Make no mistake, the Australian Liberal Party’s internal war over ‘net zero’ is much more than an internal ‘climate wars’ squabble: it’s a proxy war to reclaim the party’s centre-right soul. Yesterday’s decision to kinda-sorta, almost dump ‘net zero’ doesn’t quite represent the defeat of the ‘moderates’. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
Liberal ministers have agreed to dump any net-zero target, but moderate MPs will be able to say reaching a carbon neutral future would be a “welcome” outcome.
A source in the meeting said there would be no long-term aspiration to meet net zero, but the party will vow to remain in the Paris Agreement and set short-term emission targets from government.
This is nowhere near the bold moves the Liberals need to even begin to restore their appeal to their alienated centre-right base. It’s a start, but, so far, it makes the probably fatal mistake of not running the ‘moderates’ out of town.
In a move aimed at keeping moderates in the tent, MPs will be able to say that a net-zero future would be a “welcome” outcome as part of Australia’s aim to reduce emissions […]
One moderate said it was agreed that while there would be no net-zero target or aspiration, the party would welcome Australia and the world reaching net zero if technology makes it possible.
And there’s their problem: they haven’t the guts to put the idiotic ‘moderates’ back in their little, soggy boxes.
For Good Oil readers who may be unaware, the Liberal party ‘moderates’ are wishy-washy, lettuce-leaf, blue-green wannabe-lefties. Think Christopher Luxon, but wetter. They’ve run the Liberals for the past decade and more, after knifing centre-right conservative Tony Abbott, the last (and one of only a handful) Liberal leader to win government from opposition. For the entire tenure of the ‘moderates’ dominance, the coalition’s vote has fallen, and fallen further.
The lesson couldn’t be more obvious: purge the ‘moderates’; drag the party back to centre-right, economic conservatism. Let the ‘moderates’ go over to the Teals, where they belong.
The problem is that the Liberals’ conservatives still dream of recapturing their former blue-ribbon seats in the wealthy suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne. That EV has driven off. The doctors’ wives rule the roost in those seats, and, like all rich white women, they’re mind-numbingly ‘progressive’ and rusted on to boutique garbage like Climate Cultism.
There is, if the Liberals are smart enough to realise it, a vast potential voting-base in what used to be Labor territory: the hardscrabble, outer-suburban mortgage-belt. The very large bloc of Australians who are being driven to the edge by the consequences of Climate Cultism and mass-immigration multiculturalism. If the Liberals are going to ignore them, these are the people who are flocking to One Nation.
The first step should be to get rid of Queen ‘Moderate’ herself, Sussan Ley.
With only one scheduled parliamentary sitting week before the Christmas break in this 2025 election year it is likely that a slow implosion of Liberal leadership will see Ley limp into next year.
All of this is based on two assumptions: first, that Ley’s leadership is doomed and it is only a matter of time before she is replaced; and, second, it is better for the party and her successor, whoever that may be, if the first female federal leader of the Liberal Party is not removed in a bloody political killing season.
No one except the legacy media actually cares whether the Liberals have a female leader or not. If they do, they’d much rather it be Jacinta Nampijinpa Price – but Price is still relatively politically inexperienced. The sense is that, while she may well bear the mark of a future PM, her time is not yet. A more likely successor to Ley is someone like former soldier-scholar Andrew Hastie, especially as the world sleepwalks along the brink of war.
In fact, 2025 is shaping up as a re-run of 2019. That was when the ‘moderates’ first got their claws on the party leadership, with Malcolm Turnbull as opposition leader. Back then, as now, the ‘moderates’ were fully signed-on Climate Cultists. Tony Abbott led the revolt against the Rudd Emissions Trading Scheme and ultimately prevailed, leading the coalition to a narrow loss in 2010 and a landslide victory in 2013, largely by campaigning against Julia Gillard’s carbon tax.
Contrary to the ‘moderates’ conviction that Climate Cultism is a winner, the coalition have only ever lost ground at the ballot box by supporting it. When they have the guts to oppose the cult, and mean it, they will romp home to victory.
It truly takes a ‘moderate’ to be so blind to the lessons of history.
