Alone on the frontbench, the Liberal’s Julian Leeser seeks support for net zero

The member for Berowra was joined by only two other members of his party willing to publicly back the policy.

Author

Huw Bradshaw
November 05, 2025

What happened: Only three members of the Liberal party have been willing to speak publicly in support of Net Zero by 2050 following the National Party's announcement it would be dropping the target from its policy platform.

One of those three has been Berowra MP Julian Leeser.

Bipartisan support: Leeser appeared on ABCRadio on Wednesday and discussed the necessity of bipartisan support for the policy.

  • “It’s important to have the target because we need the certainty for investment”, Leeser told host Craig Reucassel.

Leeser asserted that despite widespread silence on the issue, there were many more Liberal party members that support the net zero target. 

  • Senators Andrew McLachlan and Jane Hume are the only other members of the party so far to join Leeser in showing support publicly.

On the other hand, party members who want to follow suit with the Nationals include Angus Taylor, Michaelia Cash, and Andrew Hastie. 

The full quote: Read Leeser’s full quote from his ABC appearance below:

"Well, I think the first thing to say is that there are many more people in the Liberal Party that support net zero than went on the record in the Daily Telegraph yesterday. And I’m on the record because I’ve been on the record for several years as a supporter of net zero. I think the importance of having net zero is it’s in Australia’s interest to have a target to reduce emissions because targets provide certainty. And I think while we’ve got an emissions reduction target, we should also be looking at targets around reliability and price because they are the three key factors that we’re trying to address by our energy policy. Everyone in the Coalition agrees that we need to reduce emissions to deal with climate change, but we also want to reduce prices and increase reliability. And that’s what the current debate’s about."

According to the 2025 GenCost report released by Government research agency CSIRO, wind and solar remain the cheapest ways to power Australia’s electricity grid.