Ley receives ‘mass exodus’ warning after Hastie threatens to quit frontbench over net zero

Senior members of Sussan Ley’s shadow cabinet have warned of an exodus from the frontbench if the Coalition does not abandon or water down its support for net zero by 2050, in a fresh test of the opposition leader’s authority a week after she sacked Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.

Opposition Home Affairs spokesman Andrew Hastie told ABC Radio Perth on Monday that he would consider quitting the frontbench, or Ley could sack him, because he believed the opposition should dump the targets.

The West Australian MP was followed by Tasmanian senator Jonathon Duniam, who on Tuesday morning said more shadow ministers would resign if the Coalition pursued climate action at “any cost”. The swell of agitation on the 2050 targets comes after Liberal state and territory conferences vote against the policy, threatening Ley’s attempt to reclaim the centre ground of politics.

Hastie’s comments on Monday came just hours after the Albanese government had released the first National Climate Risk Assessment report, which painted a grim future for the country if global warming continues unabated, and it is just days away from unveiling its interim emissions reduction target for 2035.

Ley ordered a review of the Coalition’s climate policy by her energy spokesman, Dan Tehan, after the disastrous 2025 election in which the Peter Dutton-led opposition promised to build up to seven nuclear power stations to meet Australia’s commitment to net zero emissions by 2050.

Hastie said that if Ley kept the Coalition committed to supporting the net zero target, “that leaves me without a job.”

“My primary mission in politics is to build a stronger, more secure, more competitive Australia. Energy security is a vital input into that, so that’s my bottom line,” he told ABC Radio.

“I’ve nailed my colours to the mast.”

Duniam, the opposition’s education spokesperson, said: “Net zero at any cost is something that only stupid people would pursue.”

“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].

“We have to get balance in this debate. We can say we want to save the planet by reducing emissions, great, but at what cost do we want to shut down the economy and that is what Labor is proposing to do here,” Duniam told Sky News.

Hastie said Ley had no choice but to demote Price last week because “Jacinta Nampijinpa Price didn’t express support for her leadership, and one of the conditions for serving in the shadow cabinet or the outer ministry is that you support the leader”.

Asked if Ley had his full support, Hastie said: “She has my support … I wouldn’t be sitting here speaking with you as the shadow minister for home affairs”.

The comments are likely to further stoke tensions within the Coalition over a policy that has divided the party for more than a decade.

In 2009, then-opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull’s support of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme led to a successful challenge by Tony Abbott.

As prime minister, Scott Morrison was able to negotiate with the Nationals to take a 2050 net zero target to the COP26 conference in Glasgow, and Peter Dutton largely quelled dissent on the topic during the last term of government.

The climate risk assessment report warned that climate change-fuelled heatwaves will kill thousands of Australians every year by 2050, wipe $611 billion from property values and put 1.5 million homes at risk of rising sea levels if greenhouse gas emissions continue rising.

Like many Coalition MPs, Hastie has been a critic of Australia’s commitment to net zero, which was first made by Abbott as prime minister a decade ago and which every subsequent Liberal leader has maintained.

Hastie has been seen as a potential future leader of the Liberal Party since entering politics in 2015, and is a leading light in its hard right or conservative faction.

A spokesman for Ley said, “we are committed to the process” of reviewing Coalition climate policy.

But a colleague and ally of Ley, who asked not to be named so they could speak freely, was scathing about Hastie’s intervention.

“For a bloke who thinks that he can be a future leader, he has picked a hell of a day to say he will die on the hill of net zero,” that person said.

“Millions of Australians were just warned about the potentially catastrophic impacts of climate change, and he is saying to them ‘I don’t give a stuff’.”

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