Quick reader poll. When I say 'Tony Abbott', what words spring to mind? Future-focused? Tech-savvy? Visionary?
I'm guessing the answer is nope, nope and nope. After all, Abbott is a social conservative whose signature achievement as Prime Minister was repealing legislation from the previous government. He was ridiculed for his outdated views on women and his attempts to reinstate a system of Knights and Dames. Part of Turnbull's pitch to replace him was a shift towards 'innovation'.
The other justification, as the media reminded us ad nauseam this week, was Abbott's 30 consecutive losing Newspolls. When Turnbull passed that same milestone on Monday, Abbott was cycling through Victoria's Latrobe Valley to draw attention to his latest crusade — a government-funded coal-fired power station.
A lot of people got annoyed with ol' Tony, saying he was undermining Turnbull's leadership or distracting from real solutions to fix out national electricity market and curb greenhouse gas pollution. Not me. I'm concerned about climate change and want to see Australia transition to more renewable energy, so I was cheering him on. Go Tony!
Why? Because every time he fronts up to the cameras as self-appointed Ambassador for the Little Black Rock, Tony Abbott reinforces the message that coal power is the technology of a bygone era.
The Coalition's political old guard don't get this because their thinking hasn't changed since Abbott's 'carbon tax' sloganeering of 2012 and 2013. His chief of staff, Peta Credlin, later explained the strategy on Sky News: 'We made it a fight about the hip pocket and not about the environment.'
Indeed, that's how the issue was framed for decades: reducing prices vs cutting pollution. The trouble is it's no longer true, and the energy industry doesn't support it. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the coverage of the Australian Financial Review, which once ridiculed renewables but now runs articles about how they're the cheapest investment for new electricity supply.
"The lobby group representing coal power stations is now saying that renewables are the cheapest form of new power supply. And the country's biggest financial newspaper is publishing it. Can you imagine that happening five years ago?"
On Wednesday the AFR published an opinion piece by Matthew Warren, CEO of the Australian Energy Council, which represents big coal and gas generators. Warren argued that 'new coal is now more expensive per megawatt hour than new wind and new solar', flatly contradicting Abbott's claims. Banks won't finance high