The hypocrites award moves from business to politics today with Treasurer Josh Frydenberg in close competition with his boss, the PM.
You’d think the treasurer had enough to do putting the final touches to the crucial Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) due to drop tomorrow, but obviously not. He has found time for a bit of political hypocrisy on the side.
There’s no other way to explain the news this morning that he is supporting a proposed inquiry into banks and finance companies that are pulling back on lending or insuring mining projects because of climate change concerns.
He’s been uncharacteristically quick to give his powerful backing to the controversial inquiry — instituted by climate-denying backbencher George Christensen — given the government’s prior form in this area.
For how many years did Frydenberg and his colleagues oppose a royal commission into the disgraceful and financially damaging behaviour of big banks and financial institutions? For nearly a decade after the first Senate inquiry called for one. But when then-Labor leader Bill Shorten formally proposed it in 2016 there was a dire warning from then-treasurer Scott Morrison.
“I think it is a reckless distraction,” he said, adding it was just “reckless political games” and a “populist whinge”.
But now it’s apparently alright to back Christensen’s ideological witch-hunt. And Frydenberg has even approved dragging in overworked financial regulators like APRA and ASIC to appear at the inquiry.
My how quick they are to abandon their free-market principles to grill the same privately owned firms over their corporate decisions — presumably to intimidate them into politically motivated decisions that only accord with government ideology.
Never mind that everyone from the ratings agencies to the Reserve Bank to world financial institutions are demanding climate change be considered as part of credit control.
Speaking of world financial institutions — obviously we are meant to forget that the government is jetting former finance minister Mathias Cormann around the globe lobbying for the top job at the OECD where he is burnishing his previously little known climate change credentials.
Cormann was quoted this week as promising that if he was named OECD secretary-general, he would “use every lever available through the organisation to help lead and drive ambitious and effective action on climate change as a top priority”.
How that sits with Gormless George’s inquiry is a mystery.
The government’s hypocrisy is even more stark when you see the Frydenberg story appearing on the front page of The Sydney Morning Herald today under another one with the headline “Australia uses coal ban to hit China on emissions”.
It notes the Morrison government will use China’s indefinite ban on Australian coal to accuse Beijing of skirting its climate change commitments.
Yes, you read that correctly. Yesterday Morrison warned that if China sources coal from other countries those imports “have 50% higher emissions” than Australian coal.
“As a result, that would be a bad outcome for the environment,” he said, presumably with a straight face.
Australian lecturing anyone on emissions is actually beyond hypocrisy. We’re now getting into parody. Although to be fair the PM is obviously desperately grabbing at anything as the whole China trade mess spirals out of control.
The fact that alternative customers for Australia’s superior coal exports are already scaling back demand — and only more so in the future — means the China coal crisis could be a salient opportunity to plan ahead.
But not of course for the Don Quixotes in the Coalition who want to use government power to intimidate private companies to deny the inevitable as well.
I understood that there was a fiduciary duty owed by a director to shareholders. Placing shareholders money into potentially stranded assets would surely lead to legal action against any director/board silly enough to do so.
Main problem is that we are completely unprepared for the necessary and inevitable transition from our coal based economy. But the people who get to make the decisions are not the ones who will suffer the consequences of all this.
We are unprepared because we have had a Federal Coalition Government for the last 7 years, that has resisted the Transition at every point, as their ideological opposition to Climate Change has not, and probably never will abate.
Not sure if “ideological position” is the real explanation. Marian Wilkinson’s book the “Carbon Club” suggests otherwise ie the fossil fools industry determines fed govt energy and resources policies.
Snot’s claim that China is worsening global warming by not using coal mined in this country by predominantly foreign owned tax dodgers, is up there with the “mad monk’s” claim an industry generated increase in carbon dioxide emissions is good for photosynthesis/CO2 dependent plant life. Looks as though Mad As Hell writers are moonlighting in Snot’s media team – though the comic relief is appreciated.
Gary
I would add that Scomo’s comment about Australian Coal is downright deceitful. A Fake news statement. Coal contracts specify numerous properties such as as calorific or energty value, gaseous impurities, etc. SIMPLY Coal is washed to remove “dirt” that contributes to ash content. ie.The left over after the coal is burnt. If ash content is low – add a bit of dirt and get paid for it. ( I have not mentioned gaseous pollutants collected by precipitaters.)
There are other and better Coal reserves in the World but Australia’s edge is infrastructure – the ability to get coal onto a ship.
Scomo has not got a clue what he is talking about. Very Trumpistic.
I truly don’t understand these free market lovers. As a group, they seem so quick to abandon their principles for what they would label socialism in any other context.
Is it just that the free market label is a sham, do they have no faith in their system, or is it just an authoritarian streak that makes them act this way?
ROB: What principles?
One principle, I think: follow the money…
Both.
They know that we know they are lying hypocrites but don’t care because enough fools keep voting for them.
The “free markets” theory is a myth. Capitaism as we know it would fail if monopolies, duopolies and oligopolies market controls weren’t largely state sanctioned. All large industries need “certainty” (code for legislative “protection”) ie Woolworths’ and Coles’ food and petrol outlets, the “big 4” banks, Google and Microsoft, BHP and Rio Tinto – all benefit from legislation that allows them to collude to fix prices, be exempt from criminal charges for wage theft, bank fraud, environmental degradation and tax avoidance via offshore tax shelters.
While he’s at it Frydenberg should also pursue banks which gave horse-buggy manufacturers fewer loans when the Model T was rolling off the production line.