The Liberal leader, Sussan Ley, has indicated the Coalition won’t set a 2030 or 2035 climate target unless they return to government, saying her colleagues didn’t back locking in an emissions goal while they remained in opposition.
It came as Ley had to clean up her own error, claiming she “misspoke” after initially saying her party “don’t believe in setting targets at all from opposition or from government”. She later clarified she only meant in opposition, prompting ridicule from Anthony Albanese who claimed the opposition “changes its policies from hour to hour”.
Albanese declined to guarantee whether power prices would fall under the government’s goal to reduce Australia’s emissions by between 62 and 70%, based on 2005 levels, by 2035. Energy minister Chris Bowen said projections of $1,000 a year in power price savings were only modelling, and “not a political promise”.
Labor opts for political solution to emissions reduction with Oprah-style target – video
The 62-70% goal prompted cautious support from business groups, but criticism from climate groups who said it fell short of what Australia should be doing to combat global heating.
Ley and the Coalition also immediately denounced the target as “economy-wrecking”, the opposition leader saying she was “dead against” the plan but not nominating an alternate target.
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The Coalition remains committed at this stage to the net zero by 2050 pledge made by former PM Scott Morrison. Ley is under pressure from conservatives to dump the net zero pledge, including leadership aspirant Andrew Hastie and Nationals MPs.
Asked on Friday at a press conference what alternate target the Coalition would nominate, Ley initially gave an answer she later said was in error.
“We don’t believe in setting targets at all from opposition or from government because the reality is that energy policy is not about a target that is never going to be reached and the 43% target is a perfect example of that,” she said, referencing Labor’s 2030 goal.
Ley chided the government for “setting a notional target and then expecting that everyone will agree with it, even though you can’t demonstrate how you will get there or what it will cost.” She claimed “the cost question is not answered at all.”
But after she concluded her press conference, Ley quickly returned to the assembled cameras to claim she “just misspoke in the answer I gave to you, on targets.”
“What I meant to say was that I don’t support the targets that the government sets while we’re in opposition, so I misspoke. We don’t support setting targets in opposition. We do, of course, recognise the importance of targets in government when we have the full information in front of us, which we don’t have now,” she said.
Labor set its 2030 target of 43% in 2021, while in opposition.
In a subsequent press conference on Friday, Albanese was scathing of Ley’s gaffe about not setting targets. He claimed it was “essentially the announcement of withdrawal” from the Paris climate agreement – an allegation Coalition sources strongly denied.
“In this statement, what it said was a lot about the modern Liberal Party. They’re focused on their own jobs and fighting each other,” Albanese said.
