While the federal Nationals were again fighting over which climate denialist would lead the party, the NSW government was announcing it would dump stamp duty on electric vehicles, subsidise new EV purchases for 25,000 new purchases, add EVs to its vehicle fleet and fund fast-charging infrastructure.
Environment Minister Matt Kean, Treasurer Dominic Perrotet and Transport Minister Andrew Constance presided over the announcement.
That came after Kean flagged another $380 million in investment in renewable energy in tomorrow’s budget as part of a 20-year commitment to build 14 gigawatts’ worth of renewables generation and storage capacity announced by him last year. And all with the support of NSW Nats’ leader John Barilaro — unsurprising given most of that massive investment is flowing into regional areas.
The contrast couldn’t have been clearer between Scott Morrison’s denialist outfit in Canberra and a NSW government effortlessly pursuing a net zero 2050 target and a 35% reduction target by 2030 — far and above the federal government’s miserable target. In NSW, the politics of climate action aren’t divisive and toxic, but positive for governments. Even the Greens lauded last year’s energy package as a good first step.
It’s not as if coal seats aren’t in play in NSW. The Upper Hunter byelection was dominated by coal and climate. But the government gets on with the transition to renewables and embraces the political benefits that flow from pumping renewables investment into regional communities.
The difference with the federal government is the Queensland LNP. The extent to which the LNP is a toxic political rump that poisons the whole of politics in Australia is rarely acknowledged. The LNP is a party that thinks nothing of doing preference deals with far-right parties like One Nation, that continues to collaborate with Clive Palmer even as the billionaire has run his own party against it, that tolerated the antics of George Christensen for years, and quite happily undermined its own female state parliamentary leader.
And it is the most aggressively climate denialist party in Australia in the most emissions-intensive state economy. It went to the last Queensland election promising to scrap Queensland’s emissions abatement targets.
It is mostly LNP members of the Nationals — along with malcontents like Bridget “sports rorts” McKenzie — who were behind this latest, successful tilt by Barnaby Joyce to seize back the leadership of the party. Joyce might now be a NSW MP and hail from Tamworth but he started his political life in the Queensland Nationals and remains their once and future king.
Joyce and his subfaction of denialists and reactionaries exert wildly disproportionate influence over climate policy — retarding serious action and making Australia an international climate pariah — because of the Liberal Party’s reliance on the Nationals. The terms of that reliance remain secret, despite the undemocratic consequence that majority parliamentary support for greater climate action via most of Labor, the minor parties apart from One Nation, and moderate Liberals, is thwarted.
The deadlock is thus less about who gets to make a fool of themselves as deputy prime minister than about something altogether more serious: the lack of any meaningful action on climate at the national level, when the policies to deliver that action — and the politics to support them — are on clear display in NSW.
See how power works in this country.
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OMG – other words fail me at this time of compounding national disaster.
A prize dud replaced by a dangerous dud.What a pack of self serving morons.
So this smug misogynist dinosaur will be our Deputy PM?? I suppose that’s understandable, given his party is mostly smug dinosaurs. We can only hope they suffer a similar fate at the next election – and take the rest of the LNP with them.
I don’t think it’ll make a bit of difference policy wise – it can’t really get worse anymore.
Trouble is, for the LNP things – policy wise – can only get better; that is, their new Deputy PM is gonna be more pro-coal/anti-renewables than the old one. Plus he’s an unreconstructed, unpunished sex abuser, always a good poke in the eye for the PC city set.
Yes it’s progress in Oz terms but Bernard would be well advised to look at NSW Forestry policies that has begun and will see entire regional areas clear felled over the next ten years, Habitat protection outside State forest is now subject to the Barilaro Put that has successfully neutered any prospect of progress there. Bernards long declared soft spot for Gladys and her administration needs to be balanced. By the way, News Corp have reignited their campaign targeting Matt Keane.
Keane is one of the few Liberals at Federal or State level worth a pinch of sh*t. Hopefully the NSW EV policy will drag the Federal Government toward reality. But you are right, Keane is having to survive an onslaught from NewsCorpse papers, Sky News and their opinion-writers social media outlets, who cannot hide their revulsion of a moderate Liberal. I hope he has thick skin.
Keane is actually a Liberal – not a nut or a neo-con. He seems to be like the ones who used to command respect, such as Rupert Hamer in Victoria and Fred Chaney and Ian McPhee in federal politics, as well as Frydenberg’s predecessor in Kooyong, Petro Georgiou. Sadly people like that have been purged from most Liberal parties around Australia.
Small “l” liberals – also known as wets. I’d list Senator Peter Baume with them. He was shadow minister for health and worked very cooperatively with Neal Blewett, then minister, during the early days of the HIV epidemic.
Agree.
As have their equivalents in ‘Labor’ – expunged or traduced by the nutters who run the party Machine(s).
Barilaro’s support for the plague of brumbies should be able to turn the recently clear felled forests into desert in a trice. Kean was able to talk him around on energy policy by pointing out what a boon it would be for the regions, as though that was news, somehow. Barilaro is as empty a vessel as any, whereas Joyce is half filled with bile at any point in time. If we could turn chips on their shoulders into an export industry then we wouldn’t need to cut down another tree.
The Nationals can continue to draw voters from the Liberals while the Libs fail to address primary producers’ fear for their supply of diesel fuel. Diesel fuel, currently derived from fossil oil, underpins every one of Australia’s primary industries. Farmers’ tractors, fishing boats, logging trucks, mineral explorers and so on are all designed to run on standard diesel. Even so-called biodiesel requires a heavy input of fossil diesel to produce it. The Liberals could stop the loss of voters by promising R&D to make synthetic fuel practical and competitive. For that matter, the Nationals should be demanding a guarantee of synthetic fuel in the face of (fossil) decarbonisation.
Seriously! It might have made sense (sort of) back in the 1970s or 1980s when we actually had a refining industry. To go down your path Australia would have to invest in new refineries – and it would have to be the government as no sensible commercial operation would touch it now. Talk about stranded assets!
In the 2020s the answer is to speed up the introduction of electric and potentially hydrogen powered vehicles and perhaps give this a focus on farm and commercial use. The government could even invest in creating a limited EV manufacturing capacity in Australia focusing on farm and commercial vehicles and possibly marine engines. Building up components of the EV supply chain in Australia – such as minerals processing and battery manufacture – might at least have some benefit to the country in the future.
Agree, and Australia’s transition will be due to investment of external forces i.e. global IC -> EV manufacturers; look a bit silly if Australia was the last hold out of fossil fuels….. further, many if not most younger farmers are more innovative these days.
More than silly. Since we do not have a vehicle manufacturing industry any more (other than some specialist niche producers) then we are dependent on what overseas manufacturers are making. Maybe Abbott and co should have thought about that when they finished off the car industry here. But of course – they didn’t think about the future.