The dramatic rise of One Nation, crystallised in the results of the South Australian election and the Farrer by-election, has focused attention on the threat it poses to the Coalition; there has been little discussion of the Teals. That’s a shame because Teals are facing their own extinction event.

Climate catastrophists have warned for decades of an imminent tipping point, which, when crossed, would lead to nothing less than the ‘end of the world’, as US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez put it in 2019.

Yet the tipping point we have actually crossed, with no fanfare, is the demise of climate catastrophism.

A paper published on 7 April by the researchers responsible for creating the models that will underpin the United Nation’s next climate bible, the 7th Assessment Report, pronounced the last rites.

Its sober judgment is that the high-emission scenarios that drove wild-eyed prognostications of doom ‘have become implausible’.

These now-implausible models underpinned the policies of the Biden administration, the current UK government, most central banks, and, of course, Australia.

For the Teals and their Climate 200 backers, this is a big problem. Why vote Teal if their doom-mongering has been denounced by UN modellers as implausible?

And now, thanks to Treasurer ‘Dim’ Jim Chalmers, there’s an even bigger problem for the Teals. Labor’s attack on the discount on capital gains tax, negative gearing and trusts will drive voters in Teal electorates not into the arms of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation but opposition leader Angus Taylor.

It would be foolish for the Teals to imagine voters in their electorates care more about the climate than about CGT discounts, negative gearing and trusts, which they emphatically rejected in 2019 when opposition leader Bill Shorten proposed the policies that Prime Minister Albanese has implemented with a breathtaking disregard for the utterly predictable backlash that has followed.

The implausibility of the UN’s climate models has not received the attention it deserves, with the honourable exception of the editor of The Spectator Australia, and kindred publications such as Quadrant (which this writer edits). That is presumably because Climate Change Minister Chris ‘Bo Bo the Climate Clown’ Bowen and an army of more than 100 climato-crats are having too much fun spending almost half a million dollars of taxpayer money in business class flights as they travel the globe, pumping up emissions as they pump up Bowen’s tyres.

Bowen has exhorted Australians to pump up their own tyres to reduce their fuel consumption, but claims the spending is ‘very good value for money’ because he is the President of Negotiations for the next international climate jamboree.

Indeed, Bowen said it was ‘unpatriotic’ of the Coalition to attack him. ‘It just goes to show how out of touch with climate reality and geopolitical essentials, the modern Liberal party has become,’ he said. He even used the ‘l’ word, which the speaker has banned in parliament, accusing opposition energy spokesman Dan Tehan of ‘lying’ about the cost. No need to lie when Bowen blithely chalked up a $62,000 phone bill at a climate talkfest in Azerbaijan. Bowen says the Liberal party does not care that ‘the very existence of some Pacific countries is at stake’. ‘It beggars belief that during an international energy crisis, the opposition doesn’t think it’s important to engage with the rest of the world,’ he said, declaring they were ‘embarrassingly out of touch and not fit to govern’. Labor has kept Bowen in witness protection for months, and with this sort of performance, it’s not hard to see why.

There can be little doubt that the next election will be fought on economic management, the cost of living, energy prices, immigration and national security. These have always been strong suits for the Coalition.

What is equally certain is that this will not be an election fought on climate change. Those who attack Taylor for not pulling out of the Paris agreement, which Australia signed up to when Barnaby Joyce was deputy prime minister, need to recall that polling consistently shows that cost of living, housing, healthcare and immigration all outrank climate.

SEC Newgate polling in 2026 found voters were increasingly worried about energy affordability and reliability, with growing support for coal, gas and nuclear, alongside renewables, and prioritise affordability and energy security over decarbonisation.

Claims that Taylor’s budget-in-reply speech was crafted in response to the Farrer by-election understate the calibre of the opposition leader. His policies have had a very long gestation. The first thing he did as a member of parliament was to write a paper about the high cost of renewables, highlighting that if you want to cut emissions, it is far cheaper to do so by using gas.

Now we see One Nation’s Cory Bernardi and the Liberals’ Ashton Hurn both supporting former Liberal premier Stephen ‘Marshmallow’ Marshall’s Nimby policy of a 10-year moratorium on gas in SE South Australia, whereas Taylor supports gas extraction in SE South Australia.

It begs the question of how different One Nation is from the Liberals.

Another challenge for One Nation is that it is still very much Pauline Hanson’s party, just as Reform is Nigel Farage’s party. The outsized importance of a powerful leader creates its own instability. In the UK, a spectacular clash with Farage prompted Rupert Lowe to create a new right-wing splinter party – Restore – just when Reform needs to be united.

Turning the Teals into a party seems superfluous, given that they are a party in all but name. It suggests that they are aware of the existential crisis they face. Some have suggested that the green-left Liberals might jump ship, but the reality is that there is no ship for them to jump aboard; the Teals look more like stranded polar bears floating on melting icebergs toward extinction.

The reality is that Taylor and Nationals leader Matt Canavan have reunited their troops in a way that was not possible under Sussan Ley and David Littleproud, and it shows. It’s hard to see even Malcolm the Miserable tearing up his membership card, although many live in hope.

The real ace in the pack for conservative Liberals is the ascension of Tony Abbott as Federal President, which is shaping up as a Rumble in the Jungle rematch between Abbott and Mr Photios.

In short, while climate catastrophism is on borrowed time, it is premature to write an obituary for the Coalition.