Angus Taylor’s energy policy is now a carbon copy of Hanson and Trump

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson probably summed it up best, accusing Liberal Party leader Angus Taylor of stealing her party’s policies.

“I don’t employ policy experts to write Coalition policy, but after the data breach in Parliament House it’s not hard to imagine why their budget reply is replete with One Nation policies,” Hanson said of Taylor’s Budget reply that was handed down on Thursday night.

“While they’ve been telling everyone that One Nation has no policies, they’ve been reading them very carefully because they’re desperate for some good ideas. I’m pleased they’ve seen some light at last.”

Hanson was largely referring to proposed immigration cuts, but Taylor’s Budget reply included a lot more than that: Scrapping net zero, burning coal “long and hard” and burning more gas, pushing nuclear energy, demonising renewables, and dumping support for electric vehicles.

So much so, it is now almost impossible to tell the difference between One Nation’s policy on climate and energy, and that of the federal Liberal and National parties.

“‘Net zero’ is destroying Australia,” One Nation trumpets on its website.

“Labor’s net zero obsession is driving up inflation and destroying our economy,” Taylor said on Thursday, ignoring the fact that fossil fuel price hikes – both as he left government in 2022 with the invasion of Ukraine and again in 2026 with the war on Iran, have been the driving force of inflation spikes.

A read through the transcripts of their respective budget replies delivered on Thursday, it was as though Taylor, Hanson and Nationals leader Matt Canavan were reading the same speech. They were, at the very least, singing from the same climate denial and pro fossil-fuel song sheet.

“We will ditch net zero, exit the Paris Agreement and axe the climate change department, saving $30 billion in the process. We will back coal and gas and support bringing nuclear power to bring down prices, restore reliability and guarantee national energy security,” Hanson said in her budget reply.

“Net zero must go,” Taylor said in his budget reply. “We will abolish Labor’s hidden carbon taxes, like the safeguard mechanism, and we will rewrite Labor’s antidevelopment environmental laws to speed up approvals.” He also promised to axe the Net Zero Authority.

“We’re also going to unlock critical gas and oil projects …. we will back any technologies that can deliver affordable and reliable energy in this country,” Taylor said. “That includes coal, gas, hydro, batteries and renewables in the right places, and it will include nuclear power too. We will lift the ban.”

And Nationals leader Matt Canavan also pledged to ditch net zero. “We should use our coal, gas, hydro, nuclear and renewables – they all have a role to play. Our plan will be fairer because Australia will no longer cut emissions at a rate far beyond the rest of the world.”

Of course, none of this makes sense. Economists and analysts have made clear that Australia will have faced significantly high energy bills if the coal fired power stations already closed had been kept on line, or if they continue to support the remaining fleet of ageing, unreliable coal plants.

Low cost coal was once a thing, but no longer – undermined by soaring coal mining costs, the price competition for new equipment, dependent on government handouts and unable to compete with the plunging cost of renewables and particularly battery storage, and home owner preferences for their own rooftop solar.

And Australia is not cutting emissions at a rate far beyond the rest of the world. Australia’s efforts to date have show almost no change in emissions – apart from the dodgy accounting tricks it negotiated for avoided land clearing way back at Kyoto.

All three right wing leaders attacked Labor for trying to thrust a “renewables only” policy on the country, arguing that such a mix would not support a modern economy. But that is not what Labor or the market operator has proposed – a high mix yes, but not 100 per cent renewables.

Taylor also tried to claim that the reliance on renewables means “our future is being made abroad.” Which does make you wonder where Taylor thinks that new gas generators, new or replacement coal parts, of even nuclear power stations will be built.

Certainly not in Australia, and certainly not with a grid that is still struggling with ageing coal fired generators and expensive gas, which would seem to be the plan, if there is one.

The thumping majority that Labor secured at the last election gives some people comfort that they are guaranteed at least another four years of Labor government. But nothing is certain in politics any more, if it ever was.

The Liberals and Nationals have plunged in their popularity ratings, but One Nation is surging. Together, according to the latest poll, they are just two points behind Labor on a two-party preferred basis – One Nation being the other party to Labor.

It is clear that on key issues like climate, energy and immigration, the Liberals, Nationals and One Nation are in furious agreement. And despite their public protestations, there is absolutely no reason, and no expectation, that they would not agree to form government together, given the chance.

It is not clear how the polls would play out in actual seats. But many doubted that Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison, or Donald Trump (twice) would ever be voted leaders of their nations. And yet they were.

Trump, of course, has laid the path for the destruction of policies designed around science, engineering and economics – dismantling key institutions, scientific research, banning the use of the word climate change, stopping projects in their tacks, and even paying developers billions to switch into fossil fuels.

Don’t think it can’t happen here, because the Queensland state LNP has already shown what this looks like. A government that has torn up emissions and renewables targets, and taken particular glee in putting a stop to wind and even battery storage projects.

Both have the support of a baying Murdoch media screaming its support at every opportunity, and cowering the federal Labor government and other legacy media, particularly the ABC, to go softly softly.

Australia’s major utilities, of course, could not give a hoot either way. They have done virtually nothing to build new wind or solar, or cause them to be built, despite boasting about the imminent closure of their coal powered generators.

Many of them have signed deals – some secret – to keep their coal fired power generators going longer than needed because of the lack of wind and solar power they did not bother to build or contract. And they would be happy to repeat the dose – it’s apparently good for shareholders, if not for anyone else.

Which means that if wind, solar and battery developers have ambitions of building multiple gigawatts of projects in Australia – and many of them do – they better get cracking.

Political change is never far away, particularly given the volatile and uncertain world we live in now, and there is every reason to fear that change could be crazier than they could imagine, or as mad as hell.

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