Tony Abbott has been an implacable force against rational climate action in this country for the best part of a decade, and nothing has changed.



Having destroyed one set of energy policies designed to achieve orderly economic transformation and emissions reduction, and created a monumental policy botch-up as a consequence, he’s determined to destroy another.

After warming his vocal cords for months, Abbott now says it would be “unconscionable” for Malcolm Turnbull to “go further down the renewables path”. By this he means implement a clean energy target.

Let’s be very clear about this.

What is actually unconscionable, and I don’t invoke the word lightly, is Abbott’s own behaviour.

Let’s also be very clear about what is happening right now.

Abbott wants to lead an insurgency with the aim of sinking Malcolm Turnbull’s climate and energy policy, which is now, and has always been, a proxy for his leadership.

Like an armchair general summoning a militia, using his favoured media proxies as loud hailers, the former prime minister has seeded a story that he might cross the floor.

If he does cross the floor (as opposed to threatening to, in order to pressure Malcolm Turnbull and Josh Frydenberg into producing the most coal-friendly energy policy imaginable over the next few weeks), with a posse of sharpshooters (Craig Kelly, potentially; George Christensen, who is already on the record as a no vote; a handful of others) it doesn’t mean the policy is dead.

The government could still wrangle an energy policy through the parliament with Labor’s support, if it manages to produce a policy framework which Labor can live with (a big if, on current indications, but not impossible).

But there’s still a poison pill.

If Turnbull does the rational thing and tries to end the climate wars – an outcome which business, the energy sector, climate groups, state governments and many Australian voters are now desperately looking for – then Abbott will characterise this as a fundamental betrayal of conservative values.

Turnbull will be signing up with Labor and the Greens, and conspiring in the de-industrialisation of Australia.

Being constructive is considered a mortal sin in Australia’s hyperpartisan, knock-down clown politics. Being constructive makes some of the current crop of parliamentarians – now hardwired for a permanent war which is diminishing them and diminishing the country – nervous.

So in Abbott’s brutal calculation, it’s heads I win, tails I win.

Damage is the ultimate objective.

Now before we get to conviction, or the lack thereof, let’s look again at what Abbott has done when he’s had power and opportunity, as opposed to the expression of feelings during his second career delivering careless whispers in Ray Hadley’s locker room, or during staff reunion night on Sky News After Dark.

I’ve already pointed out in some detail that Abbott is actually the primary architect of the problem Turnbull is now trying to fix in energy policy.

Abbott scrapped the investment mechanism which was legislated to drive orderly transformation in the energy sector and the economy, and left in place the pull-forward mechanism for renewable energy investment, albeit with a lower target.

If investment in energy infrastructure is now lopsided, as Abbott contends, we can start by interrogating his own clustercuss.

Abbott also agreed Australia would sign up to the Paris international climate accord, which is one of the reasons Australia needs renewable technologies to generate low-emissions electricity.

Cause, meet effect. In September 2015, Abbott certainly sounded like he meant to sign up, that this wasn’t some random accident: “Unlike some other countries which make these pledges and don’t deliver, Australia does deliver when we make a pledge.”

These are just facts. They are inconvenient facts for Abbott now, which is why he fudges and disavows them, and blames others – but facts they remain.

Having reviewed the Abbott record, and noted a gap between present statements and past actions, now let’s consider conviction.

Abbott’s behaviour would still be muddle-headed, vengeful, negative and destructive, regardless of his motives – but the most disconcerting thing, from my perch, appears to be the lack of intrinsic values behind the pugilism and the flip-flops.

Unburdening himself in Ray’s locker room on Tuesday, Abbott told the 2GB host the government needed to drop the clean energy target, obviously, to make coal great again, that being the preferred virtue-signalling du jour of the reactionary right, which is otherwise completely post-materialist – but also to create a partisan point of difference with Labor at the next election.

Let that last point just settle on your mind for a moment. It might take a moment to absorb the vacancy of that statement, because if you absorb its true meaning, you grasp that the person making it is in pure expediency territory.

If you are a political leader, you can drop the clean energy target because it is third or fourth worst policy (which is my own view).

You certainly can drop it because you’ve got a better idea, and you’ve got a hope of getting your better idea through the parliament. You can certainly shape your policies to work with the politics of the day.

But to say let’s drop it to win the next election means you need to be prepared to forget what the country needs, forget what the chief scientist recommends, forget the fact business is now becoming desperate for certainty, forget the fact voters think politics is little better than a stinking carcass – you need to be in a headspace where cheap intra-day political argument triumphs over everything.

Forget the substance. More about the wedge. More about me.

Onwards, to self-indulgence, to the great unreason, to policy oblivion.

That, for me, is the working definition of unconscionable.

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