Sussan Ley has reshuffled her shadow ministry twice in six months as leader. The first change removed Jacinta Nampijinpa Price after she refused to apologise for inaccurate and offensive remarks about Indian migrants and declined to back Ley’s leadership. The second reshuffle followed Andrew Hastie’s decision to move to the backbench so he could more freely promote his nationalist agenda.
A third reshuffle now looks possible as a bitter dispute over a net zero emissions commitment threatens resignations whichever direction the party takes. MPs are preparing for meetings to nail down a position on the contentious climate target, and scenarios that once seemed hypothetical are now real prospects.
After the Nationals’ 2 November decision to abandon its net zero commitment, senior conservative Liberals pushed hard against adopting any binding target. That coordinated intervention has put Ley under intense pressure — the net zero fight has become as much a test of her leadership as a policy debate.
Moderate Liberals have mobilised both publicly and behind the scenes to retain some form of net zero commitment, even if it is not the 2050 target championed under Scott Morrison. “They didn’t realise how angry we would be,” one moderate said.
Pro-net-zero moderates want there to be a political cost to abandoning or watering down the target. Senator Andrew Bragg warned he would quit the shadow ministry if the party walked away from the Paris agreement and any net zero pledge. Maria Kovacic issued a similar ultimatum, saying a shadow minister who cannot publicly back a party-room decision should resign and move to the backbench.
The clear implication is that scrapping net zero could cost Ley MPs who help sustain her fragile leadership. How other frontbench moderates such as Tim Wilson and Anne Ruston will react remains uncertain. Conversely, some shadow ministers who want net zero dropped would have to rethink their positions if the party keeps a firm target.
A compromise is still possible: some MPs favour dropping a firm net zero target or reducing it to a vague aspiration while reiterating support for the Paris agreement — an approach the Nationals would likely accept. That could preserve Ley’s frontbench, her leadership and the Coalition for now, but it would leave climate-minded Liberals stuck with a policy lacking credibility.
International climate experts would argue that a future Coalition government backsliding on commitments like net zero by 2050 would breach the spirit, if not the letter, of the Paris agreement. Australia would not need to formally withdraw to become an international outlier on climate action again.
Dan Jervis-Bardy is chief political correspondent for Guardian Australia, based in Canberra.
