Nationals vote to abandon net zero mandate

15 hours ago 4

The Nationals’ highest governing body has voted to compel the parliamentary party to dump net zero mandates, a day before a party room meeting in which leader David Littleproud said its climate policy would be settled.

While Liberal MPs left a meeting on Friday broadly united in favour of reducing emissions, although also watering down targets, delegates at the National Party Federal Council’s annual meeting in Canberra on Saturday voted to ditch any net zero plan after hearing speeches from parliamentary leaders that lauded the party’s resolve in its split from the Liberals.

Nationals leader David Littleproud and Nationals Senate leader Senator Bridget McKenzie during the Nationals Federal Council at the National Press Club in Canberra on Saturday.

“Tomorrow morning our party room will meet to consider your deliberations today, and also the work that [senators] Ross Cadell and Matt Canavan have put together with the Page Research institute to look at the challenges of our energy and climate policy,” Nationals leader David Littleproud told the party faithful on Saturday, before the votes.

“We’re not walking away from reducing emissions, but we can do it a better, fairer, cheaper, way. We can align ourselves with the world as the world pivots, the world pivots from an arbitrary target to using common sense, making sure that they don’t destroy their economies.”

Former Liberal prime minister Scott Morrison negotiated for the Coalition to support net zero emissions by 2050 in 2021. The target was legislated by the Albanese government in 2022.

Federal Queensland MP Llew O’Brien introduced the motion to abandon net zero, saying the move was “not about whether you believe in climate change”.

“That’s a reality. We all know climate changes,” he said, calling net zero policies in Australia a “futile” measure when compared to the actions of China, India and the United States.

“It just makes no sense that we cut our own throat to pursue something that is bad for Australia.”

Nationals leader David Littleproud delivers an address to party members at the Nationals Federal Council in Canberra on Saturday.

Only two delegates spoke against the motion, both from South Australia.

One, Young Nationals delegate Perrin Rennie, said “regional Australians will be paying the price for increased natural disasters”.

“They will be losing their livelihoods to floods. They’ll lose their homes to fires. We’ll be experiencing more droughts. It is key that Australia does its part to ensure that climate change doesn’t severely impact our regions.”

Rennie said an abandonment of net zero could see the Nationals lose votes to the Labor Party as extreme weather events impact regional and rural Australia.

Young Nationals delegates Ryan Jellesma and Perrin Rennie, both from South Australia, speak during a debate on whether the Nationals parliamentary party should abandon its support for a net zero mandate, at the Nationals Federal Council.

The wording of the motion compelled the parliamentary party to “abandon its support for a net zero mandate”, featuring almost identical language to a Queensland LNP motion passed several months ago, the wording of which was agreed upon by Littleproud, Opposition Leader Sussan Ley and then LNP president Lawrence Springborg to provide cover for a loose aspiration towards net zero from the Coalition.

A subsequent motion to see the party withdraw from the Paris Agreement was abandoned following the passing of the net zero motion. The parliamentary National Party will meet at Parliament House at 9am on Sunday.

Speaking before the motions, Nationals Senator Bridget McKenzie described the party as the “ballast” supporting the Liberal Party’s vote, “not the drag”.

“The Nationals have a more clear-sighted [sic] in what we believe in the party. We’re more courageous to stand up for our community and against bad policy. We’ve got members that have been returned here because they’re hyper-local. They’re connected to their communities, and they’re backed by a powerful grassroots membership,” McKenzie said.

Delegates vote in support of a motion calling for the Federal National Parliamentary Party to abandon its support for a net zero mandate.

McKenzie also spoke on the upcoming 50-year anniversary of the Whitlam dismissal, and the installation of the Fraser-Anthony government, saying there were “echoes of Whitlam in the Albanese left-wing Labor government that grows in arrogance every single day”.

“It’s worth recalling that for the initial part of that period in opposition, the then Country Party and the Liberal Party were not in coalition. That success, that election, was determined as a result of not being in coalition for a large period of the preceding parliamentary term,” McKenzie said.

Also speaking at the meeting was deputy leader Kevin Hogan, who celebrated Littleproud’s leadership through the shortlived Coalition split following the May election.

“It might have looked a bit chaotic, but we were all sitting there going, ‘we know what we’re doing. We know why we’re doing this. We know the four reasons we’re doing this. We’re all but unified on this’.

“Having that collective agreement, that transparency, meant that we, you know, the overwhelming majority, were supporting David through that process, and we’re going through a similar process right now,” Hogan said.

On Friday morning, about 30 Liberal backbenchers met at Parliament House, offering support for emissions reductions while backing away from concrete pledges to support its net zero by 2050 policy.

However, there remains division within the party with some members choosing not to attend the meeting, a small group calling for a wholesale abandonment of net zero, and questions over the use of the “net zero” terminology.

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