‘Net zero’ is destroying Australia

ONE NATION ENERGY POLICY: ENDING ‘NET ZERO’ AND BUILDING ENERGY SECURITY FOR ALL AUSTRALIANS

Introduction 

Australia’s energy policy must keep the lights on, protect Australian jobs, and put Australians first. 

But Australians have been let down by proponents of the radical ‘net zero’ agenda. 

‘Net zero’ is destroying Australia. 

The promise of ‘net zero’ was simple – 100% renewables would mean cheaper power bills – but the reality is very different. The burden of ‘net zero’ does not fall on the people who shout the loudest about ‘saving the planet’. 

Families are opening power bills they cannot afford. Small businesses are cutting hours or shutting their doors. Factories that once offered secure work are closing, or moving offshore, because energy is no longer reliable or affordable. 

Australians were told this was a ‘transition’. In truth, it has been a demolition job on our way of life. Reliable baseload power has been shut down before ready replacements exist. Households are pushed into expensive technology and costly ‘upgrades’ they never asked for. Mining, manufacturing and heavy industry are treated as a problem to be managed, not as strengths to be built on. 

Instead of supporting the workers who keep the country running, ‘net zero’ has become an excuse to load more costs onto them while inner city activists, consultants and foreign investors profit from subsidies, carbon credits and short-term schemes. 

The ‘net zero’ fallacy 

The key architects of ‘net zero’ – the Australian Labor Party, the Liberal Party of Australia, the National Party and the Australian Greens – demanded Australia’s introduce job-destroying energy policies as part of our contribution to a ‘concerted global effort’ to reduce human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. The goal was sold to Australians as a way prevent, or at least mitigate, global ‘warming’ and its supposed effects, such as sea level rise and more frequent climate-related natural disasters. 

These supposed effects are based on discredited computer modelling that does not account for temperature records reliably documented for decades before 1910 and deliberately distorts temperature records to falsely portray temperature rises as greater than they truly have been. The supposed impacts of future temperature rise have also been discredited: for example, the alarmist prediction in 2004 by Tim Flannery (later appointed as Chief of the Climate Commission by the Gillard Labor Government) that by 2007 city dams would run dry and never fill again; and the prediction that low-lying islands and atolls would be swamped by sea level rise when in fact many – such as the Maldives archipelago in the Indian Ocean and Pacific island nations Marshall Islands and Kiribati – have grown in land area. 

Australia is a signatory to the Paris Agreement (signed in 2016 under the Turnbull Coalition Government), a legally-binding international treaty with the nominal aim of limiting global temperature rise to below 2⁰C from ‘pre-industrial levels’. This treaty requires Australia to submit and meet national emission reduction targets: Australia’s relevant reduction target under the Albanese Labor Government is 43% below 2005 emissions levels by the year 2030. 

But ‘net zero’ is not reducing Australian or global greenhouse gas emissions. In 2024, Australia’s emissions increased (marginally) to 446.4 million tonnes (CO2 equivalent) and the world’s emissions increased to at least 37.4 billion tonnes; some estimates put this figure at 41.6 billion tonnes. 

In reality, there is no ‘concerted global effort’ to reduce emissions. The world’s largest emitter at more than 30% of global emissions, China, pledges reductions from ‘peak’ emissions but there is no consensus on when or what even constitutes the communist country’s ‘peak’ emissions. In fact, China – already emitting more than 12 billion tonnes – is permitted under Paris to continue increasing emissions by at least another two billion tonnes past the year 2030 (these additional emissions are more than four times Australia’s annual total). India, the world’s third-largest emitter, is also investing heavily in coal production and coal power plant construction to meet increasing demand for energy. Australia’s supposed contribution to global emissions – slightly over 1% - has no measurable effect and any reductions we make will have no measurable impact while increases by countries like China and India swiftly overtake them. 

Indeed this was effectively confirmed by former Chief Scientist Dr Alan Finkel – a strong proponent of reducing emissions to arrest climate change – in 2017 when he admitted that reducing the world’s emissions by 1.3% (Australia’s global contribution) would have virtually “no impact” on global climate change. 

The premise or justification for ‘net zero’ is obviously a lie. It is supposed to reduce emissions, but it is not reducing emissions. 

The real impacts of ‘net zero’

Embracing Australian coal

Embracing Australian gas

Embracing nuclear

Lowering prices for households, businesses and industries