Canavan leads group of five demanding Coalition debate scrapping net zero

Opposition Leader Sussan Ley has tried to tamp down tensions over energy policy after right-wing MPs demanded a showdown on the net zero pledge and a vanquished Liberal made a separate plea for new opposition policies that align with contemporary Australia.

Ley ordered a lengthy internal review of the opposition’s emissions reduction goal and other policies in May, being led by energy spokesman Dan Tehan, but a group of MPs created a test for Ley at Tuesday’s Coalition party room meeting by insisting on a more immediate debate on scrapping net zero.

Five conservative MPs – National Matt Canavan and Liberals Tony Pasin, Terry Young, Llew O’Brien and Alex Antic – spoke one after the other in the meeting to call for a standalone party-room debate to settle the policy, similar to those held on same-sex marriage last decade. Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce, who yesterday introduced a private members’ bill to repeal climate laws, did not speak.

The MPs speaking against net zero were countered by moderate former frontbencher Jane Hume and first-term MP Mary Aldred, who spoke in a Liberal-only party room discussion over the target that has split the Coalition since its May 3 election loss.

Details of the closed-door talks were confirmed by five MPs who declined to be named because the meetings are private.

Ley did not directly address reporters’ questions about whether she would set up a formal meeting to debate the issue.

“Members did speak up and have their say,” she said of the party room meeting.

“[I am] very willing to have party room discussions. And I said that this morning … energy policy discussion is always a good discussion.”

Canavan told this masthead that the Coalition should debate net zero, given the Liberal Party’s divisions in Western Australia and South Australia and the Liberal National Party of Queensland had in recent weeks passed non-binding motions calling on Ley to ditch the target.

“Perhaps surprisingly, the LNP conference debate on the weekend united the party. It brought people together just having the debate,” he said.

“That’s a lesson for us because we’ve never even had a debate on net zero in a joint party room meeting ever, as crazy as that sounds.

“Perhaps the best way to resolve the different views is to get in a room and thrash it out. Our approach has been to sweep it under the rug.”

Ley and her closest allies want to preserve the net zero pledge while making it more palatable for voters worried about energy prices and reliability, according to sources familiar with their thinking.

One of the highest profile Liberals to lose their seat at the May election, Keith Wolahan, made a plea to his former colleagues to do the hard work required to reconnect with contemporary Australia.

“It doesn’t have to be this way. It just requires discipline. But if I’m to be critical of our party in this loss, and we should be, it is that we collectively don’t understand the key issues for the key people in the key seats. That is an exercise in data, intelligence and demography,” he said on the Curtin’s Cast podcast hosted by the John Curtin Research Centre, with the episode to be released on Wednesday.

“What’s required is people who will put perspective over perception. That means having an out-of-body experience driven by data that says I need to pretend I’m Keith Wolahan in Menzies [in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs] because I’m not there. I need to pretend I’m in a teal seat.”

Simon Kennedy, who replaced Scott Morrison as member for Cook, addressed his colleagues to suggest net zero should be retained, while the opposition worked on policies that could lower prices and create energy abundance, such as a gas reserve. Liberal frontbencher Tim Wilson has made similar arguments.

Kennedy said the Coalition should be pressuring Labor on its plans before the release of a 2035 climate target, not on net zero.

One moderate MP who spoke on background about the private meeting said the conservative group was “peacocking”, had no serious policy solutions, and should not be taken seriously.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is being lobbied by environmental groups to announce a high 2035 target that may increase electricity bills.

Labor has seized on Coalition disunity on energy this week, taking the rare step of allowing debate on Joyce’s bill to allow the opposition time to air their dirty linen on the floor of parliament.

“If you get rid of net zero, you are saying climate change is not real,” Albanese said on Monday.

“You have Barnaby Joyce, whose private members’ bill will be debated in the parliament this morning, openly saying that climate change is not real. That’s effectively what they are saying.”

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