While the climate challenge is not a matter of religion but of science and morality, Morrison urgently needs to follow Saul’s example – to accept the need for a climate conversion. Climate is not a political issue – not right v left nor conservative v progressive – but it can have significant political consequences. Right now, Morrison’s arrogance, stubbornness and intransigence are damaging him politically. Loading Morrison’s conversion would not be as painful as that of Saul. However, his sins of the past constitute significant ignorance and negligence: the lump of coal in Parliament, his consistent failure to admit the significance of the link between climate and droughts and bushfires, his support for fracking at a private dinner, and his gross misrepresentation of our capacity to meet our very modest Paris target, relying on fudging its delivery with carry-over Kyoto credits. A schoolchild might liken this to wanting to carry over the six gold stars received in year 6 to the HSC and university admission, but I recognise that Morrison doesn’t like children pointing out his failings in terms of their future.

Loading It is pure arrogance to ignore the experts: the 97 per cent of peer-assessed climate papers agreeing that humans are the cause of climate change, the National Farmers Federation on the need for a national program of regenerative agriculture to make our soils more resilient and drought-resistant, and the firefighters who now intend to move ahead with a summit – without the Prime Minister – to develop a national bushfire action plan. The result has been for our nation to be identified as “the” laggard. Australia is ranked last in terms of genuine progress towards our Paris commitment for 2030, which is only about half what was recommended by the independent Climate Change Authority. After COP25, the UN climate meeting in Madrid, we are now tagged as a “blocker” as well. Ironically, climate probably offers Morrison his best chance to show leadership, and to earn the genuine support of the “quiet Australians”. It will take honesty and courage. It is a cop-out, as it was for Malcolm Turnbull, to blame a small recalcitrant group of deniers in the government, especially when exhaustive voter polls, and a very significant list of business and civil society, have been begging for a decisive government-led response, in the midst of record bushfires and drought. Morrison just needs to out this rump in his government and discipline or manage them. He would be surprised at just how much slack voters would cut him for doing so.

Loading It is no argument to say we are a small emitter, which ignores our position as a major exporter of fossil fuels; nor is it relevant to boast about Australia's falling emissions per capita when we are among the highest per-capita emitters in the world, and the "fall" is due more to our strong population growth than reductions in emissions. Moreover, being a small contributor hasn’t stopped us joining wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, nor attacking the tech titans. Morrison’s conversion needs to start with honesty – simply with two admissions. First, Australia is a hot and dry continent and he should acknowledge climate change’s contribution to making it hotter and dryer. Second, our emissions are still rising, and we can’t reach our Paris targets without carrying forward our Kyoto credits. Neither admission should be that difficult, especially with the prospect of bi-partisan and widespread community support. Then he needs to shift the focus from the 2030 target to, say, net zero emissions or better by 2050. He could do this by developing a detailed transition strategy for the next three decades, sector by sector – in power, transport, agriculture, buildings, industry – and by putting in place the governance structures and processes to deliver it. It may be that we will need an independent climate transition commission to co-ordinate and drive this. It is hard to accept, for example, that significant coal-fired power plants, such as Hazelwood in Victoria and Northern in South Australia, were closed without any effective consideration, by either federal or state governments, of the essential transition for workers and their communities.