Tech billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes has locked horns with acting prime minister Barnaby Joyce, describing  claims that acting on climate change would destroy Australia’s beef industry as “bullshit”, and dismissing the Nationals leader’s fear of renewables.
At a “Bush Summit” hosted by the Murdoch media owned Daily Telegraph on Friday, Cannon-Brookes went toe to toe with Joyce on key climate and energy issues, adding that a renewables transition would distribute economic opportunities to a broader range of regional communities than fossil fuels will ever do.
Joyce, who is currently serving as the acting prime minister while Scott Morrison is overseas for meetings of the G20 and COP26, suggested the Nationals agreed to support a net zero emissions target for 2050 to avoid “blowing up the government” by forcing cabinet resignations.
“Obviously, we realised that if we didn’t come to a cabinet position, there had to be resignations from cabinet,” Joyce told the forum.
“That would also probably lead to destabilisation of the government, blowing up the government, which no one likes, especially those who voted for you on the premise that you’d belong to a government.”
Joyce also revealed that no one in the Nationals Party room was in support of the net zero target without caveats, and that the party was unanimous that concessions would need to be provided as a condition of their support.
Joyce said that this included changes to the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act and the expansion of the Regional Investment Corporation, alongside the promotion of Nationals MP Keith Pitt back into the federal cabinet as resources minister.
Cannon-Brooke’s challenged Joyce’s assertion that tackling Australia’s methane emissions would spell the end of Australia’s agricultural sector.
“The idea that we’re going to destroy the beef industry, it’s just bullshit. It’s nothing to do with the issue,” Cannon-Brookes said.
“The methane challenges we have are the expansion of gas extraction. Forty per cent of Australia’s methane comes from gas extraction and will continue to grow as we want to grow that industry.”
Earlier in the week, Joyce suggested that the Nationals had secured an effective carve out of methane emissions and the agricultural sector from the Morrison government’s commitments to a net zero target.
However, any such deal along those lines has not been reflected in official documents produced by the Morrison government, including the updated Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), the official statement of Australia’s climate commitments to be presented to the COP26 talks, which said Australia’s net zero plan includes all greenhouse gases and all sectors.
Joyce described Australia as an “honourable” country for setting emissions reduction targets that Australia has been easily able to achieve.
“Other people make targets and you know full well is just it’s just for the cameras,” Joyce said. “What do we have in Australia is an honourable country. We do actually meet our targets and every target that we have been a part of we’ve met. The Paris targets we’ve met.”
But Cannon-Brookes highlighted the importance of the government publishing the details of its zero emissions plan – including the modelling it has produced by not yet released.
“We need a plan. We don’t have one. Where Barnaby and I agree is that we need to transition. What he’s describing is we need to transition,” Cannon-Brookes said.
“Transition requires a plan. It requires saying, by this date, we’re going to do this and this.
“Here’s how we’re going to transition jobs, economies, regions, whatever it is. There’s none of that detail in the current plan. There are three different references to magical technology.”
Cannon-Brookes added that the clean energy transition could deliver economic benefits for the broader Australian community, not just regional and rural areas, given the decentralised nature of solar power, battery storage and electric vehicles.
“When you’re talking about centralised assets, you’re talking about something like a mine or a plant, which exists in one place,” Cannon-Brookes added. “Renewables are far more democratic. What it does is it spreads the jobs across all of the regions, not just the ones that happen to have a hill full of coal.”
Cannon-Brookes later recorded an interview with RenewEconomy’s weekly Energy Insiders Podcast. You can find that link here:Â Energy Insiders Podcast: Mike Cannon-Brookes on the green energy future
We will update the site with a story about that conversation.
