Sideshow Barnaby’s anti-net zero crusade labelled a disgrace and “an argument to jack up electricity bills”

Former NSW Liberal Party energy minister Matt Kean has slammed the Barnaby Joyce-led federal Liberal and National Party push to scrap Australia’s net zero target, describing it as a “disgrace” and “an argument to jack up electricity bills.”

Kean, who now chairs the Climate Change Authority (CCA), is currently finalising the Authority’s advice to the federal Labor government on a 2035 emissions reduction target for Australia, that will sit somewhere in ambition between the 2030 target of 43% below 2005 levels, and net zero by 2050.

The 2035 target, or Nationally Determined Contribution, is a requirement of all of the signatories to the UN Paris Agreement, intended to sharpen the focus of governments on the huge task of limiting global warming to well below 2°C.

Speaking on a leaders panel at the Australian Clean Energy Summit (ACES), Kean said the CCA has taken its time delivering its final advice to the Albanese government in order to get across what technologies are available to meet the 2035 target at what price points.

“The advice that we’re providing is anchored in the economics,” he told the ACES conference in Sydney on Tuesday. And the economics, he adds, “have seen renewable energy, the cost of delivering renewable energy, sinking like a stone.”

Backing this up, the final version of the 2024/25 CSIRO’s GenCost report, published on Tuesday, finds that the plunging cost of battery storage has ensured that integrated renewables remain the lowest new build generation option for Australia.

And also at the ACES conference, Bloomberg New Energy Finance global head of strategy, Kobad Bhavnagri, detailed the “economic tail winds” now driving the transition to renewables, even despite the best efforts of Trump’s big black Texta.

“From the long term fundamentals we talked about investment, investment in the energy transition is likely to total over $181 trillion to 2050 with no further policy, just based on those economic tail winds alone.”

Meanwhile, in Canberra, former National Party leader Barnaby Joyce on Tuesday launched his private members’ bill to repeal the 2050 net-zero emissions target – a stance that is reportedly being supported by an increasing number of Liberals in the federal Coalition. 

Joyce hopes that by scrapping net zero he can scupper the shift to renewables energy, which he describes as a “fiasco of massive cost and unreliability that has smashed our cost of living.”

Kean was having none of it.

“You look at the Barnaby Joyce sideshow in Australia, and that’s actually an argument to jack up electricity bills for mums and dads and businesses in this country,” he told the conference. 

“And it should be called out for what it is: a disgrace.

“To Kobad’s point before, we need to look through the noise of these political stunts, of these changes in administrations, and let me tell you, this issue is bigger than one occupant at the White House in a particular point in time.

“There is an environmental imperative to reduce the carbon we’re putting into the atmosphere, and there are huge economic tailwinds to do likewise,” Kean said.

“So we need to look at the fundamentals, and the fundamentals are in favour of more renewables, not less.”

And Kean was not the only speaker at ACES who couldn’t resist taking a shot at Joyce.

“This is like a river with a really strong current in it,” said Andrew Richards, CEO of the Energy Users Association, the peak national body representing Australia’s commercial and industrial energy users.

“And you know, capital is flowing in a certain direction, insurance is flowing in a certain direction, shareholders are flowing in a certain direction, and so it’s inevitable that that momentum takes us to net zero.

“So you think about all that momentum of capital and and will from from shareholders. Why in hell would a politician jump into the river and try and push against the current?

“No one has said to me, ‘You know what? Barnaby has changed his mind,’ or ‘the New South Wales or the Queensland government has … done some funky stuff.’ They go, ‘You know what? … This is where we need to head and, inevitably, that’s where we need to get.”

“We are at a pivotal point in our transition,” added Denva Poyntz, the general manager of energy developments, Pacific, for resources giant Rio Tinto in the same panel discussion at ACES.

“And really, if Australia doesn’t have access soon to affordable, reliable and sustainable energy we are, it’s going to affect our long term productivity and global competitiveness. And that’s just the reality of where we are.

“We require firm, sustainable, reliable and affordable energy, and we really need it now. So what we’re doing is we’ve gone out to contract a portfolio of large scale renewable energy and storage projects.”

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