His plan is one hundred percent supported by our government. One supported by our government. It was resolved by.
Cabin Once upon a time in the not too distant past, a Liberal leader frantic cameras dispute the economic benefits of net zero.
The Coalition is rock solid on pursuing this plan because this protects jobs, it protects livelihoods, and it protects a way of life for rural and regional Australia.
Now, just four years later, despite supporting it herself, Susan Lee is set to dump net zero so her party won't dump her. But if the party is right winning the battle on climate policy, they're also set to win the war within the Liberal Party. Betsy Now on when, not if, Lee will lose leadership. I'm Daniel James and you're listening to seven AM today. Contributing editor of the New Daily, Amy Remikiez on the coalition's civil war on climate policy and how it lets labor off the hook.
It's Saturday, November eight Amy, Susan Lee looks set to walk away from net zero to save her leadership. Tell me about how the fight over net zero is currently playing out within the Liberal Party.
Well, it actually started about six months ago, this most recent blow up over climate when the Nationals started making a lot of noise about net zero, and Barnaby Joyce and Matt Canavan in particular, we're out and about saying we don't want to be part of net zero. We think it's costing too much money. We want to bring this policy down.
Currently we're not getting a good deal from net zero. It's been a bit of a scam where bankers and big business makes money and small businesses, families have to pay more. Power prices have gone up forty percent since we signed up to net zero, both electrics and.
We saw that when the National Party threatened to walk away from the coalition almost as soon as Susan.
Lee became a leader.
I mean, David Little Proud was trying to contact Susan Lee as she was trying to handle her mother's death. It was brutal and it hasn't really stopped being that brutal.
It's just gone a little bit more. Under the covers.
Are United Front, the National Party in lockstep on abandoning a net zero targety. A little while ago informed the Opposition leader Susan Lee of the National Party's decision to scrap net zero by twenty fifty.
So the Nationals have officially walked away from net zero, which is where we always knew that they were going to go.
We continue to believe that we need to reduce emissions, but we've got to do it in a better fare and cheaper way for all Austrains.
The right of the Liberal Party want to follow, and they're getting very very low about wanting to follow.
So that's your angus.
Taylor, You're Andrew Hasty, You're Sarah Henderson, mikayliea Cash.
We can't keep supporting targets it are unachievable or distructive to our economy and our way of life. I think we're going to destroy our country on that current trajectory, and that's why I'm so opposed to sticking with net zero and Labour's climate.
I very much hope that my Libul colleagues support the position where we turn our back entirely on Labour's terrible net zero laws.
And then you have Lee, who is supported by the moderates in the party room, trying to walk this line where she's saying, Okay, let's have a look.
At the review and see what we can do.
I said when I became leader, we would develop an energy policy that delivered a stable, reliable grid for affordable energy for households and businesses, and we'd play our part responsibly in reducing emissions. And those are still the two fundamentals in the energy policy that we are producing.
The moderates really pushing to maintain some sort of link to net zero, and the right of the party saying if you do any of that, we're going to destroy you.
So it's an absolute mess.
So the key argument for those in the party don't support next zeros apparently around cost and they're saying that is driving our energy prices. So is there any evidence behind that claim and where is that assertion coming from.
So it's a bit complicated that these things always are. I mean, our energy mix and what makes our prices is a mix of gas and coal and renewables, and renewables are by far the cheapest source of power in our network at the moment. It's one of the reasons why the government is saying, well, we can give you three hours free power because there's so much renewables in the system, it's so cheap they can afford to do that.
Coal and gas are still very expensive.
And every time that there's in, every single time that there's some sort of waves in the energy market, because our gas in particular is exposed to the international prices, our energy price goes up. So it's not because of renewables. It's because of the amount of gas and coal still in the system, and we haven't transitioned to a point where we don't need the coal.
And gas just yet. That's the reason why power prices are so high.
That doesn't really fit the narrative of what the Nationals and the right of the Liberal Party want people to know. They want people to think like, oh, it's the transition that's costing you all of this money, when we know just from looking at the evidence that that is not true.
They're also pulling this number seven to nine trillion dollars, which sounds really scary, but it comes from a report that this big agency, McKinsey did where they were looking at the cost of transition, and that figure that seven to nine trillion dollars was about investment. The Liberals who want to get rid of net zero, and what the Nationals are not telling you is that this isn't a cost.
It's investment.
An investment, as the report laid out, also reaps rewards. It also has benefits, so you get money back from that. It also didn't take into account the cost of doing nothing, which is very very similar to the cost of investment. So they've cherry picked these figures from the report to say, oh, this is going to cost x amount when it's just not true.
So is this a coordinated, internationally devised strategy to retain fossil fuels as part of the energy mix across the globe? Is this something that's been coordinated When.
You look at the talking points, it absolutely is.
All of these conversations happen globally and you see the same lines and the same flash points pop up all over the world. So at the moment we have UK politicians who are following Nigel Farage, who's their version of Pauline Hanson threatening to lie down in front of bulldozers to stop a solar farm from being built. It is all the same lines that are just being dolled out by these people. And we know that it's being funded by fossil fuel vested interests because we've seen evidence of
that across the globe. This is not unique to Australia, and often you can see what's coming down the pipeline by watching what is making news in the United States and the UK, and you can be like, oh, okay, we're going to have big fights about wind farms very very soon.
And sure enough we're having fights about wind.
Farms or wind duils, is Donald Trump calls them. Coming up the climate Wars origin story.
Amy.
This fight inside the Liberal Party over nit zero and more broadly about hat to respond to climate change, of course, is not new. So how far back does it actually go.
It actually goes back to Keating, so to a Labor government in the early nineteen nineties where they came up with the no regrets policy. And the no regrets policy was happening at the time when the world was trying to keep emissions to below nineteen eighty eight levels.
So we've blown.
Past that, but at the time that was the goal and coal Keating and the Labor government said okay, we'll take part in this, but only if it doesn't impact our agriculture and our coal mining industries, because these are the two biggest industries Australia has.
The rest of the world.
Went okay, fair enough, and they gave all sorts of little, you know, allowances that allow Australia to use things like different ways of using the land. So promising not to do land clearing, or promising to just keep different areas of vegetation going or planting trees could all count to
Australia not having to cut emissions. Then John Howard is elected in nineteen ninety six and he's all like, this is brilliant, I can really do something with this, and he absolutely dis turbocharged that policy.
Listeners may remember that the.
Kyoto Treaty was not ratified by the Howard government. That pretty much was the world's really big first attempt to deal with emissions, and Howard was one of the only people to say no to that at the time. I mean Russia ratified it before Australia did. He really made it a climate culture war, and it was the first time that we really saw how politics could derail the
science in such a comprehensive way. Not ratifying Kyoto taught an entire generation of Australian politicians in the Liberal Party how you can advance your own personal career by not actually doing anything on climate, How you can really start to build your own personal brand on that and we've been stuck.
There for the last thirty years and here we are.
So if Lee's party doesn't support net zero, does it make sense for her to walk away from the policy.
It doesn't make any sense for her to walk away from the policy. But it's also not going to save her. There is nothing that can be done to save Susan Lee's leadership.
She does not have authority in the party room.
Because Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton at least had authority over the party room, so even though they didn't do anything, they could still say we are going to keep the idea of net zero, and the right of the party had to basically just sit there and take their lumps. Susan Lee does not have that power, and she's now in a position where if she keeps any reference to net zero, she's going to lose the support of the right and they will do everything that they can to
bring her down. And if she gets rid of all references to net zero, she loses the support of the moderates. But then she's also very very reliant on polling, and we know that the polls continue to go down for the Liberal Party because of this sort of stuff. So the Liberals went backwards in the last two elections. One of the main reasons for that was their lack of
climate policy. If they get rid of any reference to net zero by twenty fifty, or even just net zero, then they're going to completely collapse in the polls, which is when the Right will go Okay, well she's useless and we're going to get rid of her anyway. There is no saving her leadership. It may not be before Christmas, but it's not going to be much longer after that.
And in the broader scheme of things, what does it mean if the Liberal Party does officially walk away from net zero? What does it do to our politics and to the market In.
Terms of Australian policy.
It doesn't actually do a lot because on the numbers it is almost impossible I say almost because nothing is, but almost impossible for the Liberal Party to win government at the next election.
So we've got labor for at least six years.
That means that our energy transition is well underway by the time that the coalition, if it still exists, is electorally competitive again. So it doesn't really do anything in terms of policy in the short term. It does impact on the market and whether or not they feel secure about investing in Australia, but it also just keeps the climate wars going. So we're not focusing on what the Labor government is or isn't doing, and they're pretty much
just doing the bare minimum. We're not pushing labor to follow the science and stop coal and gas mining. We're having a conversation again about what the coalition is going to do on net zero and it's just it's so frustrating because we just seem stuck as a nation at this one spot because of this one party that is just keeping us held hostage in terms of this conversation at the same time point that we were thirty years ago when John Howard refused to ratify the Kyoto Convention.
And how much longer do you think Susan Lee can hold on for? And what do you think this fight tells us about the future of the Liver Party itself.
Look, I mean I think they're going to let Susan Lee hold on for as long as this mess is around because Angus Taylor and it's most likely going to be Angus Taylor at this stage.
With Tim Wilson as a deputy.
They don't want to own the mess, so they're going to make Susan Lee stick around for as long as they have this fight. Once the mess is sorted out, they'll probably keep her around for a little bit longer if she capitulates, and all signs are that she will capitulate, and then when the polls start tanking, that's when they'll come out and say, well, we have.
To do this for the future of the party.
The position the Coalition is in is that because the Nationals have capitulated and basically turned into one nation in the types of policies that they present in a bid to fend off one nation in their electorates, then liberals in inner city seats cannot fend off the Greens or Independence because the policy, the compromised policies that they've come up with, don't work in both areas. And it's an absolute mess.
Amy, Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you.
Seven Am is a daily show from Solstice Media. It's made by Anigas Basto, Chris Danegate, Daniel James Ruby Jones, Sarah mcveee, Travis Evans and Zulfet Joan. Our theme music is by Ned Beckley and Josh Hergan of Envelope Bordier. This has been seven am. Thanks for listening.