Peta Credlin: Libs, are you listening? People have had a gutful of ‘Net Zero’
If the Coalition fails to respond to the concerns of middle Australia on energy and immigration, there will be a breakout on the right by fringe parties, writes Peta Credlin.
Big numbers of Australians are fed up with government, worried about the direction our country is taking and looking for sensible leadership that appreciates our country’s enduring strengths and doesn’t want to change them.
I’m not just referring to the “reclaim Australia” rallies, planned for several cities today, that don’t seem to have any clear organisation and may include some extremist elements who are against migrants rather than just against current record high levels of migration. Reportedly, flyers and videos promoting these events have gone viral on social media.
I’m more referring to the reaction against both the Prime Minister and the Victorian Premier at the national Bush Summit in Ballarat on Friday. Hundreds of local farmers and volunteer firefighters protested outside the venue while a convoy of about 80 trucks, tractors and utes ringed the venue to let Labor’s leaders know country people are sick of being taken for granted and having their land desecrated to satisfy the luxury beliefs of people living in the inner cities.
One grievance is the Victorian government’s emergency services levy that will charge some rural landholders thousands of dollars for fire services that they themselves provide as Country Fire Authority (CFA) volunteers.
Another massive grievance is state and federal Labor’s insistence that rural Victoria host massive renewable energy facilities including thousands of wind turbines up to 300m tall and thousands of kilometres of new transmission towers up to 100m tall – plus vast expanses of solar panels – in order to meet Labor’s legislated target for 82 per cent of our electricity to come from renewable sources. And that’s over double the current amount, within just five years.
Farmers see new laws just rammed through the state parliament to prevent landholders’ denying access to renewable energy operators as a violation of their property rights. They are furious that prime agricultural land and pristine national parks are being torn up to appease the green conscience of inner-city voters convinced that fossil fuels are wrecking the planet and that somehow Australia going it alone, when we’re less than 1 per cent of the problem, can fix it.
Understandably, they can’t see the sense in destroying the environment in order to save it; and wonder why, if renewable energy is so cheap, it still needs massive subsidies and, if it’s not ugly, why it’s not on the beaches of the rich.
More fundamentally, they’re worried about an urban official class that doesn’t seem to appreciate that the foundation of our economy, including our ability to raise the taxes to pay for the services that Labor governments want to expand, absolutely depends on the industries that Labor wants to close down.
Like the coal and gas exports that are two of our three biggest foreign currency earners; and the beef and dairy industries which put food on our tables but are now at risk because cattle are responsible for 90 per cent of agricultural emissions – meaning, to cut farm emissions, we must cull the national herd.
Last Friday was a cry of rage from people who can’t fathom the necessity of planting forests of wind turbines and carpets of solar panels on productive land, especially given all this intermittent power will still require back-up when the wind won’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine.
And besides, new coal-fired power and gas-fired power has roughly half the emissions of the old coal-fired power stations that still provide about 60 per cent of the east coast’s electricity.
Regardless of whether today’s urban protests get hijacked by extremists, record levels of migration ARE changing our suburbs and dividing our community. Bringing in – every two years – the equivalent of the population of Adelaide inevitably means downward pressure on wages, upward pressure on housing costs and massive strain on infrastructure.
And when some recent migrants seem more concerned to prosecute the ancient vendettas of their homeland than to adopt Australian values, people understandably worry that our society is being changed for the worse by stealth.
Unlike Labor’s leaders, at least Sussan Ley’s bush summit speech was uninterrupted by jeering. But she would have generated more enthusiasm if she’d been ready to show more leadership.
So far, the Coalition can’t work out where it stands on energy policy and looks like tearing itself to pieces over a Net Zero pledge that won’t come into effect for 25 years.
Even though what’s needed is an energy policy that keeps the lights on at an affordable cost now. And an immigration policy that makes our country stronger, not weaker, and respects our fundamentally Anglo-Celtic culture and Judaeo-Christian ethos.
Despite the big-party vote dropping from over 90 per cent to scarcely two-thirds in a generation, so far, Australia has avoided major political disruption from fringe parties. But nature abhors a vacuum.
Sooner or later, if the Coalition fails to respond to the concerns of middle Australia – and especially if it dismisses them as “racist” or “climate denying” as Labor does – there will be a breakout on the right here too, like we’re seeing from Reform and Nigel Farage in Britain.
So Libs, stop sitting on the fence.
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Originally published as Peta Credlin: Libs, are you listening? People have had a gutful of ‘Net Zero’
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