The National party has unanimously decided to its scrap net zero commitments after a party room meeting on Sunday, piling pressure on Sussan Ley and the Liberals as they continue to debate their own energy platform.
The party leader, David Littleproud, said the Nationals would focus on “aspirations” rather than targets and align Australia’s emissions reduction to other OECD countries. Littleproud said he was “proud” of the decision.
He claimed “regional Australia is being torn apart” by the government’s energy policy, and that there was “a better, cheaper, fairer way” to reduce emissions than net zero.
Sign up: AU Breaking News email
Littleproud said he had informed Ley that the Nationals would be scrapping the 2050 target, and said he would respect the Liberal party’s sovereignty as it came to its own position.
“There’s a structured process, one in which the Liberal party has respected the sovereignty of our party room. We’ve got to our position before the Liberal party has settled theirs,” he said on Sunday afternoon.
“So we’ll respect the Liberal party and the processes that they’re going to undertake. When that’s determined, then we’ll have those discussions after that.”
The Liberals were grappling with the position of their Coalition partner on Sunday, and had differing views on how it would play out.
One Liberal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, accused the Nationals of “bullying tactics” by announcing their policy before the Liberals had come to a position.
Another Liberal, who is aligned to Ley’s camp, was more positive. They said the shadow energy minister, Dan Tehan, who is leading the Liberals’ process, had already outlined the “principles” that the Liberals would follow on Friday. That included to reduce energy prices as a priority, and focus on energy reliability and reducing emissions. They said the principles outlined by Littleproud were the same, and were hopeful the Coalition could come to an agreement.
Other Liberals, who asked to remain anonymous, said the decision by the Nationals to come out ahead of the Liberals was “not unexpected but not helpful”, and were less certain the two parties would be able to come to one position.
‘We’re not going to streak ahead’
In making the announcement, Littleproud argued that Australia, which accounts for 1% of global emissions, has reduced emissions by 24% on 2005 levels, compared with the OECD average of 14%.
“We believe that we can peg ourselves to the rest of the world. We’re not going to be a laggard, but we’re not going to streak ahead.”
Senators Matt Canavan and Ross Cadell, who were charged with reviewing the party’s energy and net zero policy, put forward their policy research to the party room on Sunday morning for debate, with modelling by the Page Research Centre. Barnaby Joyce was not in the meeting.
That report recommended adopting a trajectory of 2 to 9m tonnes in emissions reductions per year, with a focus on reducing energy prices.
The Coalition supported a net zero by 2050 target under former Liberal prime minister Scott Morrison in 2021, before being legislated by the Albanese government in 2022.
skip past newsletter promotion
Sign up to Breaking News Australia
Get the most important news as it breaks
Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
after newsletter promotion
The Nationals would scrap the Climate Change Act, Littleproud said. He said the party did not discuss whether they would push for Australia to leave the Paris agreement altogether.
The meeting on Sunday followed a discussion between Liberal MPs and senators on Friday.
The environment minister, Murray Watt, earlier said the National party was the “tail wagging the dog” in the Coalition.
“We got the National party … dictating terms to the Liberal party who claim to be the majority party in a Coalition,” he told the ABC Insiders program on Sunday morning.
“The idea that you would hand over climate and energy policy to the likes of Matthew Canavan and the ghost of Barnaby Joyce is like handing Dracula the keys to the blood bank.”
The Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young was even more critical, describing the Nationals policy as a disaster that will put Australian lives at risk.
“This abandoning of net zero abandons taxpayers, it abandons future generations, it abandons investments,” she said.
“It abandons Australia’s role as a serious player in our region and our Pacific neighbours are going to be furious that they hear that this type of ridiculous snake oil of a policy is being promoted by the National party.”
