Coalition divisions erupt as more MPs urge leader to dump climate pledge

Two more Coalition MPs have urged Opposition Leader Sussan Ley to dump support for Australia’s pledge to reach net zero emissions by 2050, following frontbencher Andrew Hastie’s ultimatum on Monday night that he would quit the front bench if she backed the climate target.

South Australian Liberal MP Tony Pasin and Queensland Nationals senator Matt Canavan – both long opposed to the Coalition’s net zero commitment – told this masthead they backed Hastie’s demands to dump the target and urged Ley to tackle the divisions threatening party unity again.

Opposition energy spokesman Dan Tehan is leading a review of the Coalition’s climate policies that Ley ordered after the Nationals brief split from her party after the May election. But as the government prepares to announce Australia’s 2035 emissions reduction target on Thursday, the divisions within the opposition have been exploded in public again.

Hastie, who is seen by the right faction as a potential party leader, warned on Monday evening that he could quit the frontbench or be sacked, telling ABC local radio in Perth that if Ley backed net zero by 2050, “that leaves me without a job”.

“I’ve nailed my colours to the mast,” he told ABC Radio.

Hastie conceded Ley had no choice but to sack Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price last Wednesday after she refused to back the opposition leader when asked at a press conference.

The WA MP’s opposition to climate targets is well known, but the timing of his comments has been read by moderate Liberals as a deliberate provocation, coming just days after Ley sacked Price for disloyalty.

Tasmanian senator Jonathon Duniam, a factional ally, fellow member of shadow cabinet and close friend of Hastie, went further on Tuesday morning and said more shadow ministers could resign if the Coalition pursued climate action at “any cost”.

“If we just said net zero at any cost by 2050, I think you’d find there’d be a mass exodus [of frontbenchers and MPs],” the opposition education spokesman told Sky News.

Pasin, another conservative ally of Hastie’s, said that he was “against net zero because of the harm it will do to the economy”.

“Even if you accept the need to address climate change and if you accept 9 billion humans are contributing to it, which seems likely, I don’t see the merit in closing steel mills in Australia [to reduce emissions] and opening them in China or the US,” Pasin said.

Asked about Hastie’s future on the frontbench, Pasin said: “Andrew is a colleague of strong principles and high morals. He will make the decision he thinks is appropriate in the circumstances.”

Canavan, a member of the Nationals who cannot vote in Liberal leadership contests, said that Ley “absolutely can stay as leader of the opposition, I hope she does well”.

Asked if the Liberal Party could split over net zero, creating a new party – an option some conservative Liberals have floated in private – Canavan said nobody had suggested that to him “and I don’t think it’s on the cards”.

“The more likely outcome is the Liberals and Nationals will dump net zero, it’s never been a natural fit, the state branches have rejected it, and there is now no viable election-winning strategy while we keep net zero.”

The Victorian Liberals are the latest state branch to call on Ley to ditch that commitment, following the Queensland, West Australian and South Australian branches.

Last week, this masthead revealed Coalition frontbenchers were canvassing stripping the net zero goal from laws passed in Labor’s first term, exempting energy-intensive smelters from the targets and pushing the date out from 2050, in an attempt to find a compromise the conservatives would accept.

A conservative Liberal MP, who asked not to be named, said: “There is no appetite for a leadership change right now, the sense I get is from my colleagues on the Right [faction] is that we hope Sussan does better”.

“There is a much higher chance that Sussan becomes an arch pragmatist on net zero to save her own leadership. She needs an elegant dismount, otherwise she can’t remain leader of the Coalition.”

NSW senator Maria Kovacic, a leading moderate, noted that there was already a process for working out the party’s stance on net zero.

“Robust debate and respectful discussions behind closed doors is how credible policy is developed,” she told this masthead.

“We will deliver an energy policy that will work in 2028 [at the next election], rather than one which is reactive in 2025.”

As Ley’s supporters play down the latest round of infighting, claiming it was nothing new, the opposition leader will deliver her first major economic speech on Wednesday in a move designed to stamp her authority on the party’s direction.

The speech will warn that Australia is at risk of depending too much on government spending, which has ratcheted up public debt under the Albanese government.

Ley will pledge that so-called fiscal guardrails would be restored under her leadership and that both governments and individuals would have to live within their means.

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