Champagne socialists

THE GREENS’ INNER-CITY BUBBLE REMAINS INTACT, BUT OPPORTUNITY BECKONS FOR LIBERALS IN THE SUBURBS of melbourne. BY NIck Cater

A plate of half a dozen oysters and a glass of French champagne were on the menu at Richmond High School during polling on Saturday for anyone with $42 burning a hole in their pocket.

For those after something more substantial, there was the Double Jamie Oliver Insane Burger for $17. The $10 Boring Old Burger was advertised “for wimps and right-wing Liberals”.

Gabrielle de Vietri won the booth comfortably for the Greens while the Victorian Socialists’ Roz Ward gained a credible 4 per cent. The boring old wimp representing the Liberal Party managed less than 20 per cent.

If Philip Lowe’s interest rate rises were supposed to reduce spending, no one appears to be listening in Melbourne’s champagne bubble where restaurants thrive and the waiting time for Teslas is long. The Reserve Bank of Australia’s monthly interest rate announcements are of little concern to the four out of five households in Richmond who don’t pay a mortgage. The pressure on businesses isn’t felt by the majority of people in Richmond who work in occupations funded wholly or partly by the government.

Nor are they greatly touched by rising energy prices compared with the tradies in the outer suburbs or farmers in country Victoria. Hence, they enjoy the luxury to choose between punishing energy policies that would devastate the economic sectors that make, distribute and sell things.

The Greens in Victoria promise to reduce the state’s emissions by 80 per cent by 2030 and reach net zero by 2035 or sooner “in line with what the climate science demands”. The Victorian Socialists have matched the 2035 net-zero deadline but go further, insisting all new cars will be electric by 2030 and promising to prohibit the establishment of nuclear power generation. The Reason Australia Party trumps both by demanding zero emissions and 100 per cent electric vehicles by 2030.

By comparison, Labor’s 75 to 80 per cent reduction by 2035 followed by net zero by 2045 looks tame but would be no less disastrous if the government should follow through.

To sum up, 77 per cent of voters in Richmond supported parties pedalling the utopian fantasy that the state can wean itself off hydro-carbons in double-quick time with no adverse consequences to worry about. Close to four out of five voters in a relatively well-educated, youthful and affluent electorate happily signed off on policies unsupported by modelling that are impossible to achieve with proven technology regardless of the cost. They have voted for energy policies that are essentially fraudulent since the laws of physics and the constraints of engineering make them impossible to fulfil.

As the Liberal Party attempts to make sense of a dismal result, it would do well to put the Andrews factor to one side while it contemplates its own shortcomings. On a technical level, a contest between the Liberal Party and Dan Andrews’ Labor is like watching the Socceroos take on the French, outclassed and outwitted at every turn.

Yet the swings against Labor in the outer suburbs betray a vulnerability the Liberals could have exploited if the party had stuck to its natural game of sober economic management tempered by honest conservative pragmatism. The Coalition would undoubtedly have performed more strongly if it had listened harder to the voters of Narre Warren and Broadmeadows rather than Caulfield where university graduates outnumber tradies by a margin of six to one.

Unpublished polling conducted in the middle and outer suburbs of Melbourne showed the cost of living was far and away the most important issue for voters aged between 25 and 54, the demographic the Coalition struggles to attract. More than a third of voters (36 per cent) said inflation was their biggest concern, followed by 21 per cent who nominated improvement to health services and 16 per cent the severity of lockdowns. Only one in 10 put action on climate change at the top of their list.

On those figures, it is hard to fathom why the Victorian Liberals set a 2030 emissions reduction target of 50 per cent, a goal more adventurous than the 43 per cent target Labor took to the federal election. It is doubtful if the target did anything to save the Liberals’ skin in the green-leaning inner suburbs. If avoiding a climate catastrophe is your thing, why go for 50 when you can have 100?

In seats such as Narre Warren South, the harsh economic reality of everyday life discourages high-minded pursuits like the reduction of atmospheric carbon dioxide. More than half of households (56 per cent) are paying off mortgages compared with 30 per cent in Caulfield. Three out of four homes have two or more cars compared with just 25 per cent in Richmond.

A little more political honesty about the cost of ambitious renewable energy targets and who pays it would not have gone amiss in Narre Warren. A party that argued that Victoria can achieve its energy independence by drilling for gas might have turned up noses in Glen Huntly but less so in Hampton Park.

Narre Warren South is a seat the Liberals once held and can regain as the Labor Party drifts into woker territory in its struggle to hold back the concentric green wave radiating from Melbourne’s centre.

While the Liberal vote rose in some seats, much of the anti-Labor sentiment was captured by minor conservative parties that were prepared to speak frankly.

The Liberal Democrats pledged to abolish renewable energy targets, the market-destroying instrument that has done more to increase energy prices than any other policy blunder.

Family First outlined its policy with brutal honesty. “Families in the suburbs should not be forced to pay for the virtue signalling of elites in the leafy suburbs,” said candidate Lee Jones.

“The premature closure of power stations has already impacted family electricity bills and is a major politician-induced driver of inflation and cost-of-living pressures … There must be a proper engineering study with a thorough costing and economic analysis.”

The Liberal Democrats and Family First took about 7 per cent of the primary vote between them in Narre Warren. With the Coalition’s primary vote languishing at 35 per cent, that’s something to contemplate. Dominic Perrottet, take note.