First the Climate Sabotage

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is in trouble – from within his own party as well as from the public opposition the Australia Labor Party. And it is all centred on an internal war in the party between conservatives and so-called moderates, which are a left wing group pushing climate/green energy policies for all they are worth. Criticising the Morrison government publicly is par for the course by this internal “climate opposition”.

A lot of the bitterness and infighting faced by Morrison was listed in a post last year about him being a dead man walking, but the internal sabotage against Morrison wasn’t going to quieten down just because they have entered an election year.

The Morrison government has been trying to push the line about energy security and lowering prices, guaranteeing power when renewables have failed miserably, even hinting at supporting the only reliable baseload power available – coal power. It was extremely relevant as it came just as hot weather coinciding with common wind power failures (eg 200,000 homes losing power in Victoria alone) and the stage-managed “independent” candidates against Morrison MPs were trumpeting climate, climate and climate. Some of the hard-fighting politicos on Morrisons side could have gone in hard on that.

Morrison’s energy minister, the realist Angus Taylor was hammering that when in stepped a supporter of the Greens/Climate alarmism wing of the party, Nick Greiner, now federal president of the party.

Morrison had just been talking publicly about meeting all climate targets etc, when the party president Greiner made his policy intervention on February 6.

“I accept the fact that having no sustainability policy would not be an appropriate way to go to an election,” he told ABC News on Tuesday.

“We do need a robust climate change policy, of course we do, and I believe there will be one, yes, before the election.”

Greiner does not seem to be some honest broker in this, or a truly “national” president. No, he is in on the green/climate alarmism side of this argument. Being allied to the so-called “moderate” (ie. “left wing”) of the New South Wales Liberal party, the home state of the PM Scott Morrison, Greiner has long adopted the positions of that left group pushing for more and more deference to the green energy side of politics. This – coincidentally, I am sure -, mirrors the policy of the lobbyist/faction leader Photios family, whose green energy/ climate group, Conservatives for Conservation, Greiner was happy to join as Patron.

This is one potential body blow to any Morrison fightback against the left wing Labor party whose 45-50% renewables energy policy would de-industrialise Australia. The fight against it would allow a real street-fighting politician to make great inroads into the opposition policies. It looks like Morrison might be fighting with one hand behind his back.  How can he have credibility on energy policy when public office holders in his party are going public to virtually sabotage the campaign?

Next came immigration sell out

If that wasn’t bad enough, the Morrison government treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, has also dealt a public body to another Morrison policy, the fight against a virtual open borders policy failure by the opposition parties. With many of his party leaders and a majority of the public being for a large cut to the official immigration intake, Frydenberg went all in on another policy which aims at keeping the intake high – higher than the public and prudence deemed appropriate.    

On February 8, with a headline “States cautious as Frydenberg embraces immigration”, Frydenberg is mentioned this way:-

Frydenberg has argued forcefully for the need to maintain a strong immigration intake to safeguard the nation’s economy amid growing global headwinds, as the nation’s biggest states ratchet up demands for more infrastructure spending to cope with congestion problems.

In an apparent softening of the government’s position last year, when Scott Morrison declared Australia’s major cities were “full” and committed to lowering the permanent migration cap, the Treasurer yesterday talked up immigration as vital for the nation’s economic success.

How do they expect Morrison and his Liberal Party to defy huge odds and fight back against the Labor party when major, cut-through policies can’t be argued effectively. We shall see what Morrison does now. If he goes quietly on these two issues, to say that Morrison is fighting with one hand behind his back might mean that he is doing it willingly!

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