Nationals leader David Littleproud denies he’s making Sussan Ley’s job harder by announcing the junior party’s new policy to ditch net zero climate targets while the Liberal Party is still debating the issue.
Several Liberal MPs are furious the Nationals have tried to wedge them on sensitive climate policy. Ley must now placate moderate Liberals, who want to retain support for a version of the net zero goal, while keeping the Coalition together.
Asked whether he had caused a problem for Ley on Sky News just now, Littleproud said: “No, this, this is part of a long process that we started after the election.”
Liberal leader Sussan Ley and Nationals leader David Littleproud.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
“We’re calm about this, we understood and respect that the Liberal Party will get to their position at some point. We’ve gotten to ours, we, we haven’t hidden that. I think we’ve been very upfront, with everybody,” Littleproud said.
“I’m sure they’ll be very interested to see where we’ve got to as an alternative approach … We’re going to create the environment for them to be able to get to that position, and when they do, then we’ve got the process to work together to try to get to some consensus, and we’ll do that constructively with them.”
Littleproud wouldn’t speculate on the future of the Coalition partnership, in a scenario where the Liberals decided to keep net zero.
“We cross those bridges in a mature, open, transparent way with one another when they get to that position. I don’t think it’s healthy to inject myself into hypotheticals,” he said.