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

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