Remember when Scott Morrison shocked the green-left by bringing a lump of coal into parliament? Whatever happened to that guy? Coalition voters would gladly trade Scott Morrison the climate warrior for the woeful Scotty from Marketing they ended up with: continually spooked into submission on every woke issue.
Especially climate change.
The Coalition won their surprise victory in 2018 because they rejected the green-left “consensus” on climate policy – and dumped blue-green Malcolm Turnbull’s emissions targets. Blue collar workers in the resources-dependent states of WA and Queensland rewarded them with an historic win.
Fast-forward three years and, with an election looming within the next 12 months, Scott Morrison has capitulated to the “Net Zero” fanatics. Where even Labor is belatedly realising that its “Net Zero by 2050” policy is an election-losing dog, Scott Morrison is repeating Turnbull’s mistakes – especially trying to kid working-class Australians that they can have an each-way bet.
Scott Morrison has assured workers in the nation’s regions and industrial heartland they will benefit rather than be penalised by his climate change policies, declaring net zero emissions would not be achieved in the “cafes, dinner parties and wine bars of our inner cities’’.
All fine talk, but where’s the walk?
Morrison is talking up his government’s economic recovery plans – a recovery made necessary by the panicked actions of state governments who were given free rein by Canberra.
Mr Morrison said the budget would contain sweeping measures, cutting paperwork across the economy — including for companies, childcare operators and education and healthcare providers. The initiative is part of a broader economic plan to unlock investment and create jobs, with Mr Morrison trumpeting his commitment to lower taxes, more competitive conditions for industry, “sensible” workplace laws and policies to encourage free and open trade[…]
“Our economic recovery plan is geared to keeping our economy on the right track. To protect and preserve lives and livelihoods, but also to build a strong, durable recovery for the future.”
Unveiling a $120m deregulation package, Mr Morrison said the government wanted to take “unnecessary regulatory burdens off business to unlock investment and to create jobs”.
Morrison is trying to play the Coalition’s traditional strength: economic management. But all that will be moot if voters in the resources belt decide that the government has sold out to the climate lobby.
Pushing back against Labor, which has adopted a policy to reach net zero emissions by 2050, Mr Morrison said Australia was not going to meet its climate change targets through “punishing taxes”.
Mr Morrison said the nation had already “met and exceeded” its climate targets, arguing Australia was on track to reduce emissions by “70 per cent per unit of GDP on 2005 levels, and halve our per capita emissions”.
“Already total emissions are 19 per cent lower at the end of 2020 than they were in 2005. That’s a further improvement on the 13 per cent reduction by 2018, which compares to 0 per cent in Canada, 8 per cent in NZ and 10 per cent in Germany, Japan and the USA over the same period,” he said. “Our domestic emissions have already fallen by 36 per cent from 2005 levels.
“Australia takes our emission reductions targets very seriously. We don’t make them lightly. We prepare our plan to achieve them and we follow through. That is how we are addressing the challenge of the future net zero carbon economy.”
The Australian
Morrison is trying to play both sides, here. The question is whether he’ll end up convincing anyone. The Greens will just keep accusing the government of fudging the books and blue-collar workers will just suspect them of caving in to the loony left, yet again.
What working-class voters in Queensland and WA and in the Hunter region of NSW, where more than 50% of workers owe their living to the coal industry, want, is a clear commitment to a future with coal. Climate change might excite the “cafes, dinner parties and wine bars of our inner cities’’, but the regions have far more down-to-earth concerns. Blithering about airy-fairy “net zero” targets isn’t going to reassure them one bit.
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