Can Pauline Hanson save us from the United Nations?

Will the Coalition leave the UN, or order an audit of the treaties Australia has been signed up to?

The High Court’s ruling on a major coal mine expansion in NSW, on the basis of Scope 3 emissions, is cause for alarm.

A 3-2 majority held that the NSW Independent Planning Commission failed its statutory duty under the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act to consider whether conditions should be imposed to minimise greenhouse gas emissions ‘to the greatest extent practicable’, including Scope 3. These are the downstream emissions generated when the countries that buy our coal burn it.

Australian thermal coal is high-quality bituminous, with higher energy content and generally better plant efficiency than much of the sub-bituminous material sold by competitors, yet the court required decision-makers to grapple with the overseas combustion that makes up roughly 98 per cent of the project’s emissions.

The concept of Scope 3 draws on the Greenhouse Gas Protocol and the reporting norms outlined by the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement. The Coalition signed Australia up to the UN’s latest brain fart and the Labor government is loving this because it fits with their ideological agenda. Like everything to do with the UN, this is going to cost us big time.

Despite the best of intentions outlined by Angus Taylor at the weekend’s CPAC event, can Australians really trust the Liberal Party? After all, much of what they are saying now is the stuff they should have actioned years ago when they were in government. Hanson put it bluntly at the same event. The Liberals signed us up to Paris and Net Zero, so why would we trust them to get us out of it?

It’s not just about Taylor. The Liberal Party’s internal political stoush continues unabated.

My latest in The Spectator Australia, Can Pauline Hanson save us from the United Nations?

Labor’s credit card surcharge fiasco hits mums and dads

Mums and dads living from payday to payday have lost the card that carried them to Thursday.

The surcharge ban was sold as ‘money back every time you tap’. A month in, it has been reported that some childcare operators and private schools are tapping out on credit cards.

Anthony Albanese said a coffee should not cost extra because you paid by card, and that the price on the menu should be the price you pay. Yet cafes have done the obvious thing. They put the fee in the price.

The government’s figures, taken from the Reserve Bank, were $1.6 billion a year no longer paid in surcharges and $910 million in lower fees for business, with small business said to be the bigger winner from lower interchange. Shoppers are yet to see it at the till.

Even though the Treasurer has stepped in and the ATO will delay the credit card move for a year, the backlash showed cracks in Labor’s united front.

In the Morning Double Shot newsletter, Terry Barnes wrote:

Labor getting the RBA to abolish credit charge surcharges has not reduced the price of a coffee – it has increased it, and increased the prices of so many other goods and services. There were iniquities in surcharges being a percentage of a sale rather than the actual transaction costs, but banks are still charging businesses while those businesses can’t pass it on – except as higher prices. Michael de Percy looks at the unfairness of how this supposedly consumer-friendly thing is playing out.

My latest in The Spectator Australia, Labor’s credit card surcharge fiasco hits mums and dads.

Fizzer in Fiji takes the wind out of Bowen’s turbines

Seeing the Minister for Climate Change and Energy fall asleep at his own snooze-fest says it all.

Four years of promises, modelling, and National Press Club performances have run into higher electricity bills, angry people who live under the transmission lines, and billions poured into a policy failure that was obvious from the start. Bowen’s pre-COP31 fizzer in Fiji is the latest symbol of it. Seeing him fall asleep at his own snooze-fest says it all.

In Nadi this week he called the gathering a ‘pretty pedestrian affair’. It is costing taxpayers about $20 million, on the contracts published so far, and he refused to say how much when asked on national radio.

He has form. In March 2023, at the Sydney Institute, I asked him what happens if the plan fails and the lights go out. What is your Plan B?

My Plan B is for that not to happen.

That was the policy. Then as if on cue, the lights went out in Nadi.

My latest in The Spectator Australia, Fizzer in Fiji takes the wind out of Bowen’s turbines.