LNP members’ net-zero challenge for Scott Morrison

Liberal National Party members will push for a motion against the government’s net-zero policy to be debated at the party’s state council meeting in Gladstone this weekend.

Peter Dutton at the Queensland Liberal National Party convention in Brisbane in July. Picture: Glenn Hunt

Liberal National Party members will push for three motions against the government’s net-zero policy to be debated at the party’s state council meeting in the resources heartland of Gladstone this weekend.

The motions, proposed by the grassroots members, have been listed as the 64th and 65th items on the agenda for the meeting as party leaders try to prevent embarrassment for Scott Morrison in the same week the Prime Minister attended the Glasgow climate conference.

The low placement of the items on the agenda put them “at risk of not being debated”, an LNP insider said.

One of the motions, raised by the federal divisional council in George Christensen’s electorate, requests that the state council call on the Morrison government to “oppose net-zero emissions if job losses will occur for little gain”.

“Any proposal for net-zero emissions needs to specify how it will be achieved and in what time frame,” it states. “Before adopting any proposal, methods of achieving such need to be modelled and if there will be job losses then the proposal shall be ­opposed.”

Two similar motions from the women’s arm of the LNP and the Toowoomba north state electoral council ask the state council to call on the government “to ensure that any proposal for a carbon net-zero target by 2050 is ­opposed, and no commitment to net-zero CO2 is made at the UN climate conference in Glasgow”.

The motions would be inconsequential to the government’s policy but would be seen as an embarrassing rebuke of Mr Morrison’s net-zero emissions policy.

Several state and federal MPs told The Australian they believe the motions should be debated.

“The value of being a member of the party is that you get to ­debate these big issues and I think it is important that party members always feel they can contribute,” one MP said.

“It’s certainly not the role of the political wing of the party to stifle debate in the membership.”

The state council is made up of elected representatives voted by branches in each electorate and sources said it was hard to predict the fate of the motions. “If it was voted on at state convention, it would definitely get up,” an LNP source said. “State conference is everyone, including the grassroots, but the state council could be more reluctant to go against what the Prime Minister says.”

Most federal MPs will be unable to attend the state council meeting because they would have been required to spend two weeks in quarantine upon returning to Queensland after the most recent sitting week in Canberra; however, state MPs and party leaders are expected to be there.