Conservative Liberals Alex Antic and Tony Pasin speak out on net zero

Conservative Liberals are fuelling pressure on Opposition Leader Sussan Ley by attacking net zero targets.

Conservative Liberals are fuelling pressure on Opposition Leader Sussan Ley by decrying net zero targets after frontbencher Andrew Hastie threatened to quit over the polarising policy.

Sceptics including frontbencher Jonno Duniam predicted a “mass exodus” from the party if Ms Ley embraced “net zero at any cost”, following Mr Hastie’s declaration he would be “without a job” if the Coalition recommitted after an internal review.

South Australian Liberals Alex Antic and Tony Pasin argued net zero targets damaged the Australian economy by hiking electricity prices and driving industry offshore.

But SA Senator Anne Ruston, the Opposition Deputy Senate Leader, said the Coalition energy policy must “be about delivering affordable and reliable power” while also “doing our part in the global efforts to reduce emissions”.

Shadow Minister for Home Affairs Andrew Hastie at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Mr Hastie’s move will heighten consideration of him as a future conservative Liberal leader, while Ms Ley is understood to have privately backed both net zero targets coupled with an affordable power policy.

But Senator Antic, who in May spearheaded an SA Liberal branch push for the federal party to “rescind their policy of net zero by 2050”, said South Australians were enduring some of the world’s highest power prices “largely because of our dependence on subsidised and chaotically intermittent wind and solar energy”.

“Andrew Hastie is a man of immense courage and integrity, which he has proven by standing by his convictions,” he told The Advertiser.

“Australian politicians should be putting Australia first and that means protecting our energy security from attempts to erode our national sovereignty, redistribute wealth and impose controls on our economy through net zero. Andrew Hastie is right.

“The membership of the Liberal Party nationwide supports dropping net zero and our parliamentary parties across the nation should listen and follow their lead.”

South Australian Liberal senator Alex Antic at Parliament House in Canberra: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Mr Pasin, the Barker MP, said he had long argued the Coalition needed to move away from net zero, because this would harm the Australian economy as the United States, China, India and other nations backed away from the goal.

“ … Let’s assume for one moment that global warming exists and let’s assume also, as I think we must, that eight or nine billion humans on the planet is having an impact. You don’t solve that problem by simply moving carbon intensive emitting activity like steelmaking from Australia to China,” he said.

“That hasn’t solved the problem at all. All that’s done is weaken the Australian economy, cost Australian jobs, strengthened the Chinese economy and, potentially, increased the amount of carbon you’re emitting into the environment.”

Mr Duniam said: “Our party room (position), I’m pretty certain, based on the conversations I’ve had, including with our own leader, Sussan Ley, is that adopting net zero at any cost is bad policy.”

Originally published as Conservative Liberals Alex Antic and Tony Pasin speak out on net zero