Peta Credlin: Sussan Ley can finally challenge Labor after abandoning net zero
Opposition Leader Sussan Ley faces her biggest test yet after the Liberals abandoned net zero emissions targets, setting up an explosive clash with Labor, writes Peta Credlin.
At last, the Liberal Party has created a serious contest with Labor on a subject that matters. Dumping net zero has upset all the right people, including the Prime Minister, whose slightly hysterical reaction shows that he knows he now has a fight on his hands. And it has reinvigorated all the right ones, as Andrew Hastie, Angus Taylor, Jacinta Price, Sarah Henderson and the other Liberal conservatives showed, walking into meetings last week as a team, determined to get the Liberal Party back on track.
As the world walks away from net zero with Left luminaries like Tony Blair and Bill Gates leading the push, the Albanese government is left with Chris Bowen to hold the line.
Bowen v Taylor, or Bowen v Hastie? Bring it on!
Labor’s greatest vulnerability has always been its epic failure to deliver on its one serious pre-election commitment: the infamous promise to cut household power bills by $275 a year and Anthony Albanese’s assurance that he didn’t just think it was doable, he knew because he’d done the modelling. But it was very hard to make an issue of this, while the Liberals had the same net zero commitment that was at the heart of Labor’s energy policy train wreck.
Far from driving prices down, Labor’s rush to renewables has put prices through the roof – up 24 per cent on average over the past year says official ABS data – and while Bowen can spin all he likes, Labor is caught out every time we see our power bills.
While sun and wind might be free, getting the power they generate to our powerpoints costs billions. And when they don’t work (like at night), replacing renewables with back-up power from gas and coal is colossally expensive. The Net Zero Australia study, involving former Australian chief scientist Robin Batterham, estimated the total system cost of getting to net zero at up to $9 trillion by 2060.
So far, getting to net zero has meant subsidising renewable power to drive take-up, subsidising consumers to avoid further bill shock, subsidising coal-fired power stations to keep the lights on, and subsidising heavy industry to keep it viable in the face of massive spikes in energy costs. The only reason for this madness is Labor’s obsessive pursuit of net zero CO2 emissions by 2050 – something that not one of the world’s biggest emitters is doing.
So why are we?
And as bad as things are now, they will get worse once Labor’s latest 2035 targets are rolled out: in agriculture, because sheep and cattle emit CO2; in transport, because we will only be able to drive EVs and plane travel will be cut back (or priced out of reach); and for our beautiful landscape, because ever more renewable power will ultimately need to occupy twice the land area of Tasmania.
Again, if most of the world isn’t doing this, why are we?
That good question was one the Liberals could not answer while they were joined at the hip with Labor on net zero. This was Scott Morrison’s worst mistake – signing the Coalition up to net zero in 2021 – and it predated the worst loss of seats in Liberal Party history, at the 2022 and 2025 elections.
So much for those Liberals who say you need net zero to beat the Teals: you had it and it hurt you. How about no longer trying to be Labor-lite, or Teal-like, and go back to being Liberals?
That’s the opportunity now, for Liberals once again be the party for economic growth and prosperity; and, yes, concerned about protecting the environment, but without junking our standard of living and capacity to make things in this country to do it.
All that’s really needed for Labor’s net zero commitment to become a huge political liability is a strong campaign against it. Like the campaign Tony Abbott as opposition leader waged against Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading scheme and then against Julia Gillard’s carbon tax. Or the campaign that Angus Taylor as energy minister waged against Bill Shorten’s 45 per cent emissions reduction target, and the campaign that Matt Canavan as resources minister waged in favour of the Adani coal mine in the lead-up to Scott Morrison’s “miracle” 2019 win.
On Thursday, drawing on her experience as environment minister, and with a strong and clear policy position to fight for, Sussan Ley gave her best media performance so far as Opposition Leader. But, given the vested interests in favour of net zero, she’ll have to campaign hard almost every single day if she’s going to win this fight. She’ll need to radiate more conviction on this issue than she’s previously managed, plus show more energy.
A complication here will be the fact the Ley’s backers are from the moderate faction: the ones who wanted to keep net zero but were rolled. So, as much as they want Ley to hold on to her job, if she fails they won’t be too unhappy because any failure to sell dumping net zero will be sold by them as a failure of the policy, not the saleswoman.
This is where the conservatives will need to be strong and united, fighting hard to remediate any deficiencies in Ley’s attack. Can she do it? I hope so but I am not yet convinced, given my ringside seat to Abbott’s message discipline and sheer relentless when he fought this same battle and won.
But I am at least encouraged that finally the net zero monkey is off the Liberal Party’s back and there is now a real chance to save our country’s economic future.
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