The pious, sanctimonious nonsense was on full display in the Pacific islands and turns out yet again, Scott Morrison was right.

The communique, even if you take these things seriously, was supposed to include the pledge of a ban on all new coal mines. And in that aspect alone you had laid bare, for the whole region to see, just how hopelessly out of touch, how dangerously ideologically driven too many of our so-called leaders are.

Morrison, fresh from one of the most astonishing electoral success stories of the modern political age, was of course having none of it. None of his people would have been anything less than appalled, if he'd lost his mind and signed up to the sort of economic sabotage the rest of them were lapping up including tragically our own leader.

One of the more arrogant Pacific leaders had the audacity to say Morrison was more interested in his economy than his people.

What, of course, he fails to understand is you look after your people with an economy. Sadly, given too many in the Pacific are net debtors not contributors, they wouldn't have the slightest idea of how to run a proper economy.

As a result, they feel justified in making such outlandish statements. And oh the irony - the aforementioned election success was off course in no small respect on the back of coal.

While Bill Shorten, since vanquished to the history books of people who took victory and botched it, was banging on about climate change, Morrison wandered to Queensland a state destined for a Labor landslide and quietly reminded people that things like the Adani mine provides work and income and tax and foreign returns. Queensland understood that, got the reality vs the frippery, and voted accordingly.

Now yet again, we say as clearly as we can things like coal are not ideal and yes, hopefully one day it will all be turbines and solar and hydrogen. But right here, right now it isn't. And isn't anywhere close. And in the meantime, people still need jobs and we still need to fuel industry and our lives and like it or not fossil fuels do that.

Morrison gets that. The rest clearly don’t.

And in that ignorance, wilful or otherwise, is the real danger. This lot will literally bankrupt us with their obsession with something I strongly suspect they don't truly understand. They certainly and clearly don’t understand the cold, hard reality of the economic outcomes they wish to pursue by taxing farmers isolating industries, if not destroying them, like the oil in Taranaki.

Of course, as Winston so wisely pointed out, these same people seem to have no issue with the Chinese money that floods the place driven by - as he put it - coal driven everything. My take away from all this is the Pacific constantly has its hand out with a list of complaints. People like Jacinda are in their pocket and the only two left making any sense are Winston and Scott.