**CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY**
JOURNALIST: Real reaction to this decision. What do you make of it?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, it just demonstrates that it's just Groundhog Day, Hamish. They're sending a message to most Australians that they do not take climate change seriously. They can put all of the nuance and explanatory footnotes about it that they like, but the message is very, very clear that the National Party and people like Barnaby Joyce are driving the policy agenda and that they're not taking the energy transition seriously. And Australians expect it to be taken seriously. And just as Anthony Albanese said, and he's absolutely right, the cheapest form of new generation is renewables.
So, the one thing we know is that if you want to replace existing coal fired plants that are old clunkers and running out of time, if you want to replace them or you want to have new additional generation, the way to do it is with renewables. So what the Liberal Party is doing is essentially flying in the face of reality, not just the reality of the physics of global warming, but the reality of economics. I listened to what the PM said then, and he's right. There's a reason why there hasn't been any new coal-fired power stations built, and it's not because of political correctness. It's because it doesn't stack up.
JOURNALIST: Can you just address that, though, I mean, we've heard from a number of Sydney Liberal MPs over the last few weeks, including Melissa McIntosh, Alex Hawke, who's supported this decision, and they, when I put that to them, those sorts of issues, they say, well, if you took away the signal that the emissions reduction target sends to the markets, you would get the investment in those sorts of facilities.
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Look, that's not right. The economics don't stack up. In fact, there's been some recent studies done, one by Paul Simshauser for example, which demonstrate that if you look at the counterfactual, if you say, well let's say we were to replace the retiring coal fired plant with a new coal fired plant, the cost is substantially more than renewables. So, look when I was first John Howard's Environment Minister the question was, nearly 20 years ago, the question was: how much extra are we prepared to pay to save the planet because renewables are more expensive? Well, guess what? That's changed. It's now cheaper. Do you know Hamish, over a third of Australian households have got solar panels on their roofs? Australians understand that renewables will lead to, result in, you paying less for your electricity. Of course, new infrastructure costs money…I don’t want to sound like an echo for Albanese, but what he said to you about the energy economics is absolutely right and anyone in the industry knows that.
JOURNALIST: Do you have some sympathy for Sussan Ley? You've been in this situation before. You favour a particular policy, the conservative side of the Liberal Party doesn't agree.
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Blow the joint up, yeah.
JOURNALIST: So do you sympathise?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Sure. Well, I do, but, unfortunately…, she's sort of caught in this terrible fishbowl, if you like, with the Liberal Party room that they've got the memory of goldfish and the dining habits of piranhas. They seem to just keep on forgetting and making the same mistake again and again, and essentially what they're doing is they're allowing their policy agenda, and this is a problem I faced too, it's been a problem for nearly 20 years in the Coalition, they're allowing their policy agenda to be dictated by right-wing media echo chambers like Sky News, it's similar with their followers and social media and Murdoch tabloids and so forth. And it is leading them into this spiral, which has resulted in them losing almost all of their city seats, losing almost all of their safest seats, the lowest vote they've ever had, and now they want to double down and do it again.
…I mean, look, we used to say… back in the day when Barnaby was the leader of the Nats, and he was going from one sort of disaster after another, we used to say that Barnaby would get up in the morning, look in the mirror, and say, well, that was a terrible day yesterday, now what can I do today to make things even worse? Right? That's the kind of bleak humour that we kind of consoled ourselves with at that time. Well, that's no longer a joke. This is what these guys are doing. It is that they are guaranteeing that they will marginalise their vote. It's as though they're worried about competing with Pauline Hanson as opposed to holding Anthony Albanese to account. So, if you want to fight to the death over who's going to have the 15% or 10% that people of Pauline Hanson's persuasion might be disposed to give you, knock yourself out, but that is no way ever to get back into government.
JOURNALIST: So looking at the map of Sydney, the Liberals hold four metro Sydney seats, what does this do to their chances of winning back Wentworth, Warringah, Mackeller, Bradfield? What does it do to the seats that they do hold?
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Well, it's terrible… it does two things. Firstly, all of those electorates are very committed to action on climate, number one. Secondly, you're talking about seats which are more affluent seats, high levels of education, the kind of the nonsense, the economic nonsense that is being sprouted, namely that we should go back to I don't know, building coal-fired power stations, that may play well in circles where you've got people that are just watching Sky News all the time, but the vast majority of Australians are too smart for that. And we have compulsory voting, we have preferential voting, thank God, and our politics is largely mediated at the centre. And so, these guys…they claim to be political geniuses. You've got Tony Abbott and Peta Credlin, they're driving this agenda, supporting it. Well, how well did Tony go? He lost his own seat?
JOURNALIST: When you say driving it, Tony Abbott driving it, you've talked about Barnaby Joyce, what's the evidence they’re actually behind all of this.
MALCOLM TURNBULL: Oh, well, I mean, Barnaby claims to be behind it. I mean, he's been the most vocal. He and his friends in the National Party are among the most vocal opponents of the Net Zero by 2050 target. And you've got just read what Credlin writes, see what Tony Abbott says. Look, they're all entitled to their point of view Hamish, but I'm just saying that…this sort of, I use the term right-wing advisably, but this kind of climate denying, anti-science ideological approach to global warming and energy policy has bedevilled the Liberal Party and the National Party for years and as I used to say when I was in office energy policy should be determined by engineering and economics, not ideology and idiocy. And that is the message that they're presenting. The problem is saying that the reason electricity prices are higher is because of a Net Zero target in 2050 is absurd, people recognise that. To abandon that target is virtue signalling, whether it's virtue, but it is signalling. It's a cultural war message.
**ENDS**
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