‘Captain’s call’: Opposition leader Speakman angers colleagues over net zero
The NSW Opposition Leader has declared his Liberal Party room continues to support the 2050 emissions target, but some of his colleagues are not impressed and say he “jumped the gun”.
Mark Speakman has angered some of his colleagues by promising an open debate on net zero, before announcing the party room “continues to support” the 2050 target.
With power prices spiralling and farmers up in arms about large-scale renewable projects, Mr Speakman released a statement on Tuesday afternoon insisting his NSW Liberals “continue to support” the 2050 target. The comments were co-authored by shadow energy minister James Griffin.
Hours earlier, Mr Speakman is understood to have had told MPs their position on net zero would be discussed at length during an extended party room meeting on November 18.
Multiple Liberal sources have told The Daily Telegraph they believed the leader had “jumped the gun”, and questioned the timing of the announcement.
“It looks like he’s made a captain’s call. He told us that it would be discussed next week and the next meeting would deliberately start early at 8am. Then suddenly he puts out a weird statement,” one Liberal MP said.
Another colleague added: “Members are desperate to have a discussion about this. I have no idea what Mark’s agenda is here. He’s angered a lot of us.”
A third Liberal MP added: “The question here is whether Mark did this to create confusion with the feds? People are just perplexed”
On Wednesday the federal Liberal Party met in Canberra to determine their official policy position on Net Zero. NSW Senator Andrew Bragg has already speculated he may resign if the target is scrapped.
Mr Speakman, who has publicly declared his personal support for the 2050 emissions target, told this masthead his statement “was not to influence decisions in Canberra” and had been issued “in response to multiple media requests for clarity”.
“Tuesday was Remembrance Day, question time was pushed out and the day’s schedule was tied up, so a media-stand up or any interview requests were not possible,” he said.
“A short statement was instead provided confirming the current NSW Liberals position.”
Several sources in Macquarie Street said it remained “unlikely” the NSW Liberal Party would dump support for net zero.
“It saved the furniture for us last election” one claimed, insisting they believed it was the reason the party won seats in affluent areas which were now held by Climate 200 MPs at a federal level.
NSW Nationals leader Dugald Saunders also released a short statement this week to confirm his party had “agreed in principle with the federal Nationals’ cheaper, better and fairer (energy) plan”.
“Regional NSW should not carry all the burden of Labor’s renewables rollout,” Mr Saunders said. His remarks did not specifically mention dumping Net Zero.
Separately, a working group of Coalition MPs, including Mr Griffin, Felicity Wilson and David Layzell are working on a review of the state’s Energy Roadmap.
The road map, implemented by former Energy Minister Matt Kean five years ago, involved building 14 gigawatts of renewables and storage by the end of the decade.
This masthead has highlighted major issues with the current electricity transition, including growing anger from farmers and flaws in the future retirement plan for new wind and solar projects.
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Originally published as ‘Captain’s call’: Opposition leader Speakman angers colleagues over net zero
