Australias new prime minister Scott Morrison showed this week he has masteredone of US President Donald Trumps most amazing tricks: the ability to make claims he and every one else knows are complete nonsense and to make them with total impunity.

Mr Trumps wild claims over the past couple of years have become legendary. Among the most brazen are: that he achieved more in his first 90 days than any president; that he won a massive landslide victory in the 2016 election; andthat the US is the highest taxed nation in the world.

All are demonstrably false, everyone knows it, and yet he gets away with making them.

His staff have been no better. His former press secretary Sean Spicerfamously claimed that Mr Trumps inauguration crowd was the largest crowd ever to witness an inauguration it certainly wasnt while his adviser Kellyanne Conways alternative facts and hislawyer Rudy Giulianis truth isnt truth comments becameinstant classics ofthe Trump era.

Journalists have been tirelessly debunking such statements since the beginning of Mr Trumps presidential campaign. Pulitzer Prize-winning US fact check site PolitiFact has even dedicated a whole section of its website todisprovingMr Trumps false claims.

But it makes no difference. Donald Trump isstill president, and hes still telling lie after lie without consequence.

This is a disturbing development because it takes away the presss power to use facts to hold politicians to account.

Ifourleaders can openly lie with impunity, then whats even the point of exposing such lies? Which bringsus to the point of this article.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison, told a blatantfib on national television. In an interview with Barrie Cassidy on ABCs_Insiders_, he declared that Australia would meet its 2030 greenhouse gas emissions reduction target in a canter.

As_The New Daily_ demonstrated in some detail, this is simply not true. The governments own researchshows we are on track to fall short of our commitments, and not just by a little bit. A vast chasm separates us from our 2030 target.

Mr Morrison surely knows this, but his comments to the contrary show he has as relaxed and open a relationship with the truth as Donald Trump.

Theevidence he knewhis comments wereuntrue is found in the following extract of the ABC interview. The relevant comments are marked in bold.

CASSIDY**:**You released the latest greenhouse gas emissions on Friday night, theyre up 1.3 per cent, the highest level on a quarterly basis for eight years and yet youll say youll reach the Paris commitments in a canter.

PRIME MINISTER:Yes.

CASSIDY:Based on what?

PRIME MINISTER:Based on our assessments and weve got emissions per capita are at the lowest level in 28 years, Barrie, and those figures, in particular, for the March quarter, were based on some rather stronger LNG production figures for that period. So look, one swallow doesnt make a summer, and I know that plenty of people will leap on that and theyll say that you need to do X and Y and theyll use those numbers for that purpose. But it means that were going to meet Kyoto 2 and well smash that number. We smashed Kyoto 1.

CASSIDY:But that has no relevance to whether or not youll reach the Paris targets?

PRIME MINISTER:We will Barrie.

The plenty of people who will say you need to do X and Y include the highly-trained experts commissioned by his government to calculate Australias carbon emissions in 2030.

And thosecalculations reveal that without major policy changes, we are on track to fall hopelessly short of our Paris targets.

Judging by the comments section on Wednesdays article,_The New Dailys_readers do not accept Mr Morrisons lie. But Mr Morrison does not seem to consider it necessary to answer their concerns.

_The New Daily_presented the Prime Ministers office with the evidence thatMr Morrison was lying, and requested an explanation, repeatedly, by phone and email. We got no response.

We met the same stony silence earlier this year, when_The New Daily_debunked the then-treasurers highly misleading statements about his income tax cuts.

Mr Morrison apparently thinkshe, like Donald Trump, cantwist the truth with impunity and it may turn out hes right.