The Liberal Party’s new energy policy recycles discredited claims and fossil fuel talking points, undermining public trust and delaying the essential task of real action.

A Senate committee is currently investigating the integrity of information around climate and energy in Australia, and it’s unveiled some disturbing and frankly shocking examples of misinformation and disinformation.

There are hundreds of submissions, ranging from the downright batty, to the entirely self serving and the very imaginative. I, for instance, am accused in one submission of being a 40-year old funds manager in England with a full head of hair.

But perhaps the perfect amalgam of all this misinformation and disinformation and its impact on Australia’s social and political discussion is not in front of the committee at all – although it should be: It’s the newly released Liberal Party energy policy.

The Liberals have managed to pick out some of the worst memes around energy and climate, and the fossil fuel industry’s talking points, put them in a single document, and declared it to be policy.

It might have been useful had it been titled “climate and energy myths.” Instead it is described as: “Affordable and responsible: The Opposition’s Plan for affordable energy and lower emissions.”

We don’t have the time to go through all the untruths and misleading statements, so we are going to focus on the big ones – the ones that underpin the Liberal contention that renewables cannot power a modern economy, are too expensive, will lead to blackouts, and the lie that its policies are consistent with the Paris climate treaty.

Can’t power a modern economy?

The Liberals continue to spread nonsense about the ability of renewables to power modern economies. Liberal leader Sussan Ley, as written here,........

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