The National party has unanimously decided to scrap its 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.
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Littleproud said he had informed Ley that the Nationals would be scrapping the 2050 target.
On Sunday the Liberals were grappling with the position of their Coalition partner.
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 on Friday the “principles” that the Liberals would follow. 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 Nationals decision 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.
Barnaby Joyce, who did not attend Sunday’s meeting, did not publicly endorse the Nationals’ policy but welcomed the commitment to scrap net zero.
He told Guardian Australia he did not support Labor’s flagship capacity investment scheme continuing to support renewables projects. The Nationals’ plan would see the CIS continue, but allow it to be expanded to underwrite fossil fuel projects.
“[Scrapping net zero] moves the dial towards sanity for our economy and certainly takes into into account the massive damage that’s happened to the cost of living,” Joyce said.
‘We’re not going to streak ahead’
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 research to the party room for debate, with modelling by the Page Research Centre.
That report recommended adopting a trajectory of 2 to 9m tonnes in emissions reductions per year, with a focus on reducing energy prices.
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 Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young described 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.”
