Net-zero or none, Ley's still backing Albanese's severe immigration/housing crunch

Nominally the Liberal Party mantra is "individual freedom and free enterprise".

In immigration, housing, energy, employment, "United Nations" Labor is interventionist, dirigiste, statist. Affecting that Joy Division T-shirt, former student-activist Albanese leads the charge, defending 21^st century Australia's top 20%, their preferences and privileges.

Sussan Ley's opposition has done a fair bit of appeasement and me-too. Does their seeming rebellion of dropping net-zero signal better things?

Albo does central planning…

Albo promised moderate immigration, housing reform, cheaper energy. He's delivered the opposite, with state-overreach across the board.

Over-funding the bulk visa-processing of low-skilled temporary migrants, backed by unrelenting "Ministry of Truth" propaganda, he's already left his main legacy. A net-migration floor of 300,000 [not 80,000-90,000] is now spun as "normal" or "long term" average. We've "cut immigration" 40%, smirk Tony Burke and Abul Rizvi . The hell they have.

Such extremes were implausible, before the Howard/Rudd immigration spike around 2007-08.

The elite's loving the "virtue" - ordinary voters are fed up . When the latter finally mobilised and marched, the former dismissed their complaint - housing shortfall isn't a supply issue but a migration issue – by smearing them as racists and neo nazi dupes. Ley fell in behind Albanese.

Australia's self-inflicted immigration bubble is a prime driver of its housing bubble – the continent's absurdly overvalued land and housing.

Despite shrinking training in the trades , dilution of building standards , Australia remains remarkably productive at home-building. With construction costs rocketing during COVID, the industry needed a breather. Instead, Albo dealt Huge Australia plus fake "housing accord".

His central-planning fantasy of building 1.2 million homes in five years to 2029 has been taken seriously, both by the Coalition and Greens.

Greens' housing-irritant Max Chandler-Mather is gone, but Ley's shadow-treasurer Ted O'Brien and housing-shadow Andrew Bragg still defer to Labor's planning, zoning, and housing-supply, tropes. Like, "nothing to see" on the population-demand side.

Albo's ideological immigration/housing "solution" is matched by his renewables/net-zero straitjacket.

On the one hand, he licenses the huge Woodside expansion but refuses to exercise reservation over our natural-gas bonanza, even though gas sets the marginal price of electricity. Asian powers laugh their heads off, as we give the stuff away, whilst charging ourselves world prices.

On the other hand, there's his irrational insistence, that utopian net-zero "transformation" will make us into a "superpower". This has become central Treasury policy, propagated by a shoal of climate-energy quangos.

Even as evidence mounts, that his green-winners $22 billion Future Made in Australia is dubious . As is Australia's supposedly unrivalled capacity, to "capture" carbon in its rain forests and wide brown lands.

For Albo and the renewables elite , counterfactuals and hypotheticals "prove" renewables are cheaper or will be eventually. Yet everyday wallets still experience much higher electricity prices than last year. The left-retort is, it's all fossil-fuel's fault.

By dumping net-zero, does the Coalition now have a real point of difference?

In his recent op-ed, climate-energy shadow, Dan Tehan blurs that point-of-difference, reverting to global techno-optimism and carbon-capture nostrums:

"Breakthrough innovation drives energy abundance…scale-up of carbon capture central to global strategy…global point-of-source capture and direct air removal…nuclear power…bilateral cooperation…help Japan and Singapore with energy security and sequestering their carbon emissions"

Similar line to Labor - we can reverse or neutralise emissions, despite steeply rising population, and growing energy-generation needs. Both parties are seduced by that Abundance book.

Oh wait, Albo also promised jobs and growth. Except, his "million jobs" plus are matched by his million-plus migrants. Except, his job creation is overwhelmingly in government and non-market sectors, even in resource-rich WA.

In sum, the immigration-led economy's great, inside central Treasury propaganda . Just not that great, in productivity terms, with the worst slump for 60 years. Nor for ordinary voters, their real-wages sunk to 2011 levels, despite Treasurer's misleading boasts .

…as Ley walks back net-zero

Ley's first major statement of June 2025 went long on personal narrative, short on Albo fails. Now her Liberals have purged net-zero, supposedly with the Nationals tail wagging the Coalition dog, what of it?

The left insists, voters (especially younger, city, voters) seamlessly accept the "science" of climate change. Therefore, Ley can't win without net-zero, even if it's pie in the sky . For globalist Guardian , Paris climate "commitments" are ineluctable, to be pursued at all costs.

Yet even the ABC acknowledges, world emissions/CO2/temperatures motor on, in defiance of pious decades of UN "climate action". That is, they keep rising.

In Australia's net-zero religion, you can keep on pumping GDP/population/consumption, yet at some future point, emissions/CO2/temperatures will magically correct for this endless growth. That is, they'll bend it like Beckham.

This is junk science. It's a 21^st century pro-China gift, an unscientific distraction that suits Australian politicians.

Voters might want "climate action" but they're not much willing to pay for it and they'd rather have cheap energy.

Renewables are about 35% of our energy generation mix, estimates government, but rather less of our primary energy consumption mix. Down Under theorising says, the higher Australia goes, the closer we edge to energy superpower.

Outbidding "ambitious" Commonwealth targets, if not renewables poster-child SA, economic basket-case Victoria is targeting 95% renewables by 2035.

China and other real-world superpowers will never play by those kinds of rules. Global energy generation is only about 20% renewables. That'll go much higher, but not near 100%, and is always in a race to keep pace with the increasing demands of endless-growth, plus now the energy-rapacity of AI. Global "energy transition" has slowed.

Net-zero or no net-zero, the Coalition's still appeasing Albo-style central-planning, leaving him comfortably spinning the same old economic fibs as before the election.

Little relief for despised voters…

Peter Dutton went to Election 2025, offering 160,000 net migration, nuclear-inclusive "net-zero", and a serious stab at east-coast gas reservation. Running Labor's "housing supply" line, with no meaningful correction on immigration, the current Ley offer doesn't look any better.

Citing the International Energy Agency, your ABC posits the sainted net-zero "pathway" might "halve" our energy bills by 2050. For ABC Ian Verrender, energy price-relief means resolving the east coast "gas debacle". No surprise, we're going to need "far more" gas for "much longer".

Do Labor or Liberal really want to reduce energy prices? I rather fear, Albo's second term will induce another round of pointless climate-theatre.

Leaving both sides to focus on this uniquely Down Under punishment, far too much low-skilled immigration, and unnecessarily high rental/housing pain.

…as Ley manoeuvres on immigration

In further reports, the Coalition's resolve has stiffened, promising to strip "climate action" out of the Energy Market Operator's objectives, and revisiting gas-reservation.

Having tweaked their emissions policy, now the Coalition dares to promise a new immigration policy. So far, they're "promising" about 200,000 net each year, still higher than Dutton, and useless, in terms of ameliorating the housing pain.

Meanwhile One Nation, pushing a "130,000 visas" annual ceiling, is voters' top choice on immigration policy. ABC hates that.

To globalist Guardian, immigration reduction is racist, as in "right-wingers picking fights". Warns SMH, Ley is battling to "win back migrant voters".

Immigration-huckster George Megalogenis rates Labor as the default government. Courtesy of women, city dwellers, and "the majority of the population being a first or second-generation migrant".

Tell us about it, George. Australia's 30% migrants and 50% migrant-origin are indeed world extremes, more like a national gerrymander than social cohesion.

However, when front-bencher Jacinta Price observed that Labor was (more than ever) stacking in Labor-leaning Indian migrants, Ley flashed her the racist-card and sacked her.

Sceptical of Ley, ex-Tele scribe Jeni O'Dowd at The Nightly reckons immigration not net-zero is the Coalition avenue:

Ley's leadership…is going down faster than the proverbial sinking ship, talking about net zero targets, nuclear energy and family values. Everything except the one subject that hits real nerves in real households: the scale and speed of migration.

But even if the Coalition changed leaders, most likely they'd still endorse Albo's immigration/housing vendetta. They preach the policing of "law and justice", kindly overlooking Albo's 900,000 student-migrants scam, the 400,000 bridging-visas indulgence, the 100,000 failed asylum seekers. They'd rather screen incoming migrants for "Australian values".

Before single-mum fake-left Albo, no government had ever enforced such extremal immigration numbers, lied about it so contemptuously, or manipulated such ugly scares around it. The destructor is thriving with barely a scratch and will likely leave office billed as a "reformer".