Preparing for a tough election battle, federal Liberal MP Dave Sharma massages the truth on the government’s climate action for Wentworth’s voters.
Dave Sharma, the Liberal member for Wentworth in Sydney’s affluent eastern suburbs, likes to portray himself as a “modern Liberal”. This is code for a Liberal politician, or aspiring one, whose personal policy preferences display, inter alia, compassion for refugees and knowledge of the scientific evidence on climate change. This epithet, Sharma hopes, will distinguish him from the Coalition’s loony-right Canberra parliamentarians in the minds of the well-right of centre (but very enlightened, of course!) Liberal voters of Double Bay, Point Piper and Vaucluse.
Having lost the Wentworth by-election in 2018 to independent Kerryn “I’m in favour of releasing refugees from detention and bold climate action” Phelps, following the dumping of local hero Malcolm Turnbull as PM, you can understand Sharma’s sensitivity to these issues.
Sharma won the seat back from Phelps for the Libs several months later at the 2019 general election. By then, local anger at Turnbull’s regicide had faded and the life of the Liberal government was on the line, so the faithful returned to the congregation. Sharma’s not daft though, and he has been keen during his two and a half years in Canberra to ensure that his constituents are aware of his compassionate and environmental sustainability credentials; credentials that have been more clearly on display to a watchful voter in his proclamations than his parliamentary voting behaviour.
Sharma’s determination to promote himself as a moderate can only have been strengthened by the recent news that he will face another Independent at next year’s general election. And not just any old, unknown blow-in, but the high profile and local Allegra Spender, daughter of recently deceased darling of the eastern suburbs, designer Carla Zampatti and former Liberal MP John Spender. As Spender declared, “We’re a family of Liberals”. The penny will have dropped in the local Liberal branch that Sharma’s principal challenger is going to be a locally well-liked, well-resourced and well-organised “Liberal independen”’. The days of breezing through a campaign against no-hoper Labor, Green and independent candidates are well passed.
So, with a margin of only 1.3 per cent, it’s hardly surprising that “thoroughly modern Dave” is preparing for a tough battle to defend his seat by burnishing his liberal Liberal credentials. By way of evidence, milord, I table exhibit A, a flyer Sharma has been distributing among his maybe not-so-faithful-as-he’d-like supporters in Wentworth.
It appears that Sharma has been taking lessons from his leader on carefully worded deceptions. I imagine he is hoping that Wentworth voters will read his claim that “we have updated our 2030 emissions reduction projection to 35 per cent” and think that the government has updated its completely inadequate 26-28 per cent emissions reduction target. However, as he well knows, not only has the government not updated this target but the PM has already rejected any idea that it will be updated before the next COP meeting in Egypt in November 2022, thus reneging on the commitment Australia made when signing the Glasgow climate pact only a month ago.
As for the claim that “we are investing record amounts in solar, hydrogen, soil carbon and other green technologies” … that may well be true but what about telling Wentworth’s voters about the amount the government is investing in the development of new coal, oil and gas fields and technologies around Australia, not to mention the subsidies and tax breaks it gives to fossil fuel companies? I note that Sharma doesn’t mention the gas led recovery or compare the amounts given to support struggling fossil fuels with the amounts given to the “green technologies” that hold the key to the future. Wentworth’s climate conscious Liberal voters might not like those figures.
“Thank you for trusting me,” Sharma concludes. He must be joking. Why on earth would anyone trust a local member who tries to pull these sorts of con? Untrustworthiness and deception seem to extend beyond the PM and his ministers to the party’s backbenchers.
But to be fair, I do Sharma a slight disservice. The heading of his flyer is totally accurate: “Net Zero Climate Action”. That very accurately sums up in a snappy, Morrison-style mantra the government’s and Sharma’s real climate action — ZERO.
Peter Sainsbury is a retired public health worker with a long interest in social policy, particularly social justice, and now focusing on climate change and environmental sustainability. He is extremely pessimistic about the world avoiding catastrophic global warming.
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