EVEN within his oeuvre of dogmatic expediency, Paul Kelly’s Weekend Australian column is one of the most rambling, confusing and amoral I’ve read. The topic is the Morrison government and Net Zero, which we should start referring to as Year Zero given how closely it resembles the clean slate catastrophism of Pol Pot. In turns congratulatory and condemnatory, the tone is either told-you-so snippy or Dark Night of the Soul quietistic; I can’t work out which. Perhaps confounding himself in the voluminous telling, the Editor-at-Large eventually leans on a classic:
Morrison moved to net zero not to save the planet but to save Australia’s economy from serious investor harm. The accusations of betrayal against him from the more populist conservatives must prompt the question: how will helping Labor into office advance your cause?
There it blows: Labor Would Be Worse. How will helping the LNP into office advance your cause? Because the incumbents are not interested in any of the following: sovereignty over “investor” climate gamblers, freedom of speech, religious liberty, privacy, medical autonomy, fiscal non-communism, the honouring of war heroes, the expulsion of woke quislings from the ADF, the unapologetic development and use of our abundant, clean and reliable fuel resources. Etc. Today’s “centre right” is broadly equivalent to the hard left of ten years ago. Many so-called conservatives are starting to play a longer game in which nudging via minor party sabotage may force the spectrum correction without which this country will crash on the Uniparty’s watch.
Kelly should have retired after his Pell column. At least he would have gone out on a high. Instead he has returned to being a serially wrong buffoon.
After Craig Kelly quit the Liberals he was accused by some of “betraying the party.”
I say that the Liberals betrayed him and every conservative in the country, and continue to do so.
Their banishment to the opposition at the next federal election is assured, barring a major Albanese cock-up.
The Hawke/Keating governments were further to the right than the current LNP.
The Gillard government was further to the right than current LNP. They were against homo marriage and their ‘climate’ policy was not as insane.
This.
To paraphrase a famous former Aussie rules football commentator: “if Menzies was alive today, he’d turn over in his grave.”
In fact he wouldn’t even recognize the party he founded.
Another institution or organization infiltrated and taken over by the left.
I do not comprehend the thinking of the Morrison government.
I hope very much they will be in the grip of conservative leaning parties in the future.
Canavan and Craig Kelly are both frauds
Right or wrong, Policy of all Governments going back years is to phase out domestic Coal Generation.
When Canavan pushes the HELE Coal Plant wagon, he knows it will never happen, so he’s betting that people in the Coal Mining regions of Queensland won’t wake up to him.
What pisses me off more than anything is the assumption we all stand around and clap like seals when this wanker says something.
WRONG. You can have an opinion. It doesn’t make you right. Fuck off
It appears to me that there has been an unspoken agreement going back decades that the Coal, Beef, and Sheepmeat industries have to die.
But because no commentator will even address the elephant in the room, it’s impossible to have any debate about it.
Craig Kelly is about the only politician of principle in this country.
I totally agree Lee. Craig Kelly has shown that he has principles. An extremely rare beast at the moment. We need more like him.
Under the ALP we might achieve a collapse and potential for recovery with some new and worthwhile future party, possibly just barely within my lifetime.
The Lib/Nats might draw that out into a slow and agonizing grind down into a stable but poor and stagnant authoritarian regime that might remain for several generations.
And they believed that Fair Work Australia should at least give due consideration to the rights of the workers. That’s gone out the window.
I always had a grudging respect for Gillard … didn’t agree with her but she believed in something. She also had a fine judgement on how far to push things which Albo and Peanut Head never understood.
ScoMo also believes in something … mostly himself and selling out the country to the highest bidder … which right now is Big Pharma. It’s going to be difficult to outbid them when they are spending your money.
I’m wondering what issue Joyce, McKenzie, Pitt and the 6 other Nationals had with the NetZero Agreement
Scotty isn’t signing up to the 30% Methane Reduction Agreement, which averts mass culling of the Beef herd, and the rest of the deal, Carbon Offsets, New Tech, etc is just Motherhood Statements,so what was their issue.
Did Joyce et al favor a Mass Cull with a view to Mass Compo for the big producers?
That’s one way of looking at it.
Here’s another:
the flip side to being an Exporting Nation is Balance of Payments issues.
That’s why the CCP has been buying up Cattle Stations and there hasn’t been a peep, despite our participation in Freedom of Navigation Exercises in the South China Sea.
You can’t have your cake and eat it too, but neither Liberal nor Labor like to point that out.
Morrison goes to Glasgow having done enough to prevent Australia being labelled an outcast but not enough to prevent our effort being labelled as inadequate.
China emits around a third of world-wide emissions, and is increasing its emissions annually by more than Australia actually emits. Will China be labelled as an “outcast”, or its effort as “inadequate”? To ask the question is to answer it.
shifting out of the booming developing world demand for Australia’s fossil fuels
As usual, it comes down to a basically racist idea that the “developing” world, basically non-white, should not be allowed to have access to reliable power (except for China, the “developing” nation with a huge navy, ICBMs with nuclear warheads, a huge army, and a space program which has mounted missions to the Moon and Mars, which really must have lots of our coal).
Kelly would be a master of the game of Twister. He can effortlessly tie himself in logical knots.
China is a 3rd world Country, so is India, which also buys our coal.
I very much doubt Coal is exported on the basis of Race.
More likely, the plan is that the Domestic Coal Industry and the domestic Beef Industry will do 100% the heavy lifting on Emissions if Labor win Government, the Export Industries will be untouched.
I am pretty sure the bottom line for the nats was keeping methane out and thus a viable cattle industry. Because you can bet the ticket clippers that own the libs wanted it.
Apparently there is also a guaranteed minimum price for land set asides for carbon sequestration, and a requirement that if you area say, petroleum company buying up farm land for carbon offsets, you can only use a third of it for offsets. Thus keeping rural and remote towns alive that little bit longer. And some commitment to assess the regional impact of climate policies every five years, But by then I reckon Barnaby was just toying with ScoMo. It will be a waste of time once the harm is done.
I actually think Barnaby and Canavan pulled off a win, because everyone else in parliament was going for the two word slogan.
Sounds okay, but what if only a third of it was any good for Grazing anyway, and they planted on that third?
What’s the rules on Offsetted Land?
Can you still graze Cattle or sheep on that land?
I’ll bet you can’t.
It seems silly.
If Woodside can only use a third of the land for offsets, one way or ano9ther they’ve got to buy 3 times as many farms.
Great news for people who want to sell the farm and move to Sydney, end of the line for the towns in rural areas.
Ed C
China is a 3rd world Country, so is India, which also buys our coal.
I very much doubt Coal is exported on the basis of Race.
More likely, the plan is that the Domestic Coal Industry and the domestic Beef Industry will do 100% the heavy lifting on Emissions if Labor win Government, the Export Industries will be untouched.
Way to miss the point. What Kelly said was “shifting out of the booming developing world demand for Australia’s fossil fuels”. Pretty hard to read that as only hitting domestic coal.
PS: China is a 3rd World country??? with “a huge navy, ICBMs with nuclear warheads, a huge army, and a space program which has mounted missions to the Moon and Mars”.
On that basis, Australia is a 5th World country!
Yeah, China is a 3rd World Country.
The CCP line their own pockets and feather their own nests, the people get nothing.
The Red Army protects the CCCP that’s it.
Sure, but this is Paul Kelly talking, remember?
If a Labor Government had the choice between shutting down Coal Exports and shutting down domestic use of coal in Power Houses and Boilers to meet their Emissions Reduction Target, which do you think they’d jump?
Ed Case says:
30 October, 2021 at 7:13 pm
Yeah, China is a 3rd World Country.
Possibly for certain meanings of the word “is”, but in reality, it is a military and industrial giant.
I thought ScuMo didn’t want to travel any more because muh quarantine. Nobody on the left has written an original article in years. They just pull up a previous article, highlight, ctrl s to shuffle the words, done. ready for publication.