Fisher for compliments Brian Fisher’s BAEconomics has been paid more than $100,000 to “validate” the Morrison government’s net zero modelling. That’s the same modelling, you may recall, that Energy Minister Angus Taylor is refusing to let anyone see.
If BAEconomics rings a bell, it may be because its work back in 2019 (about the “economic consequences” of Labor’s climate action plan) was used as a cudgel by the Liberals, and Taylor in particular, to thump Labor’s “reckless” plan for 45% emissions reduction by 2030.
What Taylor didn’t mention was that Fisher has been a relentless voice of opposition to action on climate change for two decades. Indeed, in 2014 when then-PM Tony Abbott put Fisher on the panel reviewing the renewable energy target, even The Australian noted his was the appointment “that evoked the loudest laughter and most sorrowful despair” among climate change experts.
Fisher had headed up the Howard government’s agriculture and resource economics analysis agency (ABARE) during the time the Ombudsman indicated it “adopted a funding structure … for its climate change research projects which failed to adequately protect ABARE as a public sector research agency from allegations of undue influence by vested interests”. At the time fossil-fuel companies could and did spend $50,000 to buy a seat on the “steering committee” overseeing ABARE’s modelling.
After government, the Oz went on, Fisher “was paid by the oil and gas industry, electricity generators and the mining industry, each separately, to paint grim pictures of the economic consequences from government efforts to reduce carbon emissions in the near term”.
So. Just who you want assessing the efficacy of a climate change policy.
unPC Still on net zero, today brought the announcement that the Productivity Commission will monitor the economic impacts of the target on the regions. It’ll be glad for the work, we’re sure. Indeed, If you needed evidence that the Morrison government has no policy agenda beyond staying in power, and generally isn’t interested in evidence for the policies it announces, have a look at the PC’s latest report. It received just three references for studies or inquiries from the government in 2020-21 — the same number as it received the previous year.
Since 2018 the PC has received a grand total of seven references. That’s quite a contrast from the Turnbull years — there were 10 references in 2015-16 and eight the following year. It received only four in 2017-18, but it was so busy from the previous years’ work that it still completed 14 inquiries and studies that year.
One of the problems of the PC, of course, is that it is independent of government and doesn’t usually feel constrained by what ministers want to hear in making policy recommendations and findings. As with the engagement of BAEconomics, it’s further evidence that the government has decided that, if it’s not going to be told what it wants to hear, it doesn’t want to be told at all.
A bad look At yesterday’s Senate estimates, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet’s Stephanie Foster, asked about anonymous donations to Christian Porter’s legal fund, did something rather strange. See if you can pick it up:
Later Foster was asked about it by Labor’s Penny Wong and responded that she could “say categorically I have at no stage intentionally winked at Senator Birmingham. It’s either capturing me with an eye closing or there’s some other reason.”
First, judge for yourself whether what Foster does — she turns her head, and clears her hair from her eyes before the offending mono-blink — could be anything other than a deliberate wink. Of course, a wink can mean any number of things, not all of them nefarious. But any public figure ought to know by now that when you’re being held to account on any subject, a wink, that most conspiratorial and in-crowd of gestures, is the worst possible look.
Hmmmm Well, One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts is taking recent developments well. Amid a flurry of recent Instagram posts, Roberts put up a digital certificate certifying that the Nationals were “100% circumcised” on account of their support for net zero:
What can that possibly mean? Does he mean neutered or castrated? Is that what he thinks circumcision is?
Foster’s “tipping the wink”? Doing a Halton :- “doing a fire-wall protection of the government against a Senate inquisition”?
How could it be anything but a wink – look at the way she turned, swept her hair back to clear the recipient’s view, the muscles used to pull that function – her denial makes it look all the more on considered. She just didn’t the field range of that camera. Unless, of course she’s got a tic? … Does she?
Yes. Foster’s denial that she winked is right up there with Chico Marx’s character in Duck Soup:
Teasdale (Margaret Dumont): But I saw you with my own eyes.
Chicolini (Chico Marx): Well, who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?
They just don’t care klewso. They don’t give a rats how it appears, because they don’t care.
It could have been the anaesthetic wearing off after the op.
Fully circumcised digital certificate? I knew there’d be a dick in there somewhere. Big and swinging, perhaps?
Saw that post and my mind’s eye saw him in a skivvy ….
Mightn’t have been so bad, but he was just pulling it on…….
Let’s hope Malcolm Roberts is not referring to circumcision in this context as some sort of obscure anti-semitic insult. He has form for that sort of thing.
This lying rorting bloody rabble of a government has no shame – perhaps that is the Pentecostal way?
Perhaps they should have employed Tim Flannery or similar???