Bob Brown deserves the thanks of a grateful Coalition for his contribution to its win

Miranda Devine reckons greenie stupidity cost the election for Labor, The Sunday Telegraph, yesterday:

We’ve gone from “climate change is the greatest moral challenge and the planet is going to die in 12 years” to Queensland Labor Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk backflipping last week and ­offering to fast-track the Adani coalmine. Labor and the Greens told us this was the climate change elect­ion and that only a “knuckle-dragging cave dweller” wouldn’t agree. No wonder people wouldn’t tell pollsters their real intentions … It was this out-of-touch bubble that made Bob Brown think it was a great idea to drive a gas-guzzling climate convoy to stop Adani … One Liberal strategist was so cock-a-hoop about the ­effect the convoy was having on internal polling that he said: “I want to give Bob Brown a knighthood.”

The ABC on election night:

Capricornia Liberal MP Michelle Landry said … she owed her success to a convoy of anti-Adani protesters. “Thank you Bob Brown is all I can say,” she said.

But Brown can’t see that he was the problem, Bob Brown Foundation, press statement, May 20:

While the Morrison camp gloats, Earth is heating. Inevitably, the future of every child on Earth, including every Australian child, is on the altar of Adani. This is a challenge to Austral­ia’s vision and future security. So is the future of the Murray-Darling Basin, the Great Barrier Reef, Australia’s snowfields, coastlines and wildlife. The (convoy) will always remain a clarion call on this great challenge … Where leadership tackled climate change head-on … the people respond­ed. But that moral compass was in neither of the big parties.

James Norman, the ABC, yesterday:

Many commentators have pointed the finger of blame at the Greens for the Coalition’s election win. Or more specifically at former Greens leader Bob Brown’s Adani convoy … Even on election night … Arthur Sinodinos didn’t miss a beat, stating: “The Bob Brown caravan which went up there to talk about stopping Adani, had the effect of making a lot of locals say, ‘hang on, you’re not going to tell us how to live’.” While Mr Brown might make a convenient scapegoat, the analysis is at best simplistic or at worst anti-democratic. It wasn’t Mr Brown who lost the election, it was the ALP.

John Mikkelsen, New Matilda website, May 21:

Queenslanders don’t take kindly to a bunch of ratbags from the south telling them how to run their economy and create jobs. So Bob Brown’s anti-Adani convoy couldn’t have come at a better time for the LNP. Waving banners shouting “Coal Kills” and “Block Adani” floated like a lead balloon over a state which reaps billions from coal exports. This folly combined with Shorten’s fence-sitting and the Palaszczuk government’s stalling over issues­ such as the common bush bird, the black-throated finch. Annastacia Palaszczuk must be worried she’ll be next. She denies the Adani project is linked to Labor’s trip down a deep dark pit, but if she believes it, she’s already­ lost the next state election.

The art of political summary gets a new benchmark from James Kirchick­, The Spectator, Thursday: When (British Labour MP) Diane (Abbott) asks for my view of Bernie Sanders, I reply that a geriatric leftist backbencher who has spent his career delivering interminable speeches, boasts scant legislative accomplishments and is hijacking a political party to which he has shown little allegian­ce is not fit to lead a country. Whether Diane wants to laugh or strangle me, I cannot tell