Editorial
Zero sense

Sussan Ley says she’s not worried about upsetting “people in Paris”. It’s a neat way of explaining how little she understands the Paris Agreement, a failure of comprehension so great she seems to believe it’s a treaty with France. The misapprehension captures the cow-eyed stupidity of the Liberal Party’s position on climate change and of the people who argued for it.

Ley is clear that her party has abandoned its commitment to net zero but that it remains committed to the Paris Agreement. “We remain committed to Paris,” she says, “and we made that very clear.”

It’s a little like a person announcing they are vegetarian, except for beef and pork and sometimes chicken and also fish. You might call it hypocritical, but that requires a level of guile beyond the Liberal Party. Their policy is simply that they don’t have a policy. They will dismantle the infrastructure obliged by the Paris Agreement while maintaining that they intend to honour it.

“The Paris Agreement is about global temperature rises and about reducing emissions,” Ley says, as if the words mean anything at all. “Our policy is firmly focused on reducing emissions and affordable electricity, with the priority being affordable electricity.”

Commentators such as Peta Credlin, who as Tony Abbott’s chief of staff did more than anyone to set back climate action in Australia, like to point out that the Paris Agreement does not mention net zero. They believe this is a cunning trick, as if they have found the words of a spell.

Of course, this is a wilful misreading of the document. Above all else, the Paris Agreement is a simple undertaking to hold “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels”.

There is no way to do this without reaching net zero by 2050. You cannot commit to Paris without committing to net zero. To say otherwise is nonsense. Perhaps this is why the partyroom meeting took five hours; perhaps someone was trying to explain it with the aid of a balloon and some marker pens. Perhaps the party is so innumerate it takes that long to count halfway to 49.

It is hard to imagine there are any votes in this. The party has drifted so far from reality that it is now arguing for its own irrelevance. It has abandoned the most significant issue of our age, the greatest crisis society has faced. It argues a compromise of incoherence.

It takes a heroic effort to make Scott Morrison look credible on climate change, but somehow Ley has managed it. The decision made this week will be the defining embarrassment of her leadership. Likely it marks the beginning of her party’s final collapse. It is a decision made not just with disregard for the future but with contempt for it, a decision made by a party that has no interest in being a contemporary force.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on November 15, 2025 as "Zero sense".

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