Don't let them MAGA the earth

DC4y...NUo7

18 Nov 2025

G’day, cobbers. Pull up a stump, grab a cold one, and maybe find a comfy spot, because this is going to be a long yarn. We need to talk turkey about what’s gone truly rotten in our Parliament House.
If you’ve been feeling like something’s not right—like our politicians are less interested in the fair go and more interested in bending the knee to huge corporate interests—you’re spot on. The smell of cheap rhetoric and overseas puppetry is thick in the air, and it's making a mockery of our independence.

We’re known globally as the land of a fair go, the independent spirit, and people who look out for their mates. But lately, our political class is bending over backwards for overseas interests and massive corporate lobbies, tracking in a dangerous new disease: MAGA climate denial madness. It’s the same noisy, fact-free nonsense that’s poisoned American politics, but here, it’s doing the dirty work for foreign gas giants and a handful of local mates who care more about their profits this quarter than they do about your kids’ future or our nation’s security.

You see it in the way the Liberal and National parties just up and decided to dump their commitment to Net Zero. It’s not about protecting Aussie jobs, mate. It’s about protecting the profits of the few, and it’s dragging our politics so far out to the right that it's unrecognisable. This isn't just about a policy disagreement; it’s about a political takeover by an imported ideology that puts outside forces and corporate greed before the Australian people.

The Wrecking Ball: Imported Madness and the Long Game

We gotta look across the pond for a minute, because the dirt they’re tracking into our Parliament House comes straight from Washington D.C. The whole climate change denial show—the idea that it's all a hoax, or a conspiracy of "global elites"—is a playbook imported lock, stock, and barrel.

In the US, the movement promises to take a "wrecking ball" to environmental protections and climate action. The very title of the source material about this suggests that geopolitics hang heavy over climate talks because of this "wrecking ball" approach from the US, which forces other countries to react to its sabotage of global efforts.

Why is this bloody stupid, you ask? Because this denialist policy, if it’s allowed to metastasise globally, guarantees horrific long-term negative outcomes. It locks in decades of dependence on the very fossil fuels that are cooking the planet. When the world needs to be cooperating on a massive, rapid shift towards clean energy, this movement is actively sabotaging global efforts. It doesn’t just harm the environment; it turns climate action into a weapon of geopolitical competition, which is the last thing a country like ours needs.

If we let this MAGA ideology set the pace, we lose our clean energy edge, we become a global pariah, and we lock future generations into a world defined by climate chaos and economic instability. It’s the most un-Australian thing imaginable: sacrificing the independence and security of the country for short-term political and corporate gain.

The MAGA-fication of the Coalition: The End Game for Moderates

It’s impossible to look at the Liberal and National parties' recent rejection of Net Zero without seeing the long, dark shadow of MAGA ideology spreading across our own conservative landscape. The shift is clear: the Coalition is not just moving right, it’s being taken over by the far-right. The decision to abandon Net Zero was not a policy tweak; it was a victory lap for the MAGA-aligned element that now controls the party's direction.

The Policy and the Rhetoric of ‘Elites’

The policy itself is a disgrace. The Liberals’ new climate policy is so bad that "even denialists are shocked" by its lack of substance and extreme nature. The shift away from Net Zero, coupled with the move toward backing more gas and coal, is a deliberate step to match the policy positions of the extremist American conservatives.
Just like the American playbook, the rhetoric used to justify this shift is all about fear and resentment. The net zero opponents in the Coalition constantly claim they are fighting against "sneering elites" who want to impose "higher taxes, higher prices and bigger government" on average Australians. They claim to speak for the battlers, but who are the real elites, mate?

The net zero opponents say they are standing against:

Globalist elites who look down on ordinary Australians.
Higher taxes and carbon taxes designed to punish workers.
A bureaucratic nightmare of bigger government controls.

This is nothing but a smoke screen for selling out the country to the handful of corporate interests that bankroll this denialist madness. When the political leadership of our country abandons sensible policy—like Net Zero—in favour of a loud, imported, corporate-backed ideology, it’s not just a political shift; it’s a national betrayal.

The Death of the Liberal Moderate

The political consequences for those who actually believe in climate action are dire. The mainstream reporting leading up to the Net Zero vote created the illusion that the Liberal "Moderates" still mattered. But the reality is that the moderates are already deep in the "endgame" of a seven-year decline. They were "scratched before the race". The curtain had been drawn around them.

The fact is, the Liberal Party is now increasingly being run by its Queensland wing, the LNP, which acts as the 'dog' of the Coalition, with the Liberal Party as the 'tail' and the remaining moderates merely "fleas on the tail". The few remaining moderates in city seats, like Tim Wilson in Melbourne's Goldstein and Julian Leeser in Sydney's Berowra, are now left high and dry. The LNP’s new climate policy, which dumps Net Zero, will do neither of them any favours at the next election, as voters who care about climate action desert a party that no longer represents them.

The future looks like a single, unified federal LNP that increasingly appeals to a single conservative identity. What happens to the moderate remnants? With few exceptions, they will fold to keep their jobs as long as possible. This inevitable end started with Malcolm Turnbull losing the Prime Ministership in 2018, when many real moderate leaders quit, leaving those remaining powerless and irrelevant. The ones who remain are either irrelevant or simply folding to keep their jobs, proving the MAGA-like takeover of the party is complete.

The Great Aussie Ripoff: The Broader MAGA-Like Forces

The real danger here, and the thing that gets my goat the most, is that this imported denialism serves only one purpose: to make a few powerful people staggeringly rich at the expense of every other Australian. The rhetoric is about "anti-elite," but the reality is a massive wealth transfer straight from our wallets to the offshore accounts of multinational companies.

Gas Lobby’s “Tobacco Tactics”

The political shift toward denial is no accident; it’s the result of relentless, paid-for lobbying. Former South Australian Labor Premier Mike Rann warned that the fossil fuel sector is using “tobacco industry tactics” to maintain a bipartisan commitment to gas expansion in Australia. He called gas the “lifeline that vaping was for the tobacco lobby” for the fossil fuel polluters.
Their game is all about delay. Battalions of fossil fuel lobbyists swarm climate talks, desperately trying to convince delegates—and our politicians—to say, "look, not yet. Great idea, but not yet,”. They keep promising there’s a new solution, like Carbon Capture and Storage, which Rann noted was being promised way back in 2004, and is the exact same line being used today. They leverage their money and donations to keep that commitment to gas expansion bipartisan.

When multinational gas companies are making massive, multibillion-dollar profits from our resources while paying little or no tax, and politicians are protecting them, that is the definition of the elite rigging the system against the average Aussie battler.

Selling the Family Jewels for Peanuts

Get this: Japan imports Australian gas, yet Japanese households pay less for electricity than Australians do.
How’s that for a fair go? We dig the stuff up, we export it, and our customers overseas get a cheaper deal than we do. The reason? A lot of the LNG exported from offshore projects in Western Australia and the Northern Territory pay no royalties, and for four years, no gas exports have paid a lick of Petroleum Resource Rent Tax (PRRT).

The Australia Institute reckons that between now and 2030, multinational gas companies are set to export a massive $170 billion worth of gas that attracts zero royalties. This means we miss out on vital revenue that could be building our schools and hospitals, and we are, in effect, subsidising Japanese electricity prices by ensuring they pay less for their gas-generated electricity than they would if the Australian government charged them a fair royalty. The situation is so absurd that Japan is able to buy our gas so cheaply that it is able to re-sell that gas to other countries for a profit. This is a real outside force operating against us, one that is draining our national wealth and hiking our power bills, all while a handful of politicians run interference by crying about "sneering elites".

The Nationals’ Abandonment of Regional Australia

And what about the Nationals, the supposed voice of regional Australia? They are instrumental in this MAGA-shift, but the reality is that their policy is a betrayal of the very people they claim to represent. One regional Australian wrote that the Nationals' rhetoric on Net Zero is proof that they "don’t care about regional Australians like me".

The Nationals pretend that Net Zero will destroy regional jobs, but this is a lie that protects the powerful fossil fuel and mining companies that fund them. Regional Australia is exactly where the jobs of the future are—in renewable energy, in sustainable agriculture, in batteries and manufacturing. By abandoning the Net Zero commitment, the Nationals are abandoning regional Australia and its future. They are not acting in the interest of their constituents, but in the interest of the elite few who are already making a killing on our natural resources.

The Media Cheerleaders

The final piece of this MAGA-like puzzle is the relentless media cheerleading for climate denial. At a Senate grilling, News Corp was put under the spotlight over its coverage of climate change. The company had the sheer gall to deny it even denies climate change, despite the constant drumbeat of doubt, misinformation, and attacks on climate action across its newspapers and TV channels. This media empire, controlled by an offshore interest, constantly promotes the denialist line and amplifies the voices of the MAGA-aligned politicians who are doing the bidding of the fossil fuel lobby. It’s a closed feedback loop: the gas lobby pays the politicians, the politicians spout the denialist rhetoric, and the friendly media amplifies it and attacks anyone who dares to suggest an alternative.

A Call to Action: The Price of Betrayal is Your Future

We, the Australian people, the ones who love this country and its independent spirit, are facing a direct threat from these foreign and corporate-backed forces. They hide behind flag-waving rhetoric while actively ensuring we pay more for our own gas and miss out on billions in revenue.

This climate change denial madness, imported from the MAGA movement, is not just short-sighted; it’s deeply selfish.

Think about the faces of the most vocal climate wreckers, both overseas and here at home. They are, generally speaking, old men. Donald Trump and his allies are in the twilight of their lives. They are never going to live to see the long-term, devastating effects of the policies they are pushing. They will never see the worst of the climate chaos, the economic collapse, or the geopolitical strife caused by their stubborn, self-serving denial.

Instead, the people who are going to be most affected are the very people they seem to fear the most: the younger generations. The students, the young families, the ones whose whole lives will be played out in a world fundamentally changed by the decisions made by these greedy, old coots.

So, here's the call to action, mate. Don't be a sheep. Educate yourself about the true dangers that MAGA’s imported climate denial madness poses for current and future generations of Australians. Understand how the same forces that are driving the US conservative party to extremism are now driving the Libs and Nats here, all to protect the tax breaks of multinational gas companies.

We need to protect all Australians against these outside forces. Demand that our leaders serve us, not foreign corporations. This isn't just a political battle; it's a fight for our national dignity, our economic sovereignty, and the future of the unique place we call home. We owe it to the next generation to get this right. Let’s clean house before the wrecking ball takes out the whole shebang.