Somebody needs to send Andrew Bragg, Tim Wilson, Dave Sharma and their bed-wetting cohort application forms to join the Teals. The Liberal party now stands at a critical – some might even say existential – moment in its history. Yet these so-called ‘moderates’ appear hellbent on ensuring the proud and electorally unstoppable party of Sir Robert Menzies, John Howard and Tony Abbott remains in permanent and irrelevant opposition.

In a move that has strong overtones of the successful defeat of Anthony Albanese’s disgraceful, racist Voice referendum, the Nationals this week took the brave and sensible decision to get ahead of the Liberals and ditch net zero. Certainly in name, and largely in deed. ‘Abandon net zero’ or ‘dump net zero’ is a perfectly workable and appealing three-word slogan with which to destroy this hard-core ideological Labor government and its destructive renewables-at-all-costs agenda at the next federal election, much as ‘stop the boats’ did the trick back in 2013 and ‘Say No to the Voice’ did in 2023.

Watching the Liberal party agonise over what is not a difficult problem to solve may be great sport for the media and the left, but it is infuriating and dispiriting for Australian conservatives. Truth one: net zero is socialism on steroids. Truth two: climate change is not even remotely an existential threat to mankind. Put those two truths together and there is only one conceivable, honest centre-right approach to winning government. The ideology, concept and even the phrase ‘net zero’ must be consigned to the dustbin of history.

By far the most fatuous comment against this unavoidable truth has come from Senator Andrew Bragg, who is in desperation now proclaiming that Australia will become a ‘pariah state’ if we abandon net zero. This is a sad regurgitating of the original Morrison/Frydenberg line from  2021 that Australia must adopt net zero (at Glasgow) or else a mysterious cabal of unnamed ‘international investors’ would bankrupt this nation. It was a monstrous and duplicitous lie back then and it is equally idiotic now. One only has to look at the United States to swiftly dismiss the notion. Perhaps what Senator Bragg really meant to say was that the renewables grifters would turn us into a ‘pariah’ by taking their mendicant businesses elsewhere. Good. And good riddance.

Senator Dave Sharma showed his true colours with his telling comment that suggested the Liberals should abandon the Nationals rather than abandon net zero. Given that the Liberal party has never held government in its own right, what Mr Sharma is demanding is that the Liberals either remain in permanent opposition or else form a coalition with somebody else. Who? The Teals, perhaps? Wow, there’s a genius idea!

A similarly warped idea came from the one Liberal MP who has shown you can beat the Teals – Tim Wilson – but who now rather than celebrating that fact has instead decided to try his hand at coining a new catchy phrase: ‘the Liberals must not become National Party-lite’, he proclaimed. This follows on from his Victorian colleague Senator James Paterson’s similarly cringeworthy attempt only a couple of week’s ago to coin his own expression: ‘the Liberals must not be Farage-lite’.

Both were unsuccessful attempts to counter the most common criticism (and one largely promulgated in this magazine) that the Liberals since Malcolm Turnbull have become ‘Labor-lite’.

That monicker has stuck because it is embedded in an inescapable truth. In an era of authoritarian ‘wokeness’, big government overreach and overspending, and leftist climate propaganda, the Liberal party has on too many occasions simply abandoned its conservative roots and values in order to appease the leftist chattering classes. ‘National Party-lite’ and ‘Farage-lite’ are catchphrases that are as lacking in credibility as they are instantly forgettable, for they are not even remotely grounded in any political truth. Which is why neither term will gain any traction whatsoever. Sorry, fellas.

Interestingly, Senator Paterson has now suggested, according to media reports, that the Liberals should dump net zero. Abandoning net zero is literally half of Nigel Farage’s entire platform. So in the space of a fortnight Mr Paterson has gone from ‘Farage-lite is the road to ruin for the Liberals’ to ‘copying 50 per cent of what Farage is doing is the road to success for the Liberals’.

Still, if the bed-wetters are determined to split the Liberal party away from the Coalition, be it on their heads. In doing so they will rip the Liberal party itself in two, at which point those who still cling to the net zero mantra may as well join the Teals or Labor, whilst those who oppose net zero will be free to form some kind of anti-net zero coalition with the Nationals and One Nation.

What is another unavoidable truth is that the 60-40 majority of Australians across all states (with the exception of Bubbletown, ACT) that comprehensively defeated the Voice referendum, is waiting on the porch, baseball bats at the ready, to defeat Labor and net zero in 2028. But will the Coalition be smart enough to harvest their votes?