(Image: EPA/DFES/Evan Collis/Private Media)

We’re three minutes into the Hasluck candidates forum on climate change before the first “I believe you’re on mute …”

This is one of a handful of election events held on Zoom as the final echoes of Western Australia’s greater COVID-19 restrictions finally fade out more or less completely on Friday. It feels likes the end of a minor and very specific era, the characteristic form of public meetings from the past two years starting to feel kitschy, on its way out.

This event is run by the Conservation Council of Western Australia and the Perth Hills Climate Change Interest Group. The group is one of many for whom the impacts of climate change are in no way theoretical; the “Hills” (a loose term locals use for the Darling Ranges east of Perth and some of the surrounding hinterland) become a gnarled cluster of tinder in dry conditions, and has a long record of bushfires to show for it.

Obviously Liberal candidate Ken Wyatt doesn’t show. Forums specifically on climate change might as well have been designed in a lab to trip up the major parties with all their competing interest groups, but how the hell could he front up to a climate change forum after Prime Minister Scott Morrison specifically pitched Western Australia his bold “literally no action on climate change” plan, let alone the day after Nats Senator Matt Canavan declared the Coalition’s content-free “net zero by 2050” plan was effectively dead?

We do have Brendan Sturcke of the Greens, independent Jeanene Williams, Labor candidate Tania Lawrence and Will Scott of the United Australia Party. Yep, even the UAP showed up. When the party of government feels less confident debating on climate change than the representative of a mining billionaire who tried to sue the state into oblivion over its (extremely popular) border restrictions during the pandemic, something’s a little awry.

Scott actually does OK, all things considered; he acknowledges he’s not likely to win over this crowd but believes in contributing to the debate regardless and, most important, there’s nothing on vaccines or FREEDOM FREEDOM FREEDOM (“I love nature, which is why I would never consent to have chemicals pumped into my veins to help bring about one world government … “).

Of course, the major limitation of Zoom meetings is there’s no room to read — if his spruiking of nuclear energy or blaming the Texas freeze on green energy gets guffaws or boos, no one can hear them.

But by the measure of Zoom meeting etiquette, you’d have to class Williams as the winner on the evening. She’s well-spoken and her answers show real signs of joined-up thinking — she gets the most “well said”-style responses in the chatbox, the COVID-era equivalent of a round of applause.

Sturcke of course should have the best material on the environment, but he reads his opening in faltering high school debate style, meaning some of his best lines (“people call the Greens radicals, but it’s the parties failing to act on climate change who are the radicals”) skim past without traction — it establishes a slightly distracted tone that he never fully shifts out of.

And finally Lawrence, who is subject to the same dynamic I saw in similar events in Warringah in 2019. The Greens and indies can give the crowd what they want, and the ALP candidate has to be the killjoy. So Williams and Sturcke can promise they’ll oppose any new fossil fuel projects, and Lawrence has to talk about ensuring new projects meet the relevant environmental standards.

But she also has the ace up the sleeve, intensified by the fact that in Hasluck, unlike Warringah, Labor has a shot — she’s the only person in the forum who could conceivably form government, and nothing could be worse for the climate than more Coalition government: “I just implore everyone watching to think about what three more years of Coalition inaction on climate would be like.”

And so the event comes to an end, and the organisers have an adorable chat about how well they think it went, obviously not aware they’re still broadcasting — a distinctly COVID-era end to the night.