'Impossible': Nationals leader issues stern warning to Sussan Ley on net zero fight after Joyce calls on Coalition to dump emissions targets

Sky News AU

21-07-2025

Nationals leader David Littleproud has admitted achieving net zero is almost 'impossible' in a major blow to Sussan Ley's efforts to unify the Coalition on the controversial issue of emission reduction targets.
The matter of emissions reduction targets has become a contentious sticking point within the Coalition, with the Nationals deciding to briefly exit its decades long political partnership with the Liberals in late May in protest over the issue.
However, Liberal leader Sussan Ley in an attempt to modernise the party's brand has hailed 'reducing emissions' as a crucial policy aim so that Australia is "playing its part in the global effort.'
Yet the issue once again ignited on Monday, with veteran Nationals MP and former party leader Barnaby Joyce insisting the Coalition needed to scrap its position on clean energy targets.
Mr Joyce told Channel Seven's Sunrise program that the Coalition needed to desperately find policies which would separate them from the Labor Party, and implored his party to withdraw its support for emission reduction targets.
'You have to find issues which are binary, which you are fully for and the Labor Party is fully against,' Mr Joyce said.
'That's why such issues such as net zero, I say: find a point of division. You don't believe in net zero, they do believe in net zero ... if you have another way of going about it, there are your numbers.'
When pressed about Mr Joyce's critical comments, Nationals leader David Littleproud said his party was committed to overseeing its review process into the polarising issue, but conceded that it was almost 'impossible' to reach the government's current renewables targets.
'What we are experiencing, particularly in regional areas, that I don't think people in metropolitan areas understand is the real burden of our landscape being ripped up,' Mr Littleproud told Sky News.
'Our livelihoods are being ripped up for this full renewables approach – we are tearing communities apart.
'Unfortunately, when you see many parts of the rest of the world now saying that we're not going to get to net zero, we need to actually make sure that we're sensible about this, rather than trying to achieve the impossible.'
Mr Littleproud's comments are contrasted by remarks made by Liberal leader Sussan Ley who has repeatedly said the Coalition needed to become more embracing of renewables projects.
Mr Littleproud said the Coalition needed to put forward a 'sensible position, but not at the cost of regional and rural Australians.'
He also said that backbenchers were allowed to 'advance their own bills" with Mr Joyce vowing that he would table legislation in the new parliamentary term to abolish the government's net zero targets.
Mr Littleproud further blasted the Albanese government's 'hasty' push to roll out renewable projects nationwide to meet federal climate targets and said regional communities were being asked to shoulder the burden of the energy transition.
'I say to city people we are not saying we don't believe in climate change, but you are asking us to bear all the burden and there is a consequence for your food security, and a consequence for the electricity bill that you are receiving at the moment,' Mr Littleproud said.
'When you see people like Zali Stegall rail against just six wind turbines on north head, yet she's prepared to see our landscaper littered with hundreds of them the irony and the hypocrisy."