By Jo Nova
A new day dawns Downunder
For the first time in years, the Opposition doesn’t sound like a school girl (well, not all the time). And, suddenly the government has realized they shouldn’t go burning $2 billion on a COP31 UN-love-fest while voters can’t afford electricity — their political opponents could turn it into a stinging election campaign. Instead, as a consolation prize, they will fly Chris Bowen, the Minister for Weather Fiddling, to Turkey to preside over the COP meeting there and star in the bureaucratic beauty contest.
Giving up on the COP Cabaret will save billions, not just in hotel rooms in Adelaide, but in all the tokenistic daft climate projects the government might have started to impress the UN powerlords. As it is, the PM radically increased our Net Zero target in September — was that to earn favor with the UN to cinch the deal — if it was, the UN won. The fantasy target certainly wasn’t done to impress voters, because the Labor Party hid it from them during the election. Who was ‘Albo’ trying to impress?
Freed from the shackles of the Net Zero straight-jacket, the Opposition’s Energy spokesman can finally talk with some conviction about the awful costs, the poverty, the national productivity loss, the decline in standards of living, and the smelters that are closing. In a rare moment of functional governance, the Opposition promises to force the grid manager (the AEMO) to put cheap electricity ahead of weather voodoo. So, lucky Australians can still have hope, that one day our power stations might even be directed to make cheap reliable power rather than change the jet streams over Antarctica.
But the Opposition are camouflaging themselves in the talisman of climate virtue, as if chanting the spells of the Paris Agreement will protect them from the Global Bullies. To ward off the bad spirits, and BlackRock bankers, they still say they’re committed to the Paris agreement, while promising to consider building coal plants, which sounds a lot like the Chinese “net-zero plan”. Smile and say ‘Yes‘ while doing whatever you were going to do anyway.
Apart from burning the token Parisian incense, its heartening to hear some of the messages we’ve been saying for years, even if we feel like beating our head on the wall:
Australians desperately need reset on energy for more affordable power
By Dan Tehan, Opposition Spokesman for Energy in The Australian
Australia is in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis. This is undeniable. We have suffered the steepest declines in living standards of the developed world. Real disposable income has fallen by 8.5 per cent since 2022. More than a million Australians now work multiple jobs simply to get by. Under Labor, poverty has risen from 12.4 per cent (one in eight) to 14.2 per cent (one in seven). That is 3.7 million Australians, including 757,000 children, are living below the poverty line.
Our industries are collapsing under this strain. Closures in Whyalla, Port Pirie and Mount Isa are costing thousands of jobs. These are real livelihoods of real people that are being lost. Rio Tinto, who owns the Tomago Aluminium Smelter, directly attributes its imminent closure to soaring electricity prices. ASIC data shows 14,722 companies entered external administration in the 12 months to June 2025. Under the Coalition in 2021, that number was just 4,235.
And the clincher:
All of this pain has achieved nothing. When the Coalition left office, emissions were 28 per cent below 2005 levels. Today they are just 28.7 per cent below 2005 levels. Labor talks tough on climate but has delivered virtually no emissions reductions and higher costs. This is abject policy failure.
Here comes the incantation:
We remain committed to the Paris Agreement and to responding to climate change responsibly and affordably. We will reduce emissions on average year-on-year, and in line with comparable countries, moving as fast as technology allows rather than pursuing arbitrary, unachievable targets. To that end, we will use the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and ARENA to support scalable, breakthrough low-emissions technologies, including carbon capture and storage and advanced nuclear technologies that enable whole-of-economy decarbonisation.
The Blob rewards the Blob players?
Did anyone think any Australians would feel warm and gooey inside just because “an aussie” starred in a field of UN Blob-o-crats?
Chris Bowen to serve as COP31 president after Australia cedes hosting rights to Turkey
Chris Bowen will become Australia’s “part-time” Energy Minister as he takes on “all the powers” to lead global climate negotiations for the next 12 months, after the Albanese government ceded the right to host next year’s UN climate change summit to Turkey.
Many are wondering if Chris Bowen can be a part time Minister when our electricity grid and gas supply are in a crisis.
Sussan Ley challenged the decision, saying “Australians simply cannot afford to have a part-time minister in charge of energy policy”. “Families deserve an Energy Minister who is focused on their bills, not on chasing headlines overseas,” the Opposition Leader told The Australian.
But I say, if Turkey wants him, they should keep him. The further he is from the Australian electricity grid, the better.