There’s a way for the Libs out of their climate mess. Just ask the Victorians

Content warning: The following column has nice things to say about the Victorian Liberal Party.

The latest climate conniptions in Canberra, like many of life’s poor decisions, are best understood when viewed through beer goggles.

It is as true now as it was back when this columnist still had a nightlife that nothing good happens after 2am.

It’s possible that the Liberal Party haven’t been fashionable since federal MP Andrew Peacock dated film star Shirley MacLaine, pictured here together in 1982.Credit: Peter Cox

This isn’t an epiphany that suddenly comes when you find yourself standing on the wrong side of a velvet rope and arguing with a bouncer, or staring mournfully at a pre-dawn hour into the glistening mysteries of a doner kebab.

It is something we instinctively know, deep in our bones, yet somehow manage to lose sight of through the cloudy prism of a pint glass.

For the past several weeks, they have been calling last drinks on the federal Liberal Party. Their worried partners have been texting, coaxing and cajoling them to grab an Uber and come home, where a warm Doona and cup of net zero awaits.

The trouble is, their mates from the Nats are also texting. “Come out mate, just one more – Barnaby’s buying!”

And so the night ends with Barnaby Joyce splayed on the footpath and legless Liberals stumbling towards another electoral drubbing.

An unlikely subplot to this night on the tiles, otherwise known as the review of climate and energy policies that has the federal Liberal Party on the brink of dumping net zero after Wednesday’s party room meeting in Canberra, is the soberness being displayed by the Victorian opposition.

It is not fashionable to say nice things about the Victorian Liberal Party. The last time fashionable and Victorian Liberal appeared in the same sentence together, Andrew Peacock was dating Shirley MacLaine.

But when it comes to the politics of emissions targets and net zero, the Victorian Liberals demonstrated three years ago what centre-right parties can do to avoid the kind of self-destructive bender they are now witnessing from their Canberra colleagues.

In July 2022, about four months before the last state election, then-opposition leader Matthew Guy, shadow minister for energy and renewables Craig Ondarchie and shadow minister for environment and climate change James Newbury released the Coalition’s climate and energy polices.

They included support for the Paris Agreement target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and a promise to legislate an interim reduction target of 50 per cent by 2030.

This positioned the Coalition further along the emission reduction curve than Labor, which went to the election opposing legislated, interim targets before passing its own into law two years later with bipartisan support.

The 2022 state election was still a disaster for the Victorian Liberal Party but for reasons other than climate policy. Just six months after teal and Greens candidates running hard on climate ousted Liberal MPs in inner-city seats in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth, the teals failed to win a seat at the Victorian state election.

Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, a party that disputes the link between carbon emissions and global warming and wants Australia to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, received just 0.22 per cent of the primary vote in the lower house vote and 2 per cent of the upper house vote.

The principal architect of the Victorian Liberal Party’s 2022 policies, James Newbury, this week offered some blunt advice for his Canberra cousins.

“The federal party is at a crossroads,” he told this column. “No one should seriously entertain the idea of mirroring themselves off Barnaby Joyce. It’s time for a reality check.

“We lost almost every city seat at the last federal election but expanded in the city at the last state election. We are a broad-based party and our polices should reflect and accept that.

“Australians have already decided they want climate action. They don’t want representatives who believe climate change is a left-wing hoax, the world is flat and the moon landing was faked.”

These comments will not endear Newbury to his Canberra colleagues, who might rightly point out that herding Liberal cats in Spring Street is a doddle compared with finding climate consensus across the Far North Queensland reaches of the LNP, Liberal constituencies in regional WA and NSW and the Sky News studios in Canberra.

But at this point, neither Victorian Liberal leader Brad Battin nor Victorian National leader Danny O’Brien are looking to join their federal counterparts on a climate binge session.

When asked whether they supported net zero, they told this column the target was fixed by state law. Both spoke of the need to provide affordable and reliable energy and reduce emissions, with a winding back of the Allan government’s restrictions on domestic gas use to be a point of difference at next year’s election.

“You can have affordable and reliable energy and reduce emissions by bringing in the right technology, but you have got to have the right policy settings for it, which we will deliver,” Battin said.

Battin and O’Brien are hardly climate warriors. They firmly believe the most pressing issue in climate and energy policy is the rising cost of household bills and impact of power prices on industry, rather than the latest data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or who hosts the next COP summit.

They have not finalised the climate policies they intend to take into next November’s election. Until they make public their plans, the strength of their commitment to emissions reductions can’t be properly judged.

But for now, the Victorian opposition is at least sounding like someone who understands when it is time to go home.

Chip Le Grand is state political editor.

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