‘The Beetrooter’ Bounces Back

So Barnaby “The Beetrooter” Joyce is back. What does this mean for the Australian political scene?

It means that both Labor and the Liberal wets will be worried.

Sky News host Alan Jones says Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese “can now not win the federal election”.

“His pathway to the Lodge just got a whole lot harder,” he said.
“With Barnaby Joyce back in the upper echelons of the Coalition leadership team, common sense will prevail.

MSN

And that’s what will have the Liberal party “wets” – the teal-blue, inner-urban, Doctor’s Wives-pleasers – clutching their pearls.

For too long, Coalition politics on the home front have been dictated by the blue-green wets, fretting about whatever the ABC is chattering about on QandA. For too long, PM Scott Morrison has been defaulting to “Scotty from Marketing” mode on domestic politics: especially on climate change and the obvious baloney of “net zero emissions”.

Queensland Nationals Matt Canavan and George Christensen are flatly opposed to embracing the target, while most other Nationals have said they would consider supporting the goal if there were a detailed plan to get there and extra financial support for the regions.

Mr Joyce said he would consult his party about a net-zero target, declaring the decision would be a “long way off”.

“You’ve got to remember we see it through different eyes. We see it through coal-workers jobs,” Mr Joyce said. “We see it as people working in power plants (and) their jobs. (We) make our money from exports and exports are emission intensive.”

Whatever his personal foibles – and, boy oh boy, Barnaby has them aplenty – Joyce is a political fighter. After being consigned to the wilderness over an extramarital affair (the shock: a politician roots around!), Joyce is back with a vengeance.

Joyce is clearly determined to win back the grassroots conservative rural vote which has been steadily leaking from the Nationals to minor parties like the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party. Aside from climate change, also on his agenda is water reform.

The Nationals have blindsided the Liberals by proposing major reforms to the Murray Darling Basin Plan that would disadvantage the river system in South Australia in the party’s first major policy initiative since Barnaby Joyce returned as Deputy Prime Minister.

The split over the basin follows unrest within the Nationals over Scott Morrison’s plan to achieve net zero emissions as soon as possible and “preferably” by 2050, an issue which helped drive the removal of Michael McCormack as leader.

The minor Coalition party remained divided on Wednesday over whether to support a carbon neutral Australia by mid century subject to strict conditions for the agriculture and mining sectors as part of a potential compromise with the Liberals[…]

The changes would have blocked the return to SA of an extra 450GL of “up-water” (taken from irrigators upstream), while also ending water buybacks and green-lighting new water-saving infrastructure projects.

At heart is the issue of water for irrigators versus water for ducks.

Under the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, which came into effect in 2012, the federal government hopes to permanently return biodiversity to the river system by reclaiming­ 2750GL of water from irrigated agriculture.

The long-standing issue of Australia embracing nuclear power is also looming.

With cabinet level discussions having focused on taking a policy on nuclear power to the election, Nationals MPs back­ed a lifting of the nuclear prohibition.

The Australian

While environmentalists and left-wing parties have blocked nuclear energy in Australia for decades, others argue that nuclear is the only cheap, safe, reliable alternative to fossil fuels currently available.

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