After another scrappy week for the faltering Coalition, Bridget McKenzie on Thursday called for theNational partyto stop talking about itself.
No sane observer of politics since the 3 May election could disagree, but the party’s Senate leader made the observation in an awkward setting: a Sky News interview.
While they were tearing up their alliance with the Liberals, then attempting a patch-up job with the opposition leader,Sussan Ley, senior Nationals appeared dozens of times on TV and radio.
The immediate stakes are low. Labor just won a thumping majority and any return to government for the Coalition is unlikely before 2031, at the earliest. Whether the new frontbench survives orif the two parties can stick togetherat all remains an open question.
But McKenzie and her party’s leaders are doing their best to remind voters why theCoalitionwas so thoroughly rejected in the first place.
Publicly and privately, the Nationals continue to fight over whether to hold fast to the goal of reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050. They agreed to that target in 2021, despite strong internal opposition. Those negotiations saw the party secure an additional spot in Scott Morrison’s cabinet.
But without strong leadership now, the support appears a lot less secure.
Consider last Sunday alone. The Nationals leader,David Littleproud, appeared on Sky just after 8am. Asked whether net zero would remain a Nationals position, he said governments around the world were reconsidering.
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Net zero by 2050 remained party policy for now, but Littleproud promised “further discussions”.
“What the world is starting to understand is it’s very difficult to get there, but we shouldn’t give up on trying to reduce emissions,” he said.
Less than an hour later, the deputy leader, Kevin Hogan, was on ABC TV.
“The Nationals support net zero [by] 2050,” he declared, stressing the policy was settled seven years ago and “that’s not up for review or being changed”.
Within minutes, their Queensland colleague Matt Canavan was appearing on Sky, contradicting Hogan.
“There is a willingness to open this up. There’s a question about when and how we do that,” he said. Canavan has even released animated videos styling himself as a “dark Nat” out to fight net zero and the woke left.
The former Nationals leaders Michael McCormack andBarnaby Joyceboth oppose net zero, with the latter calling it “a great scam” this week.
It’s clear the Nationals are failing on net zeroon style and substance.
The pledge is the lowest common denominator of action to stem the damage being wrought by climate change, an emergency the CSIRO warns will deliver Australia increasing temperatures, declining rainfall, more drought and dangerous fire days, further sea level rises, species loss, more frequent and severe bleaching events in coral reefs, and increased natural disasters driven by wild weather.
As well as deadlyflooding in New South Walesin the past fortnight, atoxicmicroalgae bloom off the South Australiancoast this month has seen sharks and other marine life washing up along popular beaches.
Overseas, theSwiss village of Blatten was almost entirely destroyedthis week when thousands of tonnes of mud and ice fell from a collapsing glacier. Research published on Friday in the journal Science found almost 40% of glaciers are already doomed to melt due to emissions from fossil fuels. Set to put millions of lives at risk and wreak havoc with food supplies, the melt would drop by 50% if the Paris climate agreement’s target of limiting global heating to a 1.5C target can be achieved.
But the more dangerous test of net zero credibility rests with Ley.
The former environment minister was asked on Wednesday if net zero policies were under review within the wider Coalition.
She said the discussion would take place behind closed doors, led by the newly appointed shadow energy and emissions minister, Dan Tehan.
“We have to play, as a country, our part in the global response to climate change. Net zero, Paris targets, gas, all of the resources, conversations around critical minerals, they’re all part of that,” Ley said.
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“We have to play our part, but we have to make sure that we don’t do it at any cost.”
Business and environment groups agree shifting to anything less than net zero will be bad for investment and economic growth. Such a move would leave the Liberals unelectable, particularly in the metropolitan areas it needs to win back.
After just seeing off a teal challenger in her Mornington Peninsula seat of Flinders, the Liberal MP Zoe McKenzie quickly called for the party to hold firm on net zero.
“It is important for an electorate like mine where environment is very highly valued,” she said, noting the Liberals hold just eight of the 88 metropolitan electorates around the country.
A fellow moderate, New South Wales senator Andrew Bragg, said the Liberals were looking at how Australia could best get to net zero and how the target could be “deployed”.
But the Western Australian frontbencher Andrew Hastie this week told the ABC net zero was “a straitjacket that I’m already getting out of”.
“The real question is should Australian families and businesses be paying more for their electricity?” he said.
Powerful forces in business and the media are pushing back against net zero, emboldened by Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris agreement. They could influence the whole Coalition via the back door of National party agitation.
The head of this year’s UN climate talks, Cop30, warned on Friday the world is facing a new form of climate denial, in the form of a concerted attack on the idea that the economy can be reorganised to fight the crisis.
The veteran Brazilian diplomat André Corrêa do Lago saideconomic denialism will lead to the same dangerous outcomes as now discredited scientific denialism.
Labor faces criticism of its own, after the environment minister, Murray Watt, this weekapproved an extension to Woodside’s massive North West Shelf gas projectin Western Australia out to 2070.
Watt said he was signing off subject to “strict conditions” relating to local air pollution. He also had to consider the potential impact on nearby ancient rock art, and economic and social matters. Climate change is not grounds to refuse or limit a development application under Australia’s national environment law.
The Greens leader, Larissa Waters, said the government was waving around net zero “as a fig leaf” while putting the Great Barrier Reef at existential risk.
Groups including the Australian Conservation Foundation say net zero by 2035 would give Australia the best shot at fairly contributing to efforts to limit global heating to below 1.5C. They argue cutting emissions by 71% by 2035, based on 2019 levels, should be the floor of federal ambition in Australia.
Ley may have to hold the Nationals close to keep the Coalition together, but caving on net zero won’t help her win back the more than 30 seats the Liberals have lost since Tony Abbott became prime minister.
Tom McIlroy is Guardian Australia’s chief political correspondent