Scott Morrison avoids embarrassing debate at LNP council

Scott Morrison has avoided an embarrassing rebuke from the LNP’s grassroots members after motions to debate the government’s net-zero target at the party’s state conference failed to eventuate.

Queensland LNP MP Colin Boyce lost his bid to have net-zero emissions motions debated at the party’s state council meeting. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

Scott Morrison has avoided an embarrassing rebuke from the Liberal National Party’s grassroots members after motions to debate the government’s net-zero target at the party’s Queensland conference failed to eventuate.

Two separate motions were put on the agenda for the state council’s meeting in Gladstone on the weekend but their placement down the list meant the meeting ran out of time before the potentially humiliating vote was cast.

Flynn candidate Colin Boyce – who is a Queensland state MP and has said he will campaign against a net-zero emissions target – tried to have the motions ­debated earlier but did not get the support he needed.

The motions would be inconsequential to the government’s policy but would have been damaging to the Coalition so close to the Glasgow climate conference.

LNP sources said the net-zero issue would simmer within the rank and file members of the party, particularly in regional areas, until it was openly debated.

Mr Morrison and Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce gave prerecorded speeches promising the federal Coalition’s net-zero policy would be beneficial to regional economies and protect the central Queensland coal ­industry.

The council did, however, vote overwhelmingly in favour of building a coal-fired power ­station in Queensland.

“On one hand they don’t want to discuss net-zero carbon emissions but on the other hand they’ll vote for a new coal-fired power station,” an LNP source said.

“It’s hypocrisy.”