Joyce striving to lead Nationals to peace deal on climate

When the Hazelwood coal-fired power station announced it would be shutting its doors in March 2017, it was Tony Abbott, from the backbenches, who demanded the federal government intervene.

The former prime minister, who 18 months earlier had been deposed by Malcolm Turnbull, said if the federal government was serious about tackling Australia’s looming energy crisis, then the last thing it should be doing was closing 20 per cent of Victoria’s baseload power supply, even if it did involve burning coal.

Nationals MP Darren Chester, whose electorate of Gippsland was home to the hundreds of workers employed at the 50-year-old plant, was furious at the call for a bailout, suggesting it was far too late and even the company didn’t want it.

Nationals MP Darren Chester is taking a break from the party room.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“It is unhelpful for him to be providing false hope in my electorate when hundreds of workers are to be displaced,” Chester said at the time.

“Our focus as a government needs to be on dev­eloping alternative uses for the extremely valuable coal resource in the Latrobe Valley and investing in infrastructure that will create more jobs and opportunities for the region.”

Chester knew then, as he still says now, that coal communities like his would one day have to come to terms with a rapidly changing economy. He wasn’t cutting them loose by any stretch; he was simply preparing them for the inevitable shift.

Four years on and most of the Coalition are singing from the same song sheet. The world is changing and fossil fuels are no longer regarded as the future, even if they are not, just yet, a thing of the past.

But the climate remains vexed for the Nationals, who proudly represent regional Australia, and have in the past decade slowly grown their traditional appeal beyond farmers and graziers to encompass the resources sector.

Their leader Barnaby Joyce led the charge against the Gillard government’s carbon tax and has for years cast doubt over man-made climate change. Now it has fallen to Joyce to negotiate what some of his colleagues fear could be the death knell for the resources sector in Australia: an agreement to transition to a carbon-neutral economy by 2050.

The pro-fossil fuels stance has delivered the Nationals electoral success, particularly in Queensland, where the Coalition holds 23 of 30 seats. The Sunshine state and resource-rich Western Australia are the only two states where the government holds the majority of seats. Its MPs know this well.

But Chester’s dramatic decision to walk away from the federal Nationals party room this week is not based on the party’s climate stance. His views are basically widely shared by many of his colleagues.

They are that the party must be at the table when negotiating any pact, regional Australia must not pay the price but that the Nationals cannot afford to be seen as climate deniers.

Victorian senator Bridget McKenzie says you won’t hear her challenging climate science either. She just wants to make sure that the regional constituencies and industries she supports aren’t adversely affected by mandated climate targets.

Despite her personal attacks on some “cool for climate” Liberal colleagues this week, she hasn’t spoken against net zero. She just wants to see the plan to get there.

Chester is still a Victorian National and a member of the Coalition, but he will not attend party room meetings for the foreseeable future.

His decision to step out, albeit temporarily, was a reflection of the spiteful, personality-driven internal spats within the party over the past five years. The move threatens to derail any climate debate the party has in the coming weeks.

“It’s out of sadness rather than anger. It’s a degree of frustration,” he said this week. “The party room and the way it’s working at the moment is quite dysfunctional.”

His criticism is reserved for some of his “extreme right-wing” colleagues, namely Queenslanders George Christensen and Matt Canavan, over their outspoken views about COVID-19 restrictions, vaccinations and climate. But the internal clashes run much deeper.

The lingering wounds from the ousting of Michael McCormack three months ago show no signs of healing any time soon. And it is that challenging backdrop Joyce now has to navigate if he is to reach any deal with his Liberal partners on Australia’s emissions targets.

Nationals MPs Mark Coulton, Michael McCormack and Darren Chester in JuneCredit: Alex Ellinghausen

The 21-member partyroom has for many years been at differing ends of the political spectrum on issues ranging from same-sex marriage and abortion to economic, COVID-19 and climate policy.

“I’m not sure why people are surprised that climate isn’t settled within the Nats,” one senior party source said this week. “Just look at the past 10 years. Apart from the Greens none of these fights have been easy for political parties. And you need to have the fight.”

There are many within the Nationals who aren’t giving up on coal, even coal-fired power, for a second. They think the idea of setting a target for net zero emissions is the stupidest thing a nation whose wealth is tied to a booming resource sector could do to itself.

Canavan, who says he’s “deadset against” net zero, last week joined with retiring Flynn MP Ken O’Dowd and his potential successor, Colin Boyce, to call for a new taxpayer-funded coal-fired power generator on the site of the damaged Callide power station in central Queensland.

Another Queenslander, Resources Minister Keith Pitt, says he’s just “deadset against doing dumb things”.

“My colleagues will put forward their views, and at the moment it’s a blank canvas,” Pitt said of the discussions set to occur in the Nationals’ partyroom this week.

So Joyce is wedged. The Liberals believe it is critical electorally for them to strengthen their climate credentials with voters who, party officials say, are telling pollsters more and more that they simply just want governments to get on with tackling climate change.

It is not the top voting priority across the nation, but it has become critical in Liberal-held inner-city seats.

If Joyce wants to remain deputy prime minister after the election, a position he feels was unfairly taken from him for three years, then he has to consider the concerns of the Liberals when navigating his own partyroom.

Queensland MP David Littleproud, whose electorate of Maranoa boasts coal-fired power stations, gas fields and coal mines, this week went into the lion’s den for a Nationals minister – Triple J’s youth-oriented current affairs program Hack – to defend the party’s net zero debate.

“My position is that I’d, aspirationally, love to achieve it,” he said.

“There will be people with divergent views, from Matt Canavan, from me, from many other politicians. What I think you’ll find is that the majority of the room are more than open to listening to what that road map is.”

Now Joyce, for so long a firebrand and agitator, has to play pragmatist and negotiator. The suspicions within the government are that while he is dealing in good faith, he will more than likely outsource some of his gripes to his old friends Canavan and Christensen to prosecute, simply to ensure he’s driving the toughest bargain.

The man who once warned of $100 lamb roasts now says he has “no problems with any plan” to get to net zero so long as it doesn’t hurt regional Australia.

“We have to make sure our economy can function, we have to make sure that we earn the money,” Joyce said. “We have to make sure we make people very aware of the consequences of getting it wrong.”

If there are doubts that the climate has changed, the Nationals under Joyce may be the proof needed.

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