Election 2022: Net zero up in air, reaffirms Colin Boyce

Queensland’s newest Nationals MP, Colin Boyce, has stood by his mid-election claim that the Coalition’s net zero pledge is ‘flexible’.

Nationals MP Colin Boyce. Picture: Brad Hunter

Queensland’s newest Nationals MP, Colin Boyce, has stood by his mid-election claim that the Coalition’s net zero pledge is “flexible” and says the party needs to continue to adapt its policy to suit global events.

Mr Boyce narrowly beat Labor’s Matt Burnett in the fight for the Central Queensland resources seat of Flynn as voters turned off in 2019 by Bill Shorten came back to Anthony Albanese.

Mr Burnett, the Gladstone mayor, had a 7.6 per cent primary vote swing in his favour which translated to a similar two-party-preferred swing, giving Mr Boyce a 2.2 per cent margin.

The victory capped an end to almost two years of campaigning for Mr Boyce, who resigned from his Queensland state seat that he retained in October 2020 for a federal tilt.

Mr Boyce said the LNP’s victory in an industrial electorate like Flynn at a time when the Labor Party won government showed a demographic shift among working-class voters and who they supported.

“The conservative National Party, for example, we’re the people who are representing the blue collar people, the people at the coalface so to speak,” he said.

“That is a significant political democratic shift that has been clearly highlighted in this last election cycle.”

Mr Boyce, who was initially critical of the Coalition’s net zero policy, said he stood by the criticism, despite finger-pointing by some Liberal colleagues who lost their seats in inner cities.

“I guess there’ll be a period of reflection, and a whole lot of people pointing fingers and making accusations,” Mr Boyce said.

“The road to (net zero) is not a straight lineal road, given the world events and what’s happening in the world, and the fact that the world is, in my view, in a precarious position,” Mr Boyce said.

Flynn was viewed early on as a litmus test for Anthony Albanese after the swinging, resources-dominated electorate turned against Bill Shorten in 2019 over his ambivalent messaging on coal.

Mr Boyce, who won preselection last year after the retirement of Ken O’Dowd, was expected to face a tough challenge from Mr Burnett, who received several visits from Mr Albanese throughout the past year.

Labor and LNP strategists believed it was vulnerable, but the confidence in Labor’s chances diminished as the six-week campaign progressed. Booths in resources towns in which voters punished Labor in 2019 swung away from the LNP on Saturday.

In the coal mining town of Moura, where the ALP primary vote was down 7.5 per cent in 2019, the LNP primary vote dropped by 4.1 per cent, while most of the gains went to Labor.

It was a similar story in Blackwater, where the LNP vote dropped by 3.5 per cent while Labor’s rose by 3.4. But booths in more agriculture-based towns, such as Theodore, Rolleston and Capella were significantly more in favour of the LNP.