that’s now worked out, with the Coalition scoring their worst ratings in Newspoll history.

Even Ley’s first big promise as leader was so very Liberal, in the modern no-principles way.

“We have to meet the people where they are,” she declared, as if she had no ideas of her own. They are my people and I must follow them.

This is the poll-chasing politics of modern Liberals – especially many misnamed “moderates” – who work out policies not by principles but tape measures. Measure the distance between one side and the other, and stand in the “moderate” middle, wherever the hell that is. But, oh dear, the people have just moved again.

Quick, follow! Which brings me to net zero, the issue now tormenting the Liberals.

Most Liberal MPs now want Ley to be the warrior and change-agent she never was before, and scrap the party’s promise to cut emissions to net zero by 2050.

This should be a no-brainer. Just ask the most basic cost-benefit questions, as all true Liberals should do.

Most Liberal MPs now want Ley to be the change-agent she never was before. Picture: Hilary Wardhaugh

Will our net zero schemes change the climate? Answer: oops, no, we’re just too small.

So what will these schemes cost? Answer: up to $9 trillion – yes, trillion with a t – of investment, according to the 2023 report of Net Zero Australia, a collective of climate and energy experts.

Besides, is a warmer world so bad?

Or just look at the pain already inflicted by net zero policies.

The rollout of wind and solar plants has cost much more and gone much slower than planned. Electricity prices have soared 23.6 per cent in just one year, driving inflation so high that the Reserve Bank this week warned there may be just one more interest rate cut over the next year. Heavy industries are going broke.

It’s so chaotic that the Albanese government’s Energy Minister, Chris Bowen, has now announced he’s funding new chargers for electric cars that can instead drain them of power if the grid faces blackouts and the government needs that electricity.

How desperate.

Chris Bowen is now funding new charges for electric cars. Picture: Martin Ollman

Like I said, it should be a no-brainer to reject net zero, but it’s not to Liberals who themselves signed up Australia to it in 2021.

Yes, net zero is the rod gutless Liberals created for their own backs. Then Prime Minister Scott Morrison was scared the Liberals couldn’t win an argument about net zero, or he didn’t have the guts to make the stand.

But look who went along with this surrender to the green-maddened mob. Sussan Ley back then as Environment Minister declared, “speaking as someone who’s been a farmer”, net zero was “absolutely achievable” and “the direction we need to take”.

She wasn’t alone. Dan Tehan, now the Opposition’s energy spokesman working on scrapping net zero, declared back then Australia should back net zero because “the world has moved, and we need to move as well”. Baa baa.

Even Angus Taylor, now hoping to replace Ley as leader and saying net zero must go, four years ago as Morrison’s Chris Bowen said the opposite, declaring: “The vision here is to take practical action to achieve net zero by 2050”, and “when we say we’re going to do something, we do it”.

Ha ha ha ha.

And who must the Liberals now rely on to persuade Australians to trust what they say now, not what they said four years ago?

Sussan Ley, who six months after the election still can’t say it must go.

Leadership? Still looking for it from a party of followers.