By Mark Kenny
Craig Kelly was careful when responding to the latest inducement being offered to the states to secure the National Energy Guarantee. Understandable after his disastrous "let bygones be bygones" apologia for Donald Trump's Russia appeasement.
But the conservative backbencher, as one of the party room's most vocal coal spruikers, could disguise his grievance over the Turnbull cabinet's creeping environmentalism, only so well.
Asked during his regular Sky News spot about the "olive branch" now being extended by Energy and Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg to the states - an offer of a five-year review of the emissions reduction target (rather than locking it in for 10), Kelly was initially circumspect. "Well I'd imagine if you had a [target] review, you could also downscale it as well." Clearly this was said more in hope than belief.
Liberal MP Craig Kelly has been an outspoken critic of emission reductions.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Warming up, Kelly railed against the current Paris target of 26 per cent as already "the most onerous in the world"; complained he (read the party room) had not seen the detail; and then this: "People talk about [investment] certainty, if you want some certainty, you've at least got to have something set, at least, for a decade." Can't say it clearer than that.
Shortly after Kelly, Keith Pitt bobbed up on screen. Both a Nationals MP and a frontbencher, Pitt too was wary, focusing exclusively on price, as if the emissions imperative didn't exist.
Pressed specifically as to his support for the energy guarantee being actively progressed by the executive of which he is part, the Assistant Minister to the Deputy Prime Minister finally offered this: "I'm not going to put my feet on the sticky paper for a document that's not finalised and I haven't read." So, no vote of confidence there.
These comments and countless others in recent months offer a glimpse into the Rubik's Cube-like complexity that Malcolm Turnbull and Frydenberg are trying to puzzle out.
Every move has consequences on the other side. Frydenberg's latest offer might be a game-changer because it offers even those who regard the plan as inadequate the political cover to back its creation along with the caveat of future upscaling.
But that very fact is a red-rag-to-a-bull to those who view steeper emissions targets as defeat and the guarantee as the pathway to them - many of whom are in the Coalition party room.
So what does Bill Shorten say? He says Turnbull should get his priorities right by convincing his own party before trying to wrangle the states.
Ahem.