Opposition Leader Peter Dutton facing renewed calls from Nationals to dump Australia’s 2050 net zero target

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is facing renewed calls to dump Australia’s 2050 carbon neutral target by one of his backbenchers, who said holding onto the pledge while the US and others were dumping it was akin to “partying on the detritus of empty bottles.”

Mr Dutton is poised to deliver his make-or-break budget reply on Thursday night in what is widely seen to be the scene-setter for the election campaign which the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese could trigger this weekend.

He has strongly advocated that nuclear is the most viable way to achieve carbon neutrality but refused to commit to 2035 progress carbon reduction goals.

Nationals Senator Matt Canavan told The Nightly that the opposition leader should be even bolder.

“Net zero was never achievable; it is just that most are now waking up with the hangover after the party that went on too long,” he said.

“Australia is a sad case as one of the few seeking to party on among the detritus of empty bottles, deflated balloons and bunting that is falling to the ground.

“With the rest of the world deserting net zero, it is time for Australia to follow suit before this agenda costs us even more.

“Already we have lost our nickel industry to a coal happy Indonesia and the pursuit of net zero makes everything more expensive from the electricity that heats homes, the bricks that build homes and the milk in the grocery store.”

The second Trump Administration has again abandoned the Democrats’ push to be net zero by the middle of the century, with Energy Secretary Chris Wright describing the pledge as a “sinister” and “terrible goal” that was “unachievable.”

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has insisted he would not withdraw Australia from the Paris Agreement despite President Trump’s move.

“We’ve signed up to an international agreement, which I think will have continuing relevance for countries in Europe,” he said in an interview with 2GB radio.

“The future dynamic can change, but we have to act in our country’s best interests.

“To have European countries, for example, but not exclusively, applying tariffs to our exports would mean a loss of economic activity here, a loss of jobs.

“So, we have to have a sensible balance.”

Both right and left wing political parties are starting to abandon climate change measures they once took a global lead in advocating.

Following his stunning meteoric rise to become Canada’s Prime Minister, Mark Carney, a former central banker, made it his first act to kill the carbon tax imposed on households. The carbon tax was a marquee policy of his left-leaning predecessor Justin Trudeau. The impost will, however, remain on industry.

And in the UK, the Conservatives, which legislated net zero into law, have now in opposition said they still supported the target but not necessarily achieving it by the fixed timeframe they set, saying that was “impossible”.

Meanwhile, energy giant BP has zapped its own carbon reduction goals with new chief executive Murray Auchincloss saying the company’s 2020 net zero plan was “misplaced” and went “too far, too fast”.

The retaliation against climate change measures will make it even harder to meet the goal of the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 2 degrees.

The EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service confirmed that 2024 was the warmest year on record and the first time the average global temperature exceeded 1.5 degrees celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Meanwhile, the International Energy Agency found that global coal use rose by nearly 8.77 billion tonnes in 2024, a global record.

Coal is Australia’s second-biggest commodity export earner after iron ore and contributes around $75 billion in exports and global demand is set to stay in line with 2024’s record high until 2027.

China is rapidly expanding its coal-fired capacity, adding five times Australia’s coal-fired capacity last year alone. It has another 94.5GW worth of coal-fired power generation under construction and approved 66.7GW more.