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CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT It's that time of the year again when you start looking for things to
CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
A Federal Opposition backbencher from rural New South Wales who refuses to confirm whether or not he is still a member of a party that gets less votes than the Greens, has this week once again proven to be the most powerful man in conservative politics.
Barnaby Joyce MP, the three-times Deputy Prime Minister, has gotten exactly what he wants after a very public dummy spit last month.
The controversial rural politician allowed the entire Australian media to think he 'was losing it' over the last few weeks, after back-to-back interviews about how unhappy he was in the National Party, which is the junior member of the 'Coalition' that has lost two Federal Elections in a row. By significant margins.
Barnaby's gripe, he says, was with the Liberal Party's obsession with 'Net Zero Carbon Emissions by 2050' policy - which the Coalition had previously committed to in 2021, while he was Deputy PM.
For many onlookers, this is a bizarre hill to die on. Given that the rest of the country, including rural voters, are currently in the midst of the worst housing crisis that this country has ever seen.
But still, Barnaby Joyce insists that energy policy is the number one concern for regional voters, many of whom lose their homes to escalating natural disasters every couple years.
The Coalition's resistance to put forward any climate change policies over the last decade has seen their votes plummet in the cities and coastal regions, with ten Independent candidates snatching their once safest seats after campaigning on literally nothing else but climate action.
But Barnaby, for reasons that are not clear, insists that scrapping Net Zero should be the number one priority for the conservatives, regardless of whether it means that they never win another election again because it looks a lot like they are acting only in the interests of major fossil fuels companies.
Regardless of the optics, it seems Barnaby Joyce has gotten his way again this week. As the National Party formally scraps their commitment to Net Zero, and the Liberals look set to do the same over the course of the next week.
He's done it again. Time for a cold one!