It’s probably best for most people’s mental health that they are not forced to consider the hypocritical and ever-shifting grasping positions of Australian politics. For the most part, politics has the power to do good. Also for the most part, the way politics in Australia is played is very, very stupid.
Thu 29 Oct 2026 10.15 AEDT
Photo: AAP Image/Lukas Coch
It’s probably best for most people’s mental health that they are not forced to consider the hypocritical and ever-shifting grasping positions of Australian politics.
For the most part, politics has the power to do good. Also for the most part, the way politics in Australia is played is very, very stupid.
It may surprise some readers to learn that, in most of the world, climate is not considered a “left” issue. It’s not a “right” issue. It just is.
Margaret Thatcher was not a leftie and yet understood the economic benefits of an energy transition (with the added bonus of crushing workers’ unions in the mining sector, of course). Angela Merkel was by no means a leftie either, and pursued climate transition for the EU and Germany not out of an ideological drive, but a rational one.
Boris Johnson, before the culture war brain worm fully took hold, was also supportive of climate transition. And until George W Bush and the now infamous Luntz memo, which advised the Republican party to treat climate as emotions over fact, even if they were wrong, America wasn’t as obstructionist on the climate.
John Howard came along and built on the work of the Keating government for Australia to be treated as a special carbon-emitting unicorn on the global stage. He took it further from Keating’s “we’ll just plant trees” to offset our rocks and crops economy to “not sure I even believe in this anyway”, launching the climate wars we still see today.
And that we are still seeing them today – with the Coalition joining with One Nation and pretending that we can just stick with coal and gas forever and burn as much oil as we can get our hands on, and it will all be hunky dory because all those commie lefties are just drama queens anyway – is one of the reasons Australia’s politics is just so gosh darn stupid.
Before we get into the latest round of stupidity, let’s not pretend Labor is a world leader in addressing the science. Anthony Albanese might say things like “there has been now decades of science and advice on climate change that it is real. I support responding to the science of climate change”, as he did yesterday in question time, but Labor is as wedded to fossil fuels as the Coalition.
If Labor truly supported the climate science, it would not only be looking to actually lower emissions – rather than offsetting them, a wonderful practice that can allow polluters to increase their pollution, as long as they pretend it’s being offset by trees somewhere else – it would stop opening and expanding fossil fuel projects. But its policy is to support as many of those as it can.
At least the Coalition and One Nation are more open about wanting to continue polluting and cooking the planet. Barnaby Joyce wants to scrap the Climate Change Authority which, techno gobbledygook aside, is at least attempting to advise the government on what direction to go in (even if it’s ignored). The Coalition wants to repeal the 2022 Climate Change Act, abolish the Net Zero Economy Authority and wind back subsidies for energy transition, including electric vehicles.
This is all led by Angus Taylor. While energy minister, he said the phrase “technology over taxes” until the nation became one big eye twitch but now wants ideology over technology. In a cost of living crisis. When technology like electric vehicles is being taken up by the wealthier because of the overall fuel cost savings, and solar panels and home batteries help those who can afford it save even more money on energy, while the poor and the ideologically resistant remain hostage to international price shocks.
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It is inherently a very, very stupid debate.
It became even more stupid this week with the Coalition having a tantrum over the EU wanting Australia to meet its climate commitments to finalise its free trade agreement. The EU is not a leftist organisation. It’s run mostly by centrists and pragmatists who see national security in unhooking from the global energy rulers, who can turn prices up and down with conflict, and who see food security and climate refugees as a near and present danger.
But the Coalition wants Australia to again be treated as a special little climate-emitting unicorn, stubbornly sticking to its ridiculousness to own the left, even as the economic consequences of not joining the rest of the world become startling clear.
This is all after the intergenerational report that warned of the physical dangers of climate change in the form of increased insurance and disaster response costs. And the fact that we are running out of time to make any money out of fossil fuels because the world is moving away from them.
“Demand for Australia’s fossil fuel export commodities will likely plateau and then decline due to the global shift away from fossil-based energy sources,” Treasury said in its latest report.
Treasury is already modelling the economic impact of global warming and Australia’s political class is still running around debating whether or not it is real, as if it were the tooth fairy.
This is all happening while China and Japan make bank from Australia’s gas, turning our export excess into a third market as Australians grapple with energy costs that continue to drive the cost of living crisis.
So yes, politics can be a force for good. But only when the people standing have good faith intentions.
LNP MP Llew O’Brien was right when he called “bulls–t” on Albanese’s climate defence in parliament yesterday, but not for the reason he thought.
The whole debate is bulls–t. The only silver lining is that the transition will happen regardless of whether these people believe in it or not – because eventually, Australia will be left so far behind there will be no choice but to be dragged along. But it shouldn’t take fires, floods, cyclones, mudslides and the loss of coastal communities for Australians to wake up and realise they are being played for mugs.
Amy Remeikis is a contributing editor for The New Daily and chief political analyst for The Australia Institute
This piece was first published in The New Daily. Read the original piece here
