The wingnutty Right seems to be reacting in a combination of "it's all Turnbull's fault - you couldn't trust him and he never really was a Liberal - believed in climate change - come on, as if" and "you can't trust the voters of Wentworth - they're all doctors wives and believe in gay marriage and climate change - come on, as if." To them, the party is doomed unless it swings firmly to the Right, blows up the Paris Accord and gets right behind burning more coal, right now. (Oh, and stopping high levels of immigration, their second tier obsession.)
This just goes to show the Liberal Party is completely internally compromised while ever the "hard Right" or "wingnut Right" or whatever you want to call it tries to be accommodated by the centrists in the Party.
Mind you, even if Sharma had won, it would not have helped. The centrists would have felt bolstered by that, leading to more resentment from the Right, which would have still run with the message "but you can't trust the voters of Wentworth".
The Nationals are probably equally compromised - even though I don't keep that close a track on who is who there. But you know there is trouble when you've got the National Farmer's Federation dropping scepticism about climate change, but Barnaby Joyce openly making it known that he'd be back in as Deputy PM in a flash if only the party would let him in. He just doesn't take environmentalism of any kind seriously.
I've said it before but I'll say it again: climate change and energy policies are really important issues. When a substantial fraction of your Party does not even believe in the reality of a problem - there is no accommodating them by a tightrope act that cannot keep either side happy, because effective policies cannot keep both sides happy in that situation.
The "hard Right" simply disbelieves science. You can't accommodate that, policy wise.
This is worse than past examples of Labor factionalism. At least their fights have been over how to react to an acknowledged issue, either from a firm Left perspective or a more compromising centrist one. But they weren't fighting over whether there was actually an issue to address! By contrast, this is the key problem with the Coalition on climate change - dealing with a solid rump denying there is even an issue.
A proper leader of the Party needs to call for a split so as to resolve the otherwise unresolveable on a key issue for the future of the country. Perhaps 20% to 30% of members, and a similar number of MPs, need to be told to leave and join the Australian Conservatives, or create the Tony Abbott Party, or whatever. They know they'll get the support of Murdoch and Sky News - why not go for it? But they cannot expect to make their participation in the Liberals or Nationals work.
Maybe Malcolm can call for that from outside of Parliament? Can't see who else is going to do it, at least until the Party is soundly booted out of government.
Yes they are either complete idiots or have been paid off by the coal lobby.
ReplyDeleteWe now have the ACCC confirming David Blower's analysis that privatisation is the reason why energy prices have risen.
As for coal powered stations they would need a government subsidy for all of their 50 years.