Conservatives like me embrace conservation. Why the Coalitionās chainsaw approach to climate? | Andrew McLachlan
I keep thinking about McLachlan's word "pathological." When a conservative has to reach for that term to describe his own side's climate policy, something has genuinely broken. The Coalition created emissions reduction targets and mechanisms while in government, and now it's dismantling them as if they were some foreign imposition. Conservatism has always been about stewardship, about preserving what works. Throwing out your own policies is pure destruction, and it has nothing to do with that tradition.
This matters beyond Australian politics. It shows how the climate debate has shifted so far that even moderate conservatives feel pushed out. In the US, in Europe, we see the same pattern: parties abandoning their own environmental records to chase a louder, angrier base. The danger is that climate action becomes a partisan wedge instead of a shared responsibility. When both sides can't agree on basic targets, we lose years we don't have.
I'd want to know what it would take for the Coalition to reverse course. Is there any pressure left inside the party for the old approach? McLachlan suggests the answer is bleak. I hope he's wrong, but I suspect he's not.