In news this week Peter Costello was accused of knocking a journalist to the ground. Some disputed this account, arguing that Liam Mendes works for “The Australian” and therefore can’t be considered a journalist. People in the Liberal Party asserted that they knew Peter very well and, in all their experience of him, he would have the capacity to force a spill, so the poor man must have tripped up on something invisible…
And speaking of invisible, we have the imminent release of Peter Dutton’s nuclear policy. Of course, when I say “imminent”, I mean in his own good time because he won’t be rushed into an early release – or even a late one – just because Labor and the media are demanding it. No, Petey will decide on his own timeline! And then ignore that because he won’t be rushed into releasing it just because he said that he would. After all, the Liberals had nine years in government, and they didn’t allow anyone to force them into announcing an energy policy.
To be fair, that’s just a cheap shot and, in fact, the Liberals did announce an energy policy while they were in government. In fact, they announced several. It was the actual implementation of any of them that gave them trouble.
Sources tell me that Labor are considering changing their renewables target to: “We promise to have 90% renewables before Peter Dutton announces any detail on his nuclear policy.”
Whatever, Dutton has announced that he intends to pull out of Paris which, while sounding like something the Nazis would do or a video circulating on the internet, seems a rather strange way to win back the seats lost to the so-called Teals (or indeed any seats). Most people – even some lifelong Liberal voters – think that something needs to be done about climate change and the Coalition’s inability to commit to Net Zero was a big factor in people voting for other candidates.
Yes, I know that they passed legislation committing to Net Zero but they didn’t actually propose to do anything about it. They were a bit like the person who complained that they read the book they were given on losing weight and told the person who promised that it would help: “No, I’m sorry. You told me that reading this book would help but now I find that I’ve actually got to do the things the book suggested and that takes too much effort…”
The Coalition committed to Net Zero in the sort of way that Trump committed to his marriage vows.
It seems to me that Dutton’s announcement is a strange strategy. While it might appeal to his Murdoch Masters, most people would prefer a party who’s attempting to achieve a target, even if they’re not totally succeeding, rather than one who says that there’s no point in committing to something that you can’t achieve, so we’re not even going to try.
Whether that’s true or not, the fact that he added that he’d pause the rollout of wind and solar farms clearly shows that he needs to zip it because his agenda is showing. Why pause things that will actually bring us closer to a target, even if we’re not going to meet it? I mean you wouldn’t expect to hear a politician say, “We’re not going to meet our target for reducing the road toll this year, so we’re going to pause our rollout of booze buses and speed restrictions.” Every little bit helps, doesn’t it? Unless you don’t actually have any intention of even trying to…
Oh wait… yeah, that’s what he said, isn’t it? There’s no point in trying to meet a target if you’ve got no hope of achieving it.
Mm, maybe that’s what he’s decided about trying to win back seats. As he said about the government’s renewable energy target, ““There’s no sense in signing up to targets you don’t have any prospect of achieving”, so if he’s got no hope of winning back seats then why not just say whatever’s on your mind, no matter how disconnected from reality that may be.
But speaking of disconnected, someone reported that Sussan Ley said that allowing New Zealanders to join our armed forces would devalue ANZAC day… Mm, not sure that even she could be so stupid as to think that it’s AAC day and that NZ in it is silent.
Yes, lest we forget that Peter Dutton was the one who launched a spill against Turnbull but got the numbers wrong and his colleagues – who knew them both – preferred Scott Morrison.
At least he’s safe from a spill for the simple reason that nobody wants the job. And at least he can content himself that he’ll be able to run a better campaign than Rishi Sunak, who announced the election in the rain and managed to get himself photographed standing under an exit sign.
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