‘Practical and balanced’: Coalition unifies in pitch for new energy policy
The coalition has formed a united front to announce new energy policy, including scrapping net zero, after weeks of turmoil.
Opposition Leader Sussan Ley and National Leader David Littleproud emerged from a joint party room meeting in Sydney on Sunday afternoon to announce their energy policies following the decision to scrap net zero.
Speaking to reporters, Ms Ley said the 2050 net zero target was “not responsible” and Labor’s plans were “damaging Australian families and small businesses”.
“As a grandmother, I think about the world we will leave to future generations,” she said.
“We currently run the risk of leaving our children and grandchildren worse living conditions than we inherited.
In a policy document shared by Ms Ley, the Coalition laid out a range of proposed measures, saying their new approach would be “practical and balanced”.
These include preventing the closure of coal power plants, “lifting the ban on zero-emission nuclear technology”, relying on natural resources and canceling Labour’s 2030 emissions reduction target of 43 per cent and net zero emissions by 2050.
Coalition ‘not anti-renewable energy’
Despite abandoning net-zero emissions, Ms Ley said the Coalition was “not opposed to renewable energy” and would seek to reduce emissions. But these “need to be in the right place” and “balanced with base load power.”
The policy will support new and existing technologies, including gas, hydropower, batteries, coal and “renewables in the right place.”
He said Labor had “demonised” gas and failed to bring it into the system to reduce prices.
“We need a government that looks back four years,” he said.
“They demonized gas. They wanted nothing to do with gas. The minister of energy kind of washed his hands of gas in our system. They had to reluctantly return to gas because they knew gas was vital.”
Under the new policy, the Coalition pledged to “support greater gas supplies by paving the way for new gas supplies and infrastructure investments, streamlining regulations and committing to annual offshore land allocations.”
Coalition policy ‘clear contrast’ with Labor Party
Liberal energy spokesman Dan Tehan said Labor’s energy policy was in “clear contrast” to the Coalition’s energy policy, which took a “tech-neutral approach”.
“It’s all about doing the responsible thing when it comes to emissions reductions, and we’re looking forward to selling our plan because there’s now a very, very clear contrast when it comes to that debate,” he said.
Coalition to focus on economics rather than ‘climate change science’
Mr Littleproud said the Coalition’s focus would be on the economy rather than the environment.
“This debate is not a debate based on science,” he said.
“This is an approach based on economics.” The Albanian government wanted to hold this country back and continue to sleigh the Coalition over a 2015 debate about the science of climate change. We moved on to the economics of the business.”
Asked about the prices, Ms Ley said voters would “welcome” the plan set by the Coalition.
“(Australians) will take a look at our plan and see that it will work… because they will understand that by being technology agnostic on baseload power, by supplying more gas into the system, by opening up gas fields in Australia, that will immediately start to put downward pressure on prices,” he said.
