Sussan Ley defends ditching net zero target amid party identity questions

Opposition leader Sussan Ley dismissed as “commentary” claims that Liberals have lost their identity following the abandonment of net zero.

The party said it would follow its coalition counterparts, the Nationals, in shelving Australia’s carbon neutrality target by 2050 after weeks of speculation.

Ms Ley said the party would remain committed to the Paris Agreement, which aims to keep global temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

He was asked on Nine’s Today program whether he was worried about losing his party’s identity, with the suggestion that “it’s actually a National Party that you’ve adopted now.”

“Who leads whom in this Coalition partnership?” he was asked.

“I’m not interested in comments,” he replied, adding: “I see it in the eyes of my children and grandchildren.

“They’re now set to inherit a worse standard of living than the generation before them. And that’s not fair. And we’re addressing this problem because when energy is unaffordable, everything else is unaffordable.”

He said power would be made cheaper “by having a balanced energy mix and understanding that we need to be agnostic about what technologies we implement.”

Following the Liberals’ decision on Thursday, the party’s energy spokesman, Dan Tehan, will lead a Liberal delegation taking a position on the National Party to hammer out a common position.

Before the Liberals announced their position on Thursday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters the opposition was considering moving away from net zero because they “fundamentally don’t believe in the science of climate change.”

More to come