This week I stood for the leadership for the Nationals because I want us to rediscover our fight after a crushing Federal election defeat.
I started with weight in my saddlebags. In over 100 years, the Nationals party had never elected a Senator as its leader, even though there is no Constitutional or Parliamentary bar from doing so.
I ran not so much for leader but to end our crazy and insane obsession of net zero carbon emissions by 2050. In the first term of the Labor Government, we lost our urea industry (the most important fertiliser to grow food), our plastics industry and our nickel industry. All of these sectors were subject to crippling carbon taxes under Labor’s net zero by 2050 target.
Also captured by this target are the coal mines, alumina refineries, aluminium smelter and cement and magnesia plants. While these mines and factories have withstood the first few years of Labor’s carbon taxes, the taxes increase every year and many tell me that in the next they may have to shut if there is not change.
Labor had to give another $2 billion to the aluminium industry because its plans to run on green energy are more expensive than running on coal.
At the very least the prospect of having to pay to get to net zero in just 25 years means there is little investment in new industrial jobs in Central Queensland. Labor’s promised hydrogen jobs are about as detectable as that invisible gas is. Twiggy Forrest cut another 90 hydrogen jobs this week.
And then you ask why are we doing all of this? America under Trump is out. Asia was never really in. Coal fired power is booming in Asia. And, even in Europe things are changing. Tony Blair called net zero “irrational” recently and the Spanish blackout is causing a big rethink on renewable energy plans.
Back home, even Peter Beattie says we have “stuffed it” with too much renewable energy. If there is one thing that Peter Beattie is good at, it is identifying when he has stuffed something up.
After their election as leaders, both Sussan Ley (the new Liberal leader) and David Littleproud have said that they would review our commitment to net zero. While I lost the leadership battle, this was a win, and I believe I will win the war to end our support for such a silly policy.
The Liberal and Nationals parties never really believed in net zero. Michael McCormack, the then Deputy Prime Minister, said in the year before we signed up to net zero that he was concerned that net zero would “send factories and industries offshore.”
Although I have always maintained my steadfast opposition to the net zero target my colleagues were bullied into signing up with relentless polling showing that we had to because the people supported it. This would be the same polling that sent us shockingly astray in the recent election.
Well, we signed up to net zero and then lost two elections. The last one was the worst defeat for the Liberal and Nationals Coalition since World War II. At the last election, the Coalition explicitly said that it was moving to the “sensible centre”. But the centre of the road is where you get run over and we just got made in to political roadkill.
So maybe we should try something different next time.
We would be much better to ignore the protests for us to go left or right. As my colleague Andrew Willcox said, we should not care about left or right, just right or wrong.
The Liberal and Nationals parties need to reflect on the massive election loss we suffered. I hope that the main lesson we learn is to adopt what we think are the best policies to help Australia.
Even if those policies are not currently supported by the majority of Australians, our job is to fight for what we think is right and convince people that our plans are better.
This is not an impossible task. When we took a principled stance against the Voice less than 40 per cent of people agreed with us. Six months later 60 per cent of people agreed with us and the divide us by race in our Constitution was resoundingly rejected.
In politics courage is contagious. Now is the time to find our courage and rediscover our fight so that we have a fighting chance at the next election.
