By Jo Nova
Is it any wonder conservative politics is in such a deep hole?
We got another reminder this weekend of how Australia was sold out by our politicians –effectively coerced by large foreign financial forces. When Australia adopted “Net Zero targets” in late 2021 it was against the wishes of the voters. As I noted at the time the Prime Minister Scott Morrison and the Treasurer were disarmingly honest about why they did this. Well that explains everything: Bankers bullied Australia into Net Zero.
The Prime Minister and Treasurer laid it out with an extraordinary admission that “Global Financiers” threatened to jack up our national interest rates by 1.5% which would have sparked a “17% investment collapse” (according to their models) and thus presumably a stock market crash. I’ve talked about this in speeches ever since, but hardly any political commentators seem to recognize the significance.
Foreign banks were setting Australian domestic policy with threats and intimidation. The money changers look, act and smell like the One World Government we didn’t realize we had.
It is also a lesson in the peril of holding large debts.
Former Prime Minister Scott Morrison has had a few years to polish the story of why he decided we had to have a Net Zero target — we were going to be economically ostracized:
‘Political prostitution on both sides’: Morrison and Joyce’s net zero battle
By Paul Kelly, The Australian, July 12th, 2026
Mr Morrison described the forces that drove his thinking: “I became convinced in early 2021, if not late 2020, that regardless of what we thought, global markets, capital markets, business, had already made up their minds. The world was moving to a new-zero economy. Australia had one of two choices – to be part of that or be ostracized from the global economy.
“In my view that would be disastrous for us. We might not like it but we don’t set the global rules of investment decision-making.”
But lets not forget back in 2021, the raw naked truth:
Modelling shows real cost of no net-zero carbon emissions
Greg Brown and Geoff Chambers, The Australian, Nov 13, 2026.
Businesses and households would have faced interest rate hikes of up to 1.5 per cent under expected penalties imposed by global financiers if the government had failed to adopt net zero emissions by 2050, modelling for the Glasgow climate package shows.
The penalty regime would have sparked a 17 per cent investment collapse by the middle of the next decade, cutting 0.9 per cent from gross domestic product and making each Australian more than $650 poorer.
Households would have paid an extra $25bn a year to service home loans, and business and credit card debts.
And thus Scott Morrison saved us from “an extra $25 billion” in interest payments only for us to spend that money on poles, wires, tunnels and chinese solar panels instead — albeit with a lot of help from the Labor Party.
When the big test came, it was a tough test, but he failed. The Prime Minister of Australia was supposed to stand up for the voters:
Scott Morrison had gone to a “climate election” in 2019 with no Net Zero target and astonished the pundits by winning. People forget how shocking the 2019 election result was. Sportsbet was so sure the Labor Party would win with their big climate action plan, they paid out $1.3 million dollars two days before the election was even held.
So Australian voters were offered climate action, but didn’t want it (yet again). Two years later, Scott Morrison set a Net Zero Target anyway, just in time for the Glasgow UN shindig. While Morrison got what he thought he wanted, it doomed the conservative Coalition. They had thrown away one of their best weapons against an absurd Labor Party platform which was trying to change the weather. By pandering to the Woke Energy Gods, they had inadvertantly endorsed them. They could hardly criticise the Labor Party when they wanted the same goal. Six months later they lost the next election. Perhaps this was the point of coercing the Liberals into setting targets? Sabotage — to neutralize them in the political arena?
Swept away in a bubble?
The irony of Morrisons new admission is that he decided we needed a net zero target in early 2021, which was the exact peak of the renewables market bubble globally (in January 2021).
If Scott Morrison had paid a team of skeptical scientists and engineers to audit the mess in climate and energy policies — he would quickly have found out that the weather has always changed, the storms were always bad, the models are horribly wrong, and the random generators were doomed in the current form and hideously expensive.
The Global Clean Energy Index peaked in January 2021. https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/indices/sustainability/sp-global-clean-energy-transition-index/#overview
In further admissions we see what kind of coercive power the COP meetings have on leaders:
Mr Morrison said: “The thing that threatened the existence of the government more than anything else was the COP26 conference. I had to go to Glasgow. “The government nearly fell that Sunday when the Nats met, and their partyroom voted by just two votes to support the net-zero stance.
To be fair, he now says it was also to get AUKUS up and running as well.
So the coalition nearly fell apart — such was the effect of pushing a lie. Barnaby Joyce screwed good money out of the deal for his constituents, but ultimately this didn’t work out well for The Nationals either:
“I keep asking for more and more,” Mr Joyce said. “I said to the party, ‘If I ask for Morrison’s strides, then I’ll get them’. I think by the end I’d got about $32bn.”
That figure cannot be verified, but the subsequent Mr Frydenberg budget offered immense funding for Nationals’ projects, inland rail, dams, pipelines, upgrades for ports, highways, roads and beef roads, water security, and agricultural and industry development.
Asked how he would describe his political battle with Mr Morrison, Mr Joyce offered a remarkable statement: “It was a huge deal. It was political prostitution on both sides. I think that’s a fair call. One paid for it and the other one gave it up.”
The right choice is always the one closest to the truth. The conservatives picked the wrong side. They didn’t do their homework.
When dealing with evil doers, or recalcitrant people in general, including children, the best policy is to firmly stand up to them.
It’s a basic principle of leadership that used to be understood, back in the day.
Morrison lacked leadership in failing to stand up to the banks.
The banks are never going to abandon a massively indebted country that spends borrowed money without restrictions or concerns like Australia does. We are an excellent market for them and will be for generations which is how long it will take to pay off the debt, if there were ever the political will to do so.
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Simple remedy as has been practiced by international debtors in recent decades:
Induce Hyperinflation.
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I agree and would have stood firm and called the bluff. Being told that you won’t be playing marbles with the gang, Morrison – prompted by the odious Boris Johnson- folded. What a weakling.
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Back then, as now, my message is the same. The Conservatives have abandoned their roots and it’ll be a cold day in hell when I offer my vote to them again – for as long as the main protagonists hold their seats we KNOW the Liberal party, and they will continue to play “whichever way the wind blows” politics.
You see, Conservatism is like an internal compass, it’s Wisdom, Common Sense. When you don’t have it, you don’t have it. You can never regain that which you never had. The current crop never had it, so how can they expect Conservatives to think they’ve “learned from their mistakes?” They view their mistakes as “doing something the Electorate didn’t want,” rather than viewing turning into Labor Lite as “wrong.” They simply don’t get it.
We must burn it down.
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Will you vote for Count Bin Face if you are in the right area?
The major parties have decided not to fight the by-election for Farage, possibly because their votes will be way down (and rightly) and Count Bin Face might be their only chance.
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Bin Face is another clever Blob ploy, whether employed by them or just convenient to them. I mean it’s pretty funny in some ways! Farage stuffed up, sure. History is replete with very successful politicians who didn’t have the right words and/or big skellies in the closet, but managed to bang the rocks together anyway.
Churchill was a major fail up to 1939. Milei, Meloni, Trump spring to mind – blob said they were not up to it but they are making History. No reason Hanson can’t do the same. If the Blob says don’t do it, DO IT. When the Devil gives you advice, thank him for it and do the opposite.
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Tim,
When did you last hear a “Liberal” politician stand up in public and state the basic principles of Conservative Liberalism? Sir Robert Menzies did this often.
When did you last hear a Lib getting stuck into Socialism and Communism? A few years back for me. Now Libs carry on as if these are good ways to present to the voter. Geoff S
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As I laid out yesterday, the person whose stamp is all over this disaster is Angus Taylor, Australia’s only “Minister for Emissions Reduction”. A Rhodes scholar rival to both Abbott and Turnbull, he was an Energy business consultant, economist and clearly the person most interested. I don’t think Kelly is being analytical, just repeating what Morrison said in his own defence. The big business was in the UN scam of Climate Cash.
And the head on conflict with sceptic Joyce who threatened to bring down the Morrison government. Joyce finally conceded but said they would never be able to pass laws supporting Net Zero. But Albanese could. The role of Angus Taylor in the brutal and wrong dismissal of Abbott and the signature in Glasgow has never been admitted, but is obvious in hindsight. Who cares about the fact that 38 years later, man made emissions driven Climate Change is obviously fake? Like Alabense’s $1Bn tossed to a failing Quantum Computer company in California. Or the gigantic sinkholes of Snowy II and a $1Tn National Grid to seize control of all electricity in Canberra.
What is the point of Parliament when one or two people decide election promises don’t matter because they have other ideas? And no one can stop them. Plus potentially secret vested interests? Since Snowy II and Turnbull’s gift of $444million in cash to his wife, no one is accountable for the unilateral actions of the Prime Minister. Trump is accountable to Congress, but the Australian Prime Minister does not even have to explain his decisions or justify them to Parliament. What sort of Democracy is this? Like Justin Trudeau’s dictatorship without parliament, ordering banks to shut the accounts of tens of thousands of people for donating $10.
Morrison’s justification of his actions does not explain his behavior. We are left to guess who was behind Net Zero and Angus Taylor’s fingerprints are all over this. He has as much credibility on Nett Zero as Albanese has on Capital Gains taxes. The only consistently truthful person has been Pauline Hanson.
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Every other person in this sorry story reminds me of Adam Bandt’s statement “we tell them what they want to hear. And when we get power we do what we like”. It’s the same story for Liberals and Labor and Greens. At least Kelly’s recounting of Morrison’s explanation has made it clear than Joyce fought hard for his core principle. The war on the sixth element of the Periodic table must stop. All anti carbon expenses must stop immediately. All money must be directed to helping states exploit their coal reserves, not build National energy control for the minions of Canberra. And prepare for the next drought and AUKUS. “Si vis pacem, para bellum” The UK needs to do the same.
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And the last thing Australia needs is a million million dollar and super fragile National Grid. How many nuclear power plants would that build? How many HELE coal plants to exploit our biggest National exports? Our free coal and gas? Far cheaper than wind and solar. And tiny land requirements. How much new exploration for gas and oil? Who needs a National Grid?
And why is nothing ever cost justified to parliament? No Kings is far more appropriate in Australia than the US. Parliament could start by asking for the $444million back, or what’s left of it. And sell the absurd Quntum computer share. Find a use for Forrests’ free $1Bn water pipeline from the Fitzroy River to Gladstone. What was the backup plan? Don’t tell me.
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“And the last thing Australia needs is a million million dollar and super fragile National Grid. ”
Far from an exhaustive comparison.
Ten years ago Victoria had 4 coal and 7 natural gas generators to run the entire state. Today Victoria has 2500 turbines with another 64 large scale solar farms with another 75 approved or planned.
Why is it that I can see the more complex you make a process the more likely it will develop problems and yet governments, with all their ability to hire consultants can’t.
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You answer your own question Sambar.
Governments hire consultants. To give them the advice they seek.
A consultant who does not give the sought answers doesn’t get a second chance.
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And it will need numerous Synchronous condensers at 130 Million each just to get the complex mess to maintain the required frequency..
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Indeed.
How stupid does one have to be to declare war against the fourth most abundant element in the universe and the fourteenth most abundant element on earth?
-60,000,000 to 100,000,000 gigatonnes in rocks.
-38,000 gigatonnes in the ocean.
-3,000-4,000 gigatonnes in coal, oil and gas.
-2,000 gigatonnes living and dead organic matter.
-A relatively small 870 gigatonnes in the atmosphere
It’s all typical Leftist scientific ignorance and stupidity.
And how many of them have even heard of the carbon cycle which used to be taught in primary school, back in the day?
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I can remember being taught about the water cycle in primary school.
The first I heard of the carbon cycle was many years later when I taught it in secondary school. I thought it was just an ambitious curriculum writer playing copy cat.
And the first I heard of treemometers was in a Mathematics teachers conference handbook. My response was incredulity first that anybody would publish something so tenuous. Second that anybody would see it as a way to enhance their reputation. Then the irrascible Mann appeared on the scene.
Ever get the feeling you are getting old?
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All living things are connected. DNA, Chromosones. We have 60% genetic overlap with a carrot.
Living things are almost entirely made from only CO2 and H2O. All living things breathe in oxygen and breathe out CO2. All convert carbohydrates into CO2 and plants also convert CO2 into Carbohydrate. Carbo hydrates are just hydrated Carbon Dioxide. Hydrocarbons are dead living things, part of the cycle, nothing more. Carbon is not our enemy.
And our politicians and bankers have decided they can tax it, control it, ban it and declare CO2 an existential threat to humanity. It’s beyond tragic and beyond evil.
It’s all about the money, taxing breathing. A dream come true for bankers and their friends in politics starting with the outrageous and worthless 80,000 people UN. There is no science.
The UN now wants a $million million a year. To do what is not known? Perhaps to fund world communism?
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All living things are related, which is a bit of a shock. Fungi? Lobsters? I was amazed with Jordan Petersen comments on the response of lobsters to seratonin. The same drugs have the similar effects on lobsters, which means we are closely related. It’s one thing to know this and quite another to imagine a common ancestor. Although I have probably known some people who would be closer than most. The ancestry of bankers though is more difficult.
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Morrison led a weak Feral Guv’ment.
Emissions Impossible.
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Great comments. I endorse them all. Both parties, the UNIPARTY, have brought Australia to the brink of disaster with terrible policies especially the green policies which have given birth to the absolute madness of renewable energy. Taylor is simply terrible. He has no capacity to communicate with the public and his background, which you have described accurately, means everything he now says about Net Zero and renewables and energy generally cannot be believed.
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Economic and scientific illiterates have ruined the country. And the lies continue.
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I’d like to see ScuMo explain away his latest venture, fast tracking Indians into Oz.
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The problem with we Aussies is that we have a bad dose of FOMO. Way down here at the bottom of the Southern hemisphere, a long way from all those cool dudes in the US and Europe. Scotty from marketing “had” to go to Glasgow. Why? To get a photo posing with the rest of the world’s leaders I suppose. For a selfie with Boris Johnson?
It’s why we’re still a member of the moribund UN. Again, fear of missing out on some useless treaty.
So, why not challenge these financial institutions by calling their bluff. Something along the lines of “you put up interest rates if we DONT sign up to Net Zero and we’ll pull your licences in Australia”.
I’m sure that’s what the Chinese do all the time.
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Yes, but the banks would never be so crude as to threaten. More like nice country you’ve got there. Shame if something were to happen to it.
They would be more likely to say something like market forces will put downwards pressure on interest rates for borrowers with economies responding blah blah blah.
Oh, I run out of patience even trying to imitate their bafflegab.
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Basically, what Jo has said is that Scott and Josh wimped it. I would agree. Much as I despise Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers, if the same were to happen to those two and some banks were threatening some basic Labor Green ideology, there would be some serious pushback.
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Yet the cause of this BS and con merchant’s parade is obviously wrong.
Can anyone use proper data or evidence to show us their so called climate emergency, or crisis or even Biden’s so called existential threat?
It’s not: polar bears, or SLR or the fabled hot spot or an increase in deaths from extreme weather events, or wild fires or the GBR or extreme changes to El Nino or la Nino or Aussie rainfall or ….?
Why not check out the data and wake up?
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Here’s Dr Pielke jr’s death rates from extreme weather events per 1 million people since 1960.
We are now living in the safest period in Human history and yet very few understand the scientific data. Why is it so?
1960- 320 per million.
1970- 80 per million.
1980- 3 per million.
1990- 1.3 per million.
2025 – 0.8 per million.
His article takes about 5 minutes to read so what’s their problem?
https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/congratulations-world
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Meh
Every nation has MASSIVE debts. The lesson is to have leaders that understand how banks work, not ones that can barely balance a checkbook or negotiate their way out of a wet paper bag.
Australia failed to use the one weapon debtors do have against banks … scale. As J. Paul Getty said …
Australia (and every other developed nation) owes banks WAY more than $100 million. Banks can play tough guy all they want, but at the end of the day, when you owe them billions of dollars, that is their problem as much as it is your problem. There comes a point where sheer scale of money changing hands changes the dynamics of the relationship.
Just ask Donald Trump. He spent most of his real estate career fleecing banks by borrowing a tons of money during the good times and then renegotiating the deals massively in his favor during the lean times. He knew the bank needed him solvent in order to pay off the loan, even if it meant sacrificing a bit of the return on their end. Getting something back was better than Trump going bankrupt and getting nothing back.
Australia is a MUCH bigger fish than Trump ever was. They had the same kind of leverage on a MUCH larger scale. But their leaders were too dumb to use it.
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Reminds me of the threat that Australia will be targeted by nuclear weapons because it has nuclear powered submarines.
Gonna lauch nuclear sub reactors back at the agressors? /sarc
Australians are gulible to climate backmail.
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I wonder if Paul Kelly reads this blog? He makes out that he is highly erudite and knowledgeable in geopolitics. Maybe he is but it seems pretty clear he is in the pay of the said “multinational financiers” – as Jo likes to call them “the Blob” – and I agree.
I was having to do a whole lot of refreshes this morning to get this article to load… evidence the Blob doesn’t want people reading it???
And of course now I am on their hit list?
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A beautiful dream for bankers to force net zero on to gullible Australians who will burn in global warming hell if they don’t reach out to save the world.
Geez, net zero has got to work in Australia with all that wind, sunshine, coast and very low population density
The world is in huge trouble if Australians cannot reach net zero.
Yup. Despte every possible favorable condition, it’s not working.
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Morrison stupidly mistook Mark Carney’s Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero as something other than financial robber barons self-interest. The world’s banksters were happily fishing for a parade of low-risk, high-return investment opportunities supported by OPM supplied by dunces, just like Morrison – certainly not trying to save the world from Climate Armageddon.
The 1.5% Australian capital surcharge threat was a political fever dream.
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Craziest part about this, if Morrison had stood up to the bankers in November 2021, he would have looked a genius in February 2022 when Putin tried to invade Ukraine with spike in energy prices and would have won a landslide election in May 2022. Also, the people cheering on Net Zero insanity of November 2021 are the same people who since the sixties claimed there was some secretive cabal of bankers running the world.
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It wouldn’t have helped.
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Of course the bankers wanted Australia to go down the net-zero path. We’d have to spend huge amounts of money and as a consequence borrow even more huge sums – big profit for the bankers, and it puts Australia in an even more vulnerable position for future bullying.
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Jo ,
Thank you for this article. Josh Frydenberg on TV discussing threats from bankers as excusing “net zero carbon” has stuck vividly in my mind. That same mind says that extortion is a criminal act that should have been investigated by Commonwealth police.
The other vivid event is PM Morrison doing a trivial little shonky deal with Greens for the price of banning nuclear energy for Australia. Such profound decisions require public debate and informed consent of the voters, not deals of the childish type “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours”.
Since 2000, Australians have lost sight of basic principles like truth, honesty, kindness, positivity, heritage, right and wrong. I weep for the futures of my grandchildren.
Geoff S
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“Global Financiers” threatened to jack up our national interest rates by 1.5% which would have sparked a “17% investment collapse”
Peanuts. It’s easy to see that now, but it was Scott Morrison’s job to see it back then. He failed. He had to be thrown out. Anthony Albanese is the very high price that we had to pay for that, but it’s only temporary. Taking the long view, that is.
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