The global anti-climate movement is breaking politics here

Barnaby Joyce, liberated from the Nationals into the senior ranks of One Nation, is growing ever more blunt about climate policy.

His new party not only rejects any action to mitigate climate change, but also the very basics of climate science.

This puts One Nation at odds with the Coalition, which has abandoned Australia’s net zero target, but professes to accept the scientific consensus on global warming. And it puts Joyce and One Nation in lockstep with a new hardline stance against climate action and science by surging populist parties around the world.

Joyce is unapologetic about his stance, telling this masthead he believes that One Nation’s “pure” position against climate science will elevate it over the Coalition he abandoned.

“The day One Nation’s vote got to 18 per cent was the day that the written-in-blood, sealed-in-concrete commitment by the Coalition to net zero was removed within 24 hours,” Joyce says.

“Now they’re trying to have a bet both ways by being in [the] Paris [agreement], which is net zero with a French accent.”

Last week Joyce posted video of himself watching a broadcast of AGL’s Liddell coal-fired power station being demolished, offering a commentary of contestable talking points.

The interview did not end, and over an hour Tice laid out his view that the link between human emissions and warming was not settled (it is) and that the climate has always changed (it has not on the current timescale).

He rejected any action to reach “net stupid zero” and laid out a set of policies that would see government support for nuclear power, end all subsidies for renewable energy, encourage offshore drilling for more oil and gas and ban battery energy storage.

Tice also warned investors in renewable energy to redirect their capital to fossil fuels.

“We put people on notice. Invest in nuclear. Invest in gas. Invest in oil. Don’t invest in renewables.”

Joyce takes a similar position. Asked if One Nation’s policies would drive renewables investment away from regional Australia, he says bluntly, “I’m hoping so”.

In his view the renewable energy zones created to encourage clean energy development, and the wind farms being constructed in them – which he likes to call “swindle factories” – are of no benefit to locals.

“All their promises about labour are just complete and utter lies. There are no permanent jobs. They’re fly-in, fly-out contractors,” Joyce says. “If that was the case, Glen Innes would be a much bigger town than it was before, and $2 billion worth of precincts went into their area.”

He also believes One Nation has captured the zeitgeist.

“I can road-test this by giving a speech in town halls, and one of the biggest claps I get is when I say ‘I am going to get rid of the climate change department’.”

One Nation has taken the lead in the polls, and in conservative policymaking, Joyce says.

The Liberals have shifted their energy policy away from emissions reduction since the 2025 election, when then-opposition leader Peter Dutton pledged an ambitious rollout of nuclear power plants to support clean energy in the grid.

After the election, Dutton’s replacement, Sussan Ley, announced a plan that edged away from nuclear and promoted the need for carbon capture and storage to cut the emissions from coal plants.

Current leader Angus Taylor is now full throated in his support for coal.

“I announce that a Coalition government will work with coal-fired power plant owners to keep them running as long and as hard as possible to get electricity prices down,” he said in his budget reply speech last month.

However, Taylor was treasury spokesman when Dutton pledged $331 billion in taxpayers money for nuclear plants and was sceptical of the use of public funds. While One Nation has pledged billions of dollars to build coal plants, Taylor has stopped short.

Joyce claims the Liberals are equivocal and conflicted. “They’re in Paris now out of net zero, it’s just ridiculous. Just be pure about this. They’ve fooled no-one.”

Opposition energy spokesman Dan Tehan rejects Joyce’s claim that the Liberals are following One Nation’s lead.

“We’re focused 100 per cent on Australia and doing the right things by Australians. We all remember that, Barnaby Joyce was the one who signed the agreement, that led to net zero for the Coalition,” Tehan says.

Though the Liberals support Australia’s continued participation in the Paris Agreement, Tehan says, the party does not believe it forces Australia to actually deliver on net zero by 2050.

“Everyone knows it’s a toothless tiger and not the main game. The main game is energy abundance and energy affordability, and that’s what we’ll be pursuing,” he says.

Former prime minister Tony Abbott, a leading opponent of net zero since he was ousted from parliament in 2022, was recently elected as Liberal Party president.

Nationals Leader Matt Canavan has campaigned for years against Australia’s net zero commitment and claimed credit for pushing the Coalition to ditch its support for the goal.

In his first speech as leader to the National Press Club in April, Canavan said advocates of net zero used the policy to pursue a socialist agenda.

“They want to tell us what energy we can use, what car we can drive, what food we can eat, lots of them don’t think we should eat red meat, and some of them, even want to control what we say.”

As political warfare over climate rages on, University of Melbourne specialist in climate denial Dr John Cook, has detected a shift in rhetoric.

Where once politicians tended to pay lip service to accepting climate science, he believes they are becoming increasingly likely to reject scientific advice entirely.

“The idea that they’re emboldening each other does seem to be the case,” Cook says. “I think in the US, especially, it is climate denial on steroids, and they’re not just giving arguments, but they’re actually dismantling climate science, defunding it, and shutting down organisations.”

He detects a growing disconnect between political philosophy and the policy debate.

Opposition to climate action, says Cook, found an early home in conservative think tanks due to a natural mistrust of government regulation and taxation that climate action demanded.

But when green energy technology started becoming cheaper than fossil fuels, some conservatives began backing government intervention to block renewables and subsidies to support nuclear or fossil fuels.

“It’s not just about political ideology any more. Now it’s just about tribal alliance.”

However, recent history has shown that political rhetoric does not necessarily determine decision-making, even of ardent cultural warriors, says Michael Liebreich, the chief of consultancy Liebreich Associates, who founded Bloomberg New Energy Finance and once served on the UK Board of Trade along Abbott.

“Don’t get fooled by the knockabout politics. There’s what politicians say to get votes and then there’s what they end up doing if they were in [government],” Liebreich says.

“Tony Abbott signed up to Paris and then Scott Morrison signed up for net zero. That’s the reality of political expediency.

“What actually happens is neither as good as the progressives promise nor as bad as the headbangers say.”

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