Give the Coalition points for chutzpah, if nothing else. In a press release on Wednesday, first given to the Australian for a not exactly hard-won “exclusive”, it declared “Australians need cheaper power, not more ideology”.

You don’t have to get far beyond that headline to find its position comes from a worldview that is ideology on steroids. That worldview says climate change is not real, or at least not a real concern, and Australia should abolish nearly all plans to respond to or prepare the economy – and people’s lives – for the changes under way.

As one campaigner put it, it is a plan to let climate change rip. Greenhouse gas emissions would be much higher than on the current trajectory.

From a here-and-now consumer point of view, it is a plan that is based on the fallacy that the big jump in power bills in recent years is due to renewable energy and a legislated net zero target. Evidence and most experts clearly say otherwise. But both are disregarded.

Most of what the Coalition announced wasn’t actually new. The fresh bit is that it has promised to package up eight commitments in a new bill that would be introduced within 30 days if it was elected. Remarkably, at least half of those commitments are to abolish policies that were introduced under Coalition governments led by Scott Morrison, Tony Abbott and John........

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