Sussan Ley promises ‘immediate’ cut to power prices under new policy

Opposition leader Sussan Ley has moved to head off the next conservative battleground by promising an immigration policy soon while releasing the Coalition’s new climate and energy plan.

Would-be leadership contender Andrew Hastie labelled cutting immigration numbers “objective two” after dumping net zero in an email to supporters over the weekend, while Angus Taylor listed it as part of a five-point election plan during a high-profile interview..

“In the coming weeks, we will release a migration policy, the broad principles of such a policy, that demonstrates what I have said from the get-go, which is that this country’s migration numbers are far too high, and this needs to be addressed as a priority,” Ms Ley said on Sunday in her opening remarks on the new energy policy.

Moderates within the party have lamented the public undermining of the leader but one said they were not remotely surprised her opponents were moving on to the next issues after she “blinked” on climate policy.

Another said the party had a bad year ahead of it.

A second poll showing the Coalition primary vote collapsing to 24 per cent and One Nation’s vote climbing will compound the problems for Ms Ley.

She was nominated as preferred prime minister by just 10 per cent of people in the Redbridge poll published in the Australian Financial Review.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong accused the Coalition of being “overrun by the fringes”.

“They are trying to outflank Pauline Hanson. And what I’d say to Sussan Ley and to Andrew Hastie and to Angus Taylor is you can’t be more Pauline than Pauline,” she told ABC’s Insiders.

A fortnight after the Nationals met and agreed to walk away from Australia’s previously bipartisan net zero by 2050 target, Coalition MPs backed a climate and energy policy that closely mirrors the one agreed by the Liberals last week.

Ms Ley promised Australians an “immediate” reduction in power prices under the plan.

It would scrap the legislated commitments to cut or neutralise emissions by 2050 and interim targets, open up financing to include coal, gas, carbon capture and storage, and nuclear, and pay to keep ageing power stations – mostly coal – open until replacement supply is ready.

“It is all about affordability when it comes to energy prices and playing our part responsibly with emissions reductions,” Ms Ley said.

She said that emissions cuts had flatlined under Labor, but also that the Government “has raced ahead” of comparable countries with its rate of cuts and this would have to increase to meet the 2035 targets unveiled in September.

“That’s not responsible emissions reduction. That’s not doing our fair share,” she said.

The Coalition is now promising to reduce Australia’s emissions every year, but only in line with the level other OECD countries are cutting.

However, it appears to have rejected the Nationals’ proposal to reinstate the Tony Abbott-era Emissions Reduction Fund to pay large polluters to cut.

Instead, the policy includes a market mechanism where large facilities have to report their emissions against a baseline, and if they come under this, they will earn credits to trade with other participants.

Ms Ley said bringing new gas fields online, including the Browse and Scarborough basins, would be the main way to cut electricity prices for users.

After refusing to say last week when households would see lower bills, she said on Sunday that prices would drop “immediately”.

“They’ll have a look at our plan, and they’ll see that it will work … because they’ll know that immediately it starts to put downward pressure on prices by being technology agnostic about baseload power, injecting more gas supply into the system, opening up gas fields in Australia, so we have Australian gas for Australians,” she said.

The Government claims the Opposition’s new policy amounts to walking away from the Paris Agreement because the international deal forbids “backsliding” on targets.

But senior Liberal frontbencher Jonno Duniam insisted ahead of Sunday afternoon’s meeting the new plan would still comply with the Paris Agreement.

There was scope within the agreement for taking the economic impact of the green transition into account, he said.

“The economic impact on our country of Labor’s blind pursuit of net zero by 2050, and their targets between now and then, have cost us dearly,” he told Sky News.

“And so we need to factor all of the elements of the Paris Agreement in. You can’t read one paragraph of Article 4 separate from others, all of them need to be read together. And our belief is we are not in breach.”

The section of the agreement he cited says that countries should take into consideration the “concerns of parties with economies most affected by the impacts of response measures, particularly developing country parties”.

Australia is not considered a developing country.

It accounts for about 1 per cent of global emissions, despite having about 0.3 per cent of the world’s population.