The war in Ukraine has fundamentally changed the outlook for the forthcoming federal election. It is unlikely, once the gravity of the situation sinks in to the quiet Australians, that they will take the unprecedented risk of trusting our national security to the crazies of the Labor/Greens alliance at a time of such global danger.

When one of the few members of the federal Labor party who understood the ever-growing threat of China, Senator Kimberley Kitching, died this week, it was not only a terrible personal tragedy but also a fitting omen. The heart and soul of traditional Labor – wary of China, pro-Israel – has now departed. Hounded out of politics, if certain media reports are correct, by the ghastly girls of modern Labor.

Punters are well within their rights to question the loyalty of the modern Labor party to traditional Australian values, given the repeated examples of Labor politicians cosying up to China, taking money from Chinese billionaires and, as in the case of Victoria, attempting to sign us up to China’s expansionist ‘Belt and Road’ debt trap. At least two prominent Labor figures were on Chinese payrolls and happily spruiked the so-called benefits of Xi’s Celestial Totalitarian Kingdom.

As David Flint and Michael Baume make clear in this week’s cover stories, and as is brilliantly captured by Sarah Dudley and Ben Davis on this week’s cover, the Thunbergian push for zero emissions spells self-destruction for the West. The communist world’s greatest gift in their century-old dream of disarming and dismantling Western democratic supremacy is the doomsday cult of climate change alarmism. Thanks to this cult and the way it has insidiously inveigled its way into pretty much every major financial, academic, political and cultural institution we have, we are now facing the end of a golden era of individual freedoms.

Indeed, as Christopher Akehurst rather gloomily points out, Australians may never again enjoy the fruits of our civilisation. With America in decline under a woeful leftist government, Britain only belatedly beginning to realise the stupidity of its own energy policies and with our own defence capabilities a sorry joke, such concerns are not unjustified.

Putin’s predecessor and namesake Vladimir Lenin famously postulated that capitalists would sell you the rope with which to hang them. He wouldn’t believe his luck with climate change and net zero. Not only the rope – we’re bringing our own chair, tying the noose ourselves and then happily sticking our neck through it.

Those who are heavily invested both financially and politically in the climate hoax will refuse to admit they have been hoodwinked, wallowing as they do in their sense of sanctimonious self-righteousness as they ‘save the planet’. But the simple truth is that which climate realists have always known; namely, that the only way to genuinely clean up pollution is through wealth, innovation and technology, not through self-impoverishment. The stupidity and naivety of the ‘woke’ crowd was best summed up by ‘Climate Czar’ John Kerry’s literally insane comments on the eve of the invasion of Ukraine about hoping that President Putin would nonetheless carry on helping him tackle climate change.

The Morrison government is far from perfect, but in Peter Dutton we have a defense minister fully on top of his brief and with the intellect, the spine and the fortitude to protect our nation’s security. Throw in the likes of Andrew Hastie and Senator James Patterson (who with the aforementioned Kimberley Kitching set up the China-wary ‘Wolverines’ group within parliament) and the nation can breathe a lot easier than under a Cabinet led by ‘Tory-hating’ Anthony Albanese – one that would include Penny Wong and Kristina Keneally and likely would be in hock to the Greens. Perish the thought.

It is clear now that Scott Morrison and Angus Taylor made a monumentally foolish decision in embracing net zero emissions. History will likely view Glasgow’s Cop26 climate conference not as the beginning of the path to global net zero, but the last hurrah. The dream, to quote John Lennon, is over.

Scott Morrison must recognise, as he did at a ‘pub test’ with Sky’s Paul Murray in Gosford this week, that coal is here to stay. Putin has made sure of that.

The viper in the nest, however, remains those so-called ‘modern’ Liberals who would happily see this nation castrate itself on the altar of climate change and renewables. We know who they are. And we know not to vote for them. Far better to ensure that at least some of those conservative independents from One Nation, the Lib Dems or Craig Kelly’s UAP make into our next parliament.

The next Liberal government, with the support of such independents, must purge itself of the fifth column of climate cultists within its ranks if it is to have any hope of keeping this nation strong and safe.