The Coalition’s polarising flagship energy policy may well be the self-inflicted shot that sinks the Liberal leadership. 

But despite Malcolm Turnbull’s position looking precarious at best, Craig Kelly insists a Coalition defeat at the next federal election is not the set-in-stone prophecy being depicted.

If the government ditches the NEG and proactively prosecutes the case against Labor’s energy policy, they could have a fighting chance come next year. But to do this, they’d need to capatilise on the renewable energy ideology at the heart of Labor’s policy-line and go on the attack.

Something their track record suggests they’d struggle with…

“The Labor Party wants a 45% emissions reduction target,” Kelly explains.

“That’s not just in electricity. It’s in trucking, aviation… across the economy.”

“The only way you can get those targets is to decimate the economy. That is the official policy of the Labor Party. So we need to ram it home at every opportunity to explain to the Australian people what this will do to the nation’s prosperity, jobs and our competitive advantage.”

“If we explain that, we should win this next election in an absolute landslide.”

“What the Green-Labor states have been asking for is for the Government to introduce legislation that would enable emission targets to be changed by future governments by regulation. That would mean a future Labor Government could come in and rather then put their policies up to the parliament, they could change the emission targets with a stroke of a pen.”

“ To have it able to be ticked off and changed at a minister’s whim is something I think all Australians should find unacceptable.”