(Image: Gorkie/Private Media)

Rarely has the gap between political reality and fantasy peddled by a government and press gallery been wider.

Today we have yet another round of the “inching towards 2050” game, with Treasurer Josh Frydenberg — the man who used to be the next prime minister — making the anodyne observation that capital markets are moving more quickly than the government on climate (and being applauded by press gallery journalists for doing so) and speculation that the Nationals will agree to a deal on a 2050 net-zero target, doubtless in exchange for yet more billions of taxpayer dollars.

In the real world, Energy Minister Angus Taylor is still trying to push through his “CoalKeeper” tax — which would require every household to pay up to $400 a year to keep coal-fired power stations going — in a meeting with state energy ministers today. 2050 in the streets, CoalKeeper in the sheets, as it were, with the press gallery dutifully averting its collective eyes.

Taylor is facing growing difficulties with his tax. Victoria made its position clear last week when its Energy Minister Lily D’Ambrosio said Victoria wouldn’t support it. Yesterday she repeated that: “Victoria will not sign up to a scheme that delays the transition to clean energy or locks in outdated technology… A capacity mechanism that only incentivises new investment in zero emissions technologies would be welcome.” The ACT will oppose it too.

What started off as Taylor’s plan to funnel subsidies to the Coalition’s fossil-fuel donors may end up only supporting new storage infrastructure, if it gets that far. 

You can see why Taylor and the Morrison government are so anxious to find a way to subsidise coal-fired power. Yesterday EnergyAustralia flagged it had brought forward the closure date of the Mt Piper coal-fired plant in NSW to 2040, and might bring it even further forward. It says it wants out of coal by 2040, but the timing of yesterday’s announcement is clearly designed to encourage support for CoalKeeper among the states — especially New South Wales, where Energy Minister Matt Kean has emphasised trying to keep prices down.

CoalKeeper isn’t the only way the Morrison government is backing coal — at the behest of Nationals it is likely to add another multibillion-dollar extension of its inland rail line to extend it hundreds of kilometres to Gladstone. In a document now well-hidden on the Infrastructure Department’s website, the complete lack of any case for such an extension has been detailed in a “pre-feasibility study” of the idea, that brutally concludes “an extension to Gladstone would not be economically viable”.

However, it did note that “the expansion of inland rail to Gladstone, via an inland route, could potentially extend the port’s coal hinterland and ultimately improve the region’s export opportunities” and that “the inland route via the Surat Basin has the potential to open up numerous thermal coal deposits for export”, though the cost of shipping coal through Gladstone would be very expensive.

Given that the existing, loss-making $15 billion inland rail project will act as a subsidy for coal exports, an inland rail extension to Gladstone would further confirm that the entire $20 billion (minimum) project is based on increasing coal exports.

Again, that’s a nuance that has bypassed the press gallery. Like carbon capture and storage, inland rail is all about feigning climate action while encouraging the continued use of fossil fuels at current disastrous levels.

That will presumably continue when Morrison boldly announces a net zero by 2050 (hey, what about 2045 to make it look really ambitious), a wholly inadequate target that will do nothing to address the climate emergency, and stand in contrast to other countries committing to significantly reduce, even halve, emissions in the next eight years.

The fantasy and the reality, with voters being urged to ignore the latter and concentrate on the former.