I’m struggling to find a better summary of the Coalition’s election campaign than “nervous evil”. Normal evil is, for example, Tony Abbott loudly announcing during an entire election campaign that he plans to kill off the carbon pricing scheme in Australia (that turned out to be relatively popular evil, too).
Nervous evil is different. It’s the same wrecking, callous, destructive intent. But it is ashamed. It is anxious about the optics of doing a huge Godzilla stomp through carefully constructed climate policy. It is quiet, hesitant and almost shy about the flamethrower that’s hidden behind their back.
You can see this in a range of issues that have emerged in the election campaign. Peter Dutton hopped around a variety of positions when it comes to axing or not axing tax breaks for EVs. The nuclear power campaign was unceremoniously dropped. The domestic gas reservation scheme put a friendly face on their plans to deregulate fossil gas expansion.
I can’t recall any major, consistent or loudly announced attacks on renewable energy. As I’ve discussed before here, this was a right-wing campaign forced to dress up in moderate clothes by the embarrasing entrace of Donald Trump (whose talent got Canada’s centre-left party re-elected a few days ago).
In one of their final acts before election day on Saturday, the Coalition have dropped probably one of their most materially significant climate positions before anybody has any chance to properly digest it.
It’s evil, but it’s nervous evil – they hid this until the last moment possible. The Smart Energy Council has a list of programs the party announced they’ll be axing as part of their ‘costings‘ released late on Thursday.
● $2.3 billion Cheaper Home Batteries Program. Axed.
● New Vehicle Efficiency Standards. Axed.
● $26 billion Future Made in Australia Program. Axed.
● $19 billion Rewiring the Nation Program. Axed
● $16 billion National Reconstruction Fund. Axed.
● Net Zero Economy Agency. Axed.
● Tax discounts for electric vehicles. Axed.
● Production Tax Credits for renewable hydrogen and critical minerals. Axed.
● Funding to Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water. Slashed.
● Additional funding to ARENA and Clean Energy Finance Corporation. Stopped.
I found a few more awful line items in the list:
“Cease duplicative research activities of the Climate Change Authority”
“Cease funding to the Environmental Defender’s Office”
“Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts – Net Zero Unit and maritime strategic fleet – reprioritisation”
“Establishing the Critical Gas Infrastructure Fund”
There is a rough (that’s putting it nicely) explanation of how their nuclear program would work, including the budget hit from providing equity investments.
The party very clearly waited until nearly 5 million people had already voted before releasing these wildly unpopular positions. If it had any confidence at all in being a climate-wrecking, pro-fossil party of destruction, none of this would be new information. We would have heard about it well prior to this weekend.
More than a decade ago, Tony Abbott was elected thanks to his loud, proud promise to kill the carbon pricing scheme. But once he won, he realised that climate policy in general was well liked (particularly renewable energy policy) – and that ultimately helped bring about his downfall.
The Coalition have been wedged between their ideology, and the electorate’s pure hostility towards their ideology. The party tried to reframe pro-fossil thinking as the solution to the cost of living crisis, but didn’t follow that up with any policy beyond ‘let’s build tens of ultra-expensive nuclear plants’.
They tried to appeal to voters with an effective vehicle fossil fuel subsidy, but that subsidy was only of real benefit to the wealthy who drive the most. And on every issue in the climate and energy space, they cosplayed as moderates while continuing to think nasty, right-wing thoughts. That was obvious, and it was met with real, justified distrust.
Short of a minor miracle, they’re likely to emerge from Saturday’s poll badly scathed. And if they do, I think they’ll deserve it: despite the many criticisms of the current government, Labor has built and will continue to build a suite of energy and climate policies that is, at the very least, the first step towards real, effective climate policy.
Ideally, the next government will face immense pressure from an independent crossbench to do far better. But in these final moments, we are given a clear picture of a future of destruction that’ll be avoided if the Coalition truly lose, tomorrow.
And I hope whoever hasn’t voted yet takes a good, long look at this late little moment of real honesty from the nervous evil party.
