\n<\/p>\n
Nationals senator Matt Canavan has claimed the Coalition is \u201con the cusp of walking away from net zero\u201d, urging Sussan Ley to campaign against the emissions reduction target by taking inspiration from Peter Dutton\u2019s opposition to the Indigenous voice referendum.<\/p>\n
The conservative political conference Cpac has heaped more pressure on Ley to dump the climate target, with a host of rightwing Liberal and National politicians calling for the 2050 aspiration \u2013 agreed by the former Coalition prime minister Scott Morrison \u2013 to be scrapped immediately.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019re on the cusp of the Liberal and National parties walking away from net zero,\u201d Canavan told the Cpac conference, claiming the \u201cthe last rites [are] being administered right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s got to go through this process, maybe it\u2019ll take 12 months, but we took two hours to come up and oppose the emission target this week, so that\u2019s good.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Shadow energy minister Dan Tehan is leading an internal process to set the Coalition\u2019s energy policy, including its position on net zero. That process is ongoing but has no timeline for reporting or finalising policies; Ley last week said the party was \u201cnot going to be pinned down on timelines\u201d but \u201ctaking the time to get that right\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do take climate action seriously and we do believe that Australia should play its part in reducing emissions, but not at any cost,\u201d she told a press conference.<\/p>\n
Ley indicated the Coalition wouldn\u2019t set a 2030 or 2035 climate target while in opposition, saying her party didn\u2019t support pledging emissions goals unless they return to government.<\/p>\n
Some net zero sceptics including Canavan and Abbott have argued that not setting 2030 or 2035 targets would necessitate scrapping the 2050 goal, because not setting shorter-term goals would mean even more drastic reforms would be needed to meet the longer-term aspiration.<\/p>\n
Canavan, in a live broadcast at Cpac of the Sky News opinion program Outsiders, called on his colleagues to have \u201cthe guts and courage to point out the emperor, the net zero emperor, has no clothes\u201d, and suggested emulating Dutton\u2019s strategy from the Indigenous voice referendum.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Australian people didn\u2019t change their mind on the voice until Peter Dutton came out and showed leadership. As soon as he took a position, the polls on the voice went off a cliff. The same thing will happen here,\u201d Canavan said of net zero.<\/p>\n
In Cpac speeches on Saturday, Abbott joined recently demoted Liberal senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, senator Alex Antic and the Cpac chair, Warren Mundine, in urging the dumping of net zero. The Liberal deputy leader, Ted O\u2019Brien, was heckled several times during his speech by audience members calling for the Coalition to scrap the target.<\/p>\n
Ley was not on the speaker\u2019s lineup at Cpac. Angus Taylor, who she defeated in a leadership ballot, sent a short video message; Andrew Hastie, another potential leadership aspirant, was mentioned several times in glowing terms by speakers and attenders. Canavan, in a separate speech on Saturday, strongly praised Hastie for his threat to quit the shadow frontbench if the Coalition stuck by net zero, which received a standing ovation and loud applause from many in the audience.<\/p>\n
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Sign up to Breaking News Australia<\/span><\/p>\n Get the most important news as it breaks<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n The energy minister, Chris Bowen, told the ABC\u2019s Insiders on Sunday there was \u201cpeople of bad faith in Australian politics exploiting this issue\u201d. He accused the National party of \u201cbetraying regional Australia\u201d by downplaying the alarming projections in this week\u2019s climate risk assessment, voicing alarm about climate \u201cdisinformation \u2026 from so many on the right of politics.\u201d<\/p>\n Abbott claimed Labor\u2019s 62-70% emissions reduction target by 2035 could be the government\u2019s \u201cpolitical death warrant\u201d, and would be \u201cnational economic suicide\u201d, calling on the Liberals to wage an election campaign on climate issues.<\/p>\n \u201cI also want to remind my former colleagues that every time the Coalition has fought an election on climate and energy \u2013 in 2010, 2013, and 2019 as well \u2013 we have succeeded. And every time we have \u2018me too-ed\u2019 Labor, we have done badly.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think this week, an opportunity has opened for us to take back Australia.\u201d<\/p>\n Price labelled the climate target \u201ccommunism\u201d, saying: \u201cIt\u2019s time the Liberals pushed back against this freedom-eroding nonsense.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nationals senator Matt Canavan has claimed the Coalition is \u201con the cusp of walking away from net zero\u201d, urging Sussan Ley to campaign against the emissions reduction target by taking inspiration from Peter Dutton\u2019s opposition to the Indigenous voice referendum. The conservative political conference Cpac has heaped more pressure on Ley to dump the climate<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22851,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[13998,7386,1891,186,1772,187,11585,13999,1097,13745,3036,765,1986,322,8229],"class_list":{"0":"post-22850","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-abandoning","9":"tag-canavan","10":"tag-claims","11":"tag-climate","12":"tag-coalition","13":"tag-crisis","14":"tag-cusp","15":"tag-duttons","16":"tag-follow","17":"tag-ley","18":"tag-net","19":"tag-referendum","20":"tag-tactics","21":"tag-urged","22":"tag-voice"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}