The usual garbage from the MSM today, via The Australian:
Barnaby Joyce and senior Nationals MPs have warned that the Coalition agreement could be severed over energy policy, setting up a showdown with city-based Liberal MPs fearing a voter backlash over coal in affluent blue-ribbon seats in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
After Scott Morrison yesterday rejected a push to fund new coal-fired power plants in central Queensland, Mr Joyce, the Prime Minister’s hand-picked drought envoy, told The Australian the termination of the Coalition was an option on the table.
Mr Joyce, who would stand for the Nationals leadership if a spill were called, openly defied the Prime Minister, declaring there was “no law saying the Nationals and Liberals must be together”.
Yeh, yeh. Domain hints at what is really going on:
Nationals MPs said they wanted the Prime Minister to fight harder for the Queensland project even if the state Labor government held out against it, saying the Coalition should “drag them to the table” to assure voters it was acting on electricity prices.
The Queensland Nationals will keep pushing for coal projects in their state despite Mr Morrison’s remarks, arguing that the extension or expansion of an existing coal-fired power station may not need state government approval and could be backed by a new federal underwriting scheme.
Mr Morrison argued that any Queensland coal-fired power project would not have support from the state government.
“I support moves to back coal-fired energy generation in Queensland because it still provides the majority of Australia’s energy needs; especially baseload power,” he said.
…The Nationals’ Michelle Landry holds Capricornia by just 0.6 per cent, Ken O’Dowd holds Flynn by 1 per cent and George Christensen holds Dawson by 3.3 per cent.
Look at those electorates. They are absolute One Nation coal heartland. This is a pantomime designed by QLD Nats bludger MPs to stabilise their sinecures.
As said many times, so long as ON exists, the LNP will never rule again. It divides the LNP base fatally. The answer was obvious years ago. They should have pulled the party together around lower immigration, which would have killed ON stone dead while offering Australia hope of higher wages and lower house prices to attack Labor.
This failure is fundamentally why Malcolm Turnbull got the boot, and why QLD’s Peter Dutton led the push. Alas for the party, as it enters its death throes and guts any and all labour border protections, its obvious that there is almost no consciousness of this bedrock political reality, only a weird kind of corporate sponsored low wages suicide instead.
Unless it changes, the LNP can look forward to a very long time in opposition, much along the lines of Labor’s historically fatal DLP split.
