From net zero to political hero: ScoMo’s path to survival

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison at No. 10 Downing Street in June. Picture: Adam Taylor/PMO

It is January 2022, the height of holiday season and the Prime Minister is on a family holiday back in the Shire.

The federal election campaign is playing out in his head, and he is quietly confident of victory.

January sales are booming as free Australians in Sydney and Melbourne unleash their savings on goods and services. Covid-19 is around but manageable. House prices are high but manageable too, now APRA has stepped in to take the froth off.

His trip to the G20 leaders meeting in Rome in late October and then on to Glasgow for COP26 was absolutely the right decision.

Touch and go until parliament came back in mid-October, Morrison achieved mission impossible: not just a plan, but a full commitment for Australia to be net zero by 2050. The deal with the Nats was expensive but necessary if he was to avoid the fate of four other Australian Prime Ministers guillotined by climate change policy failure. Malcolm Turnbull has been rather quiet.

In mid-October, Trade Minister Dan Tehan, fresh from the G20 trade ministers gathering in Italy, flew to London where he signed Britain’s first free trade agreement with any country after Brexit.

It was the perfect backdrop for another meeting in Glasgow between Scott Morrison and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson at COP26.

Boris was keen to demonstrate Britain’s vital independent middle-power role and it cemented the new bond of AUKUS sprung on the world back in September. And the threats to carbon borders for Australian exports are disappearing.

Soaring gas prices have brought the winter of discontent that both Britain and Europe feared and Russia is turning the screw. But Australia has been dealt the perfect hand. LNG exports at top dollar came just as China dropped back its demand for the country’s iron ore. It is China that is finally giving gas its rightful position as the great transition fuel and – ever pragmatic – the Middle Kingdom is taking it from Australia.

Relations with China are no better but no worse. The Evergrande property shock is still playing through the Chinese economy but there was no Lehman moment for markets. And in the meantime, apart from the odd barb, party leaders are occupied with a new regime to cap the upside of capitalism, from crypto to tech moguls.

Back at home, the fire season is calm. Qantas is in overdrive flying euphoric passengers in and out of the country through Darwin and the Labor premiers of Western Australia and Queensland are struggling with how to open state borders as their electorates finally begin to turn on them in frustration. All very satisfactory ahead of the one federal poll that matters.

For this story not to be a work of fiction, a lot has to go right for the Prime Minister before he gets back to a Shire break.

And looking at these world meetings over the next three months, it is easy to see why a 2050 net zero commitment for Australia could make such a difference. The government has flown the kite on shifting from a preference to a commitment and this has to happen. The media should be backing Morrison and Frydenberg to the hilt. Australians are as tired and angry about climate change policy failure as they are about lockdowns.

Those in the Coalition who threaten to cross the floor must be persuaded otherwise. Unlike the Morrison government that has been at least working with the Nationals on a plan for emissions reduction, Labor is fully committed to the 2050 goal with no such plan. They should consider this alternative.

And where is the great Senate negotiator Mathias Cormann when you need him? Why, the OECD Secretary-General is in Paris confounding his critics by leading a push for carbon pricing.

One matter the Prime Minister should not lose any sleep over is France. Like the jilted lover left on the Pont des Arts, she may need wooing but France has too much invested in the Pacific to be silly.

As with China, business will play an important part in repairing the relationship. France may well ask for Australia to be sent to the back of the queue on a European free trade agreement, but those who believed that an agreement was close have been misinformed. There are just too many cats.

Malcolm Turnbull’s call to Emanuel Macron was certainly unhelpful for the government but his planned trip to COP26 as chair of Andrew Forrest’s FFI is business. That should not in any way be a factor in the PM’s decision to go to Glasgow.

A downside scenario for Scott Morrison over the next three months could just as easily have been penned, including a hyped Macbeth scene in Glasgow.

But this decision on net zero by 2050 for Australia is just too important to be downcast, even for a journalist.