Coalition charges up energy talk as key meeting looms

Zac de Silva | October 28, 2025

The federal opposition is inching closer towards finalising its energy policy as tensions over climate change threaten to split the political alliance.

After a months-long policy review following Labor’s landslide election win, Opposition Leader Sussan Ley told a partyroom meeting on Tuesday consultations on energy were coming to an end.

Opposition energy spokesman Dan Tehan has been leading a broad inquiry into the issue, including travelling to the United States to speak with top nuclear power officials.

Mr Tehan will discuss his work with coalition backbenchers on Friday, in a meeting scheduled to run for up to three hours.

Party members will be allowed to ask questions of Mr Tehan and insiders said it would be the ninth meeting of the coalition’s energy committee.

MPs were briefed on the upcoming discussion during Tuesday’s partyroom meeting, which was not attended by rogue backbencher Barnaby Joyce.

Mr Joyce has become estranged from his Nationals colleagues because he wants them to abandon any commitment to net zero emissions by 2050, with broad speculation the former deputy prime minister could move to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.

Michael McCormack, a fellow Nationals backbencher and also a former leader of the regional party, said Mr Joyce should decide whether he was leaving or staying “very, very soon,” and hoped his colleague would return to the fray.

The two colleagues have had a rocky on-again, off-again relationship, with Mr Joyce rolling Mr McCormack for the party leadership in 2021.

They have since become unlikely allies following the coalition’s election defeat, urging their colleagues to walk away from any commitment to net zero.

Mr McCormack said nuclear power needed to be part of the coalition’s energy mix.

“I think we need to have a sensible, national, rational discussion about nuclear energy,” he said.

The Nationals are running a review into energy policy, separate from Mr Tehan’s probe.

The party is widely expected to walk away from any commitment to net zero, but leader David Littleproud has made it clear he will provide a solid alternative instead.

There were rowdy scenes in parliament on Tuesday as the government mocked the ongoing dysfunction within the coalition.

“They no longer speak with one voice,” Acting Prime Minister Richard Marles said.

“They are not a coherent political movement. They are just a binfire