Revolution, not evolution, inimical to our way of life

Despite claims of independence, Climate 200’s activists are anti-Liberal, single-issue zealots.

Simon Holmes a Court at his Melbourne home. Picture: Aaron Francis

Simon Holmes a Court’s article in The Australian last month must at least be credited with chutzpah. He leads an activist group masquerading as traditional small-L liberal independents who in reality are anti-Liberal, single-issue zealots determined to see off the governing party by hook or by crook.

Yet he has the cheek to wear a Liberal-blue polo shirt and to base the font and colour of his C200 outfit on that of Josh Frydenberg’s Kooyong 200 group. This sleight-of-hand operation fools no one.

An independent is defined as one who is “free from outside control; not subject to another’s authority and not dependent on another for livelihood or subsistence”. Yet all of these so-called independents are shaping up to be wholly owned and controlled subsidiaries of a very wealthy individual with a single-interest fixation and seemingly not having the slightest interest in accommodating the concerns of hardworking, middle-class Australians.

Poll after poll tells us that while people acknowledge climate change as an important issue – how could they not in the face of a relentless tsunami of scare stories – they will not pay very much at all to address the obsessions of Holmes a Court and his ilk. They are much more concerned with keeping energy prices down than playing gesture politics. This should already be apparent from a succession of recent federal election results, not least Bill Shorten’s epic fail on this score.

Ordinary Australians do not have any immediate fear of being overwhelmed by “existential threats” and reject the scaremongering of doomsayers such as Al Gore, Prince Charles and Tim Flannery, who were telling us more than 20 years ago that it was “one minute to midnight”.

Holmes a Court’s last thought piece was in Guardian Australia more than 10 months ago. Since then he has contented himself with mouthing generalities with no apparent regard for the fact the principal emitters, such as China and India, have no intention of coming to the party.

Climate change is a global issue, which by definition cannot be solved by a single nation. Glasgow, like Copenhagen and Paris, gives the principal emitters a free pass so anything Australia might do would make no difference to fixing the problem.

He resolutely ignores Australia’s emissions record – down 21 per cent on 2005 levels – better than New Zealand, Canada and the US, despite our economy having grown by at least 25 per cent since that time.

Holmes a Court carefully avoids saying what his ultimate policy goal is. Instead he simply scorns the federal government’s approach, reserving particular derision for Liberal moderates for agreeing with their “hardline” colleagues.

If he seriously believes this he should be targeting conservative Coalition candidates. He dismisses Labor as Liberal lite – so why is he not targeting them?

It follows that, whatever his proposal, it is little more than grandstanding, but with severe economic consequences for struggling families and pensioners who would be faced with much higher costs for almost every commodity, especially energy and motor vehicles.

He doesn’t even mention the pandemic or the federal government’s heroic efforts to contain it, preferring instead to slag off at the consequential size of the national debt, as though debt was more important than the nation’s health.

He claims to be targeting Labor and the Greens but his words and actions speak for themselves. A recent Sydney Morning Herald interview gives the game away with a heading that tells us his target is “disgruntled small L-liberals”, many of them moderates, but no Labor or Greens sitting members.

Despite claims to the contrary, there is no evidence that any of his motley crew were or have been seriously committed Liberals, certainly not of the mainstream kind, which is where the votes and a great proportion of the Australian population reside.

He professes to be a moderate: “I much prefer incremental change than blowing everything up”, yet his actions make it clear that he is fixated on removing as many Liberal moderates as possible from the federal parliament. He seems not to be interested in adaptation or scientific breakthroughs; so much for claiming to belong to the sensible centre.

His research should tell him that Australians want a sensible transition to a new renewables paradigm, not a helter-skelter race to punish ourselves. He should remember Mathias Cormann became the OECD secretary-general by persuading Europe, home to the world’s biggest climate change enthusiasts, that Australia’s credentials were second to none.

He also should know that ordinary working-class citizens are not intimidated by elites who don’t have to work for a living and prefer to “save the world” by generating maximum political mayhem. Elites have a poor track record in Western countries – living in enclaves or on hobby farms, comfortably isolated inside their own networks, having abandoned the middle class, divided the nation and betrayed the very idea of democracy. They rejoice in being citizens of nowhere, aloft on their global magic carpet.

Holmes a Court’s “revolution, not evolution” mantra is inimical to the Australian way of life. Perhaps his real agenda is to keep his Liberal targets preoccupied at home base, thereby making it easier for Labor to succeed.

Richard Alston is a former federal president of the Liberal Party and was a senior cabinet minister during the Howard years.