The Nationals leader, David Littleproud, will face a concerted push at the federal conference of the party this weekend to dump its commitment to achieving net zero emissions by 2050.
Guardian Australia has obtained a copy of a motion submitted by Barnaby Joyce’s federal electorate council in New England that calls on the Nationals parliamentary party room to “abolish its policy of net zero by 2050, and adopt a policy that will reduce Australia’s CO2 emissions in collaboration with the rest of the world”.
The new motion – which some party sources interpret as a strategic strike intended to destabilise Littleproud’s leadership – has alarmed moderate Liberals because the Nationals abandoning net zero would reopen an acrimonious internal Coalition discussion about climate policy.
As well as dumping net zero, the new motion championed by the New England FEC also calls on the Nationals party room to “ensure that any policies relating to CO2 emissions do not negatively affect on-farm production of food and fibre”.
The conference push from Joyce’s party organisation in New England is ironic given the Nationals’ official commitment to the net zero target was actually settled while Joyce was party leader.
The Nationals agreed to net zero in October 2021 after the prime minister at the time, Scott Morrison, made it clear ahead of UN-led climate talks in Glasgow that he wanted that target to be government policy.
Joyce made it clear during a Nationals party room discussion to settle the policy commitment that he did not support net zero. But a majority of his colleagues – including Littleproud – did. In National party terms, Littleproud, historically, has been significantly more progressive on the climate transition than Joyce.
Some Nationals believe the insurrection is likely to succeed at the weekend, although the motion is unlikely to be backed by conference delegates from Western Australia and Victoria.
Joyce told Guardian Australia the motion “did not come from me”. But he also acknowledged he was “pleased they’re having the discussion.”
Joyce said he would express a view on the motion at the Nationals’ conference “but right now in New England and many parts of Australia, the biggest issue I’m getting run over with is transmission lines, the diminution of value of people’s properties and ... being surrounded by a new industrial park”.
“We seem to be wearing this: the transmission lines, the windfarms and solar factories in New England,” he said. “Everywhere else gets to feel virtuous, but we get completely run over with the impediments. You don’t hear any proposals to put wind and solar factories in [Sydney’s] North Head or Middle Head or transmission lines in Sydney or off the beaches. It wouldn’t be tolerated, understandably.”
Joyce declared renewables projects and transmission lines were “turning the whole landscape into an industrial park” on behalf of the residents of cities and these were “completely changing” the landscape “for the worse”.
“They don’t want any part of the infrastructure but they want the virtue of the source [of renewable energy].”
Joyce claimed Labor had “completely botched” the transition to net zero, to the extent they are “now subsidising coalfire power stations” – a reference to the extension of the Eraring power station – because “they’ve got no alternative”.
Ahead of the 2022 election a number of Queensland Nationals undercut the Coalition’s support of net zero, including the then candidate for Flynn and now MP Colin Boyce, who described the target as “flexible”, and senator Matt Canavan, who said that net zero was “over”.
Asked about these comments and the Coalition’s position on net zero leading into the next election, the deputy Nationals leader, Perin Davey, recently told Guardian Australia: “Officially, we still have a net zero policy in the Nationals as well as in the Coalition.”
“We’ve always been technology, not taxes,” she said on 24 August. “The Nationals have been very forthcoming in our openness to talk about nuclear. And we’re very pleased that the Liberals have now started to look at it and are actually making positive noises about nuclear too ... We’re very proud that we’ve led the way.”
Littleproud, told the Guardian’s Australian Politics podcast in May that the Nationals’ engagement with young people would be improved by a focus on the “environment and articulating to them that we are serious about net zero and how we achieve it”.
