The Liberal Party has not dropped Net Zero. They have merely ditched the official Net Zero 2030 and 2050 targets and made some sort of pinky-promise not to dwell on the phrase ‘Net Zero’, replacing it with ‘clean energy’ and ‘emissions reduction’.

As for the actual destructive policy in the background that leads to parasitic grants, subsidies, industrial-scale renewable projects, and expensive bureaucracies inhabited by former politicians … all of that remains.

Absolutely zilch has changed.

Which means the cause of the Coalition fracture and declining Blue Ribbon vote (being exploited by One Nation) will continue once the masthead-washing wears off.

This explains why a handful of moderates and lefty power brokers were happy to put their name to the proposal. Their presence in the vote served as an early warning sign that this piece of political theatre was a con designed to make bad headlines go away.

By re-committing themselves to the Paris Agreement, the Liberals have effectively given a huge middle finger to regional Australia and a sneaky wink to the renewable energy lobbyists.

Dan Tehan, tasked with managing the Net Zero problem, said the party would be pursuing a ‘technology agnostic approach’, which is not true, is it?

A grid aimed at cost and reliability would consider these features exclusively, but the Liberals have made it clear they want ‘clean energy’ and ‘emission reductions’ which means there is no chance a coal-based grid would be embraced even if it was the best fit for cost and energy production. ‘Technology agnostic’ the Liberals are not…

We should get into the habit of saying, ‘Prove it!’ every time a politician makes a claim. Cheap energy? Prove it. Net Zero? Prove it. Energy superpower? Prove it. Green? I dare you to prove it.

‘The Liberals will now take the new policy to the Nationals to negotiate a shared position on Sunday,’ said Ms Ley. ‘We hope and anticipate that we can land after Sunday on a joint policy that allows us all to fight the Labor Party.’

What are they fighting the Labor Party on? Not Paris. Not renewable energy. Not Net Zero. Not the underlying lie of the climate apocalypse. Genuinely, what is the war pitch?

At the risk of becoming that, ‘Just asking questions…’ meme, we need some clarity here.

The moderates believe this kerfuffle will help them remain competitive against the Teals, but the only way to win those ‘precious’ rich inner-city Liberal seats is to dismantle the climate change fabrication and expose renewable energy for the environmental catastrophe that it really is. The Teals won those seats based on virtue. When the virtue is gone, the Teals will collapse, remembered only as an embarrassing fad.

Voters have to look at a wind turbine and see butchered eagles.

Climate change is a cult. That is why Labor politicians keep saying ‘believe’ in their increasingly desperate social media posts. You do not convert a religious person by sending in the door-knockers.

And by gosh, climate change is a fragile religion.

If nothing else, that is what we learned this week. When there was a slight chance that the Coalition might fight on this topic, Labor, the Greens, and the collective squawk of the media went into a full panic spiral. If Sussan Ley and her party had made a proper break, they could have done some real damage to the government. As the chief architects of Net Zero, the Liberals know where all the skeletons are buried. We missed Halloween, but Ley could still drag out a few and rattle them in front of Chris Bowen to unnerve him while he bids to host the next COP conference at the cost of (at least) $1.5 billion.

Australians demanded honestly about the Net Zero climate scam.

Instead, they have received sneaky tricks.

All this did is make the Liberal Party look shifty.

‘Today was a big day for our Liberal Party as we chart a new pathway forward to deliver affordable power for Australians as a first priority of our energy policy,’ wrote Liberal Leader Sussan Ley on X.

As a nation, we are so far beyond the point where ‘good enough’ politics can survive. There is no fat left on the economy. No ‘give’ in the grid for mistakes. Green ideology has done real damage to our wallets and energy infrastructure. Labor wins elections on vanishing margins by offering freebies from an empty treasury, not ideological purity. The policy highroad for the Liberals runs over difficult terrain. So far, no one has so much as laced their boots.

The Coalition, and particularly the Liberals, were given one chance to walk away from the climate mess cleanly and save the country from the international socialist cult.

They have failed.

And they think we, the conservative voters, will be fooled by dropping a meaningless target and pretending not to say the scary phrase ‘Net Zero’.

It is insulting.

One Nation, the current biggest political threat to the Coalition, wasted no time calling them out on a ‘smoke and mirrors’ game, with Pauline Hanson saying:

‘We’ve forced the Liberals to review their stance, but they’ve got it all wrong. By trying to please everybody they’ve ended up pleasing nobody.

‘If you want to lower power bills, you have to stop the renewables and get rid of the agencies and schemes subsidising them. You have to build more coal-fired power plants, and you have to get out of Paris.

‘By remaining committed to emission reductions under Paris, you remain committed to higher energy costs for Australian households, businesses, and industries.’

One Nation further insisted that not only would they withdraw from the Paris Agreement, they would also ‘scrap the capacity investment scheme, Labor’s new vehicle efficiency standards, carbon credits, hydrogen funding, and the Future Made in Australia’ and further, would ‘abolish the Climate Change Authority, Net Zero Economy Authority, and the whole Department of Climate Change’ saving $30 billion a year.

My prediction?

Sussan Ley has bought herself a few more months in the Leadership, but ultimately, the public are not stupid and their energy bills don’t lie.