BY Alan Kohler

After 25 failed UN-led attempts to do something about global warming, number 26 has been presented with a revolutionary new scheme by the Australian government.

The idea is blindingly simple, and could take the world by storm as it were: Just predict that the private sector will take care of climate change.

A voluntary price on carbon (not a tax, mind) plus private sector innovation will achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, job done.

Governments have to do almost nothing.

We’ll never know for sure whether Australia’s stunning breakthrough contributed to the struggles in Glasgow, but it probably did.

As suggested here two weeks ago, Australia punches above its weight on these matters because there are other countries looking for an easy way out. The Australian way looks appealing.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison laid his idea out most clearly in a speech to the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry last week: “[Climate change] will be fixed painstakingly, step by step, by the entrepreneurs, by scientists, by technologists, by innovators, by industrialists, by financiers, by risk-takers. That’s the Australian way.”

The modelling subsequently released on Friday did not even pretend that this approach will achieve net-zero emissions: It gets us to 85 per cent, after which the great spirit of technology will carry us the rest of the way to 100 per cent net zero on a golden staircase of innovation.

In fact, it’s clear from the modelling that the only reason the Morrison plan exists at all is to prevent an increase in Australia’s cost of capital caused by the world’s banks and investment houses shunning this country.

The sheer audacity of what Morrison is doing is breathtaking: To say it’s a plan when it’s a forecast; to say it will achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 when the document itself says it won’t; to say it’s “technology not taxes” when it relies on voluntary carbon pricing of between $24 and $400 per tonne that will be passed on to consumers; to say Australia is leading the world when we’re actually coming last.

It seems to spring from a combination of the Prime Minister’s character, so brilliantly described in Sean Kelly’s book, The Game – a portrait of Scott Morrison, and an extreme version of the actual game that’s played by both main parties.

In his book, Kelly writes: “When Scott Morrison declared on election night that he believed in miracles, he meant the phrase literally.”

And: “The more useful way to think about the effect of Morrison’s faith on his political career is to see in it a sensibility. Rather than offering him a doctrine, its elements have structured the way in which he perceives the world.

“The first element is an abiding optimism …”

“This is closely related to a second element: The sense of certainty that can come from believing that God has you in his hands – that he has a plan …”

When it comes to something that affects the whole planet and human race, the whole of creation no less, how can someone who believes in the pre-eminence of God’s plan for each one of us think that humans should, or even can, interfere in it.

So leaving it to the private sector and technology, supervised by God, makes perfect sense.

The politics of the Morrison plan, meanwhile, look shattering – for Labor.

The Prime Minister will now campaign on doing next to nothing about climate change because it’s going to turn out OK thanks to the private sector – it will basically take care of itself.

Therefore whatever the Labor Party proposes on climate change will have to be something, not nothing, which means it can be attacked as a cost, a tax or a dictate.

ALP leader Anthony Albanese is in a tight spot now.

He must either go for broke, boldly announcing the phasing out of coal, a new emissions trading scheme and a ban on internal combustion vehicles by, say 2040, and try to win the cities with that, or match Morrison’s nothing plan and campaign about something else.

A half-measure will please no one.

Both strategies are enormously risky – unless Morrison falters, which looks unlikely at the moment.

Which is why the media must now become players in this drama.

The reason Scott Morrison knows he’s pretty safe with an obvious non-policy is that most of the mainstream media tries to be politically even-handed, and is inclined to show respect to a Prime Minister.

But most media company directors and journalists also understand that we actually do face an emergency from global warming, and that it may not be true that private technology will take care of it, or that preventing disaster will be cost-free – it will just be cheaper than the disaster.

So we need to call him out, constantly, every day, and apply truth in advertising standards to election ads as well.

Climate change is not just politics, and shouldn’t be reported as just politics.

Alan Kohler writes twice a week for The New Daily. He is also editor in chief of Eureka Report and finance presenter on ABC news

READ MORE:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/finance-news/2021/11/15/climate-change-morrison-kohler/

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The Prime Minister and others have slammed the independents running in the federal election as the voices of Labor and the Greens that are only running in Liberal seats, backed by “big money”.

But Zali Steggall says this just shows that Scott Morrison “doesn’t get it”.

Ms Steggall ousted formed prime minister Tony Abbott at the 2019 election as an independent from his long-held NSW seat of Warringah through a grassroots campaign of dissatisfied Liberals.

She said Scott Morrison is overlooking that these independents are running because communities did not identify with their choices at the moment.

“Where the Liberal Party has moved so far to the right, and under Scott Morrison, does not represent its values when it comes to integrity and accountability, they are looking for alternatives,” Ms Steggall told Sky News’ Sunday Agenda program.

She said the Prime Minister was not speaking to the traditionally sensible, more-moderate Liberal voters with the policies he was pushing.

Big money from the Climate 200 group is reported to be backing independent candidates and Ms Steggall said they may well support her in this election, but didn’t in 2019.

“What I find interesting, the Prime Minister doesn’t have an issue with Clive Palmer spending $80 million on his party,” she said, referencing the United Australia party.

“If we are really talking about big money influencing politics, we really need to look at that.”

She said there were also millions of dollars that were donated to the Liberal and Labor parties that weren’t properly reported.

If next year’s election ends with a minority government, Ms Steggall said it would force more collaboration, which she endorsed as a positive.

“The worse thing we have at the moment is (Nationals leader) Barnaby Joyce, who is dictating and holding the Coalition to ransom on what it can and can’t do,” Ms Steggall said.

“There is a major loss of trust in the Prime Minister, so I think that needs to be addressed at some point.”

On the key issue of tackling climate change, Ms Steggall didn’t think much of the Coalition’s net-zero target.

‘I think they got there kicking and screaming,” she said.

“It is a bit of an empty promise because their plan only delivers 85 per cent and doesn’t deliver 100. It doesn’t actually transition at the speed we need to.”

She believed Labor’s 43 per cent 2030 target was playing it safe for the election and provided just a little bit more than the Coalition, but not enough to “scare the horses”.

“I am not for extreme targets so they are [not] going to be at any cost. I am for a sensible planned transition,” Ms Steggall said.

-AAP

Read more:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/politics/australian-politics/2021/12/12/zali-steggall-slams-morrison/

Please be aware that some "independents" are stooges for ScoMo... Choose carefully...

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