Best of 2025 - Assessing the Liberal Party's policy-making capacity |
Good policy should be evidence-based. But this is not the case with the Liberals energy policy and seems unlikely with their migration policy.
The Liberals have abandoned their commitment to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, even though it was originally introduced by a Coalition Government led by Liberal Scott Morrison.
The Liberal Party’s justification for this major policy change is their priority is to ensure that electricity is “affordable”. But there is no explanation of why increasing gas, nuclear and even coal in place of renewables will help to reduce power prices. Instead, as everyone who has examined the evidence knows, renewable energy is the cheapest source of power.
Nevertheless, in a pathetic attempt to justify this policy change, the Liberals like to blame renewable energy for the increase in electricity prices over the last few years, But again this defies the overwhelming evidence that all the increase in power prices in the last four years is entirely explained by the increase in coal and gas prices, not the cost of renewable energy.
But now, having torn themselves apart over carbon emissions and climate change, Sussan Ley is seeking to reunite the party with a new migration policy that will involve fewer migrants, although she won’t say how many yet.
What Ley is inviting the public to........