In dumping net zero, the Liberals have thumbed their noses at voters they need to win

With much talk this week about the end of the Whitlam government, Liberal conservatives might do well to read Gough Whitlam's 1967 speech to the Victorian Labor Party, at the start of his climb to power.

Like the Liberals now, federal Labor had been trounced at the 1966 election. Whitlam was the new leader, and he took on Victorian hardliners who put ideology ahead of electability.

"Certainly, the impotent are pure," Whitlam told the delegates at the conference, in a line that echoed down the years.

The Liberal conservatives' success in forcing their party to dump its commitment to the net zero emissions reduction target has been a triumph of ideology over pragmatism, worthy of those 1960s Labor zealots.

Walking away from the commitment is ill-judged and politically dangerous. It's als