Net zero change possible as David Littleproud stays in charge of Nationals

David Littleproud has left the door open to dumping the net zero emissions by 2050 target after he was returned to the Nationals leadership.

Leadership team: David Littleproud, flanked by Kevin Hogan and Bridget McKenzie, at Parliament House in Canberra on Monday. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

You can now listen to The Australian's articles. Give us your feedback.

You can now listen to The Australian's articles.

David Littleproud has left the door open to dumping the net zero emissions by 2050 target after he was returned to the ­Nationals leadership, as he faces pressure from within his party to take a stand on climate policy that could rupture the Coalition.

Amid speculation about the future of the party’s Coalition with the Liberals, Mr Littleproud defeated challenger Matt Canavan in a closed-door ballot that saw Kevin Hogan assume the deputy leader position and Bridget McKenzie continue as Nationals Senate leader.

After he emerged from the partyroom on Monday, Mr Littleproud had another swipe at Jacinta Nampijinpa Price for defecting from his partyroom to join the Liberals, saying the NT Senator had “greater ambitions” than the Nationals could offer.

Ahead of a key Nationals party meeting on Friday, some MPs are pushing for the agreement with the Liberals to be revisited to provide “room to breathe” and ventilate new policies; others are agitating for the party to drop the net zero target.

Mr Littleproud tried to hose down suggestions the Coalition could splinter over emissions targets and the role of nuclear in the energy mix, declining to weigh in on “hypotheticals” before the Liberals settled their own leadership challenge in a vote on Tuesday.

“We’ll work through the whole process but the fundamentals haven’t changed,” he said. “You cannot run an economy of the industrial scale the size of Australia on an all-renewables approach, just look at Spain and Portugal.

“The reality is, even Anthony Albanese is saying your energy bill is going to go up, not down.

“The lived experience of Australians over the next three years is going to be one that they’ve endured for the last three, that they’re going to see their energy bills going up.”

The Australian understands Mr Littleproud won the ballot by 15 votes to six.

Senator Canavan vowed to “keep up the fight” to shelve the net zero emissions target, and continue to push for policies that would “revive Australia as the lucky country”.

“I may not have won the battle but the war on net zero madness continues,” he said.

Nationals MP Colin Boyce, who said the net zero emissions target was “destroying the Australian economy and driving down our standard of living”, has called for the agreement with the Liberal Party to be “discussed”.

“Those discussions must be had amongst my colleagues in the Nationals partyroom … that is paramount,” he said.

Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce, also a vocal critic of the net zero emissions target, has urged his party to adopt a different approach. “Intermittent power ­issues driven by net zero policy are … atrociously hurting our ­nation and must go,” he said.

“With China breathing down our neck, doing live-fire exercises in the Tasman Sea off Sydney, with an erratic policy structure emanating from the US … if we continue on this path, we are foolish, and fools get hurt.”

Outgoing Nationals deputy leader Perin Davey urged her colleagues not to adopt “opposition for opposition’s sake”, and be open to policy ideas from the other side of politics.

Senator Davey, who was not re-elected after she was relegated to a losing spot on the NSW Senate ticket, said if the Coalition continued, then the Nationals needed to retain “meaningful” frontbench positions and be treated as “equals”.

“I certainly think that if we are going to sign up and say ‘Yes, we’ll coalesce in opposition’, we’ve got a really, really strong case to plead that we can’t be treated as the poor sibling anymore, because we’re the party that consistently holds our seats,” she said.

Other Nationals MPs have speculated that a new Coalition agreement could take as long as 18 months to be finalised, meaning the party would have policy “conversations more publicly”, including on tax reform.

“I think we have some really interesting conversations on family tax reform and family tax systems in our partyroom that never sees the light of day,” one Nationals MP said.