Tony Abbott, Craig Kelly and Ken O’Dowd unhappy as committee votes for scheme to be considered at meeting

Josh Frydenberg has secured the backing of a majority of the voting members of the government’s backbench energy committee to proceed to Tuesday’s much anticipated Coalition party room debate on the national energy guarantee.



After a lengthy meeting on Monday night, seven members of the committee voted in favour of the commonwealth components of the scheme going to the party room for consideration.

According to one source at the meeting, Tony Abbott was opposed and two others, Craig Kelly and Ken O’Dowd, were unhappy but accepted there would be further discussions. Another person present insisted Abbott, Kelly and O’Dowd were all against the package proceeding to the party room with the committee’s endorsement.

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Both sources who spoke to Guardian Australia after the meeting said Abbott branded the government’s proposal a “crock”.

Frydenberg was continuing to lobby government colleagues late on Monday night to back the Neg when it reaches the party room on Tuesday.

If the policy is accepted at that meeting, the energy minister will go to the states later in the day to try to secure their blessing to circulate state legislation required to implement the scheme.

Frydenberg needs the backing of his colleagues in Canberra and the state and territory energy ministers to legislate the Neg – but the state and territory ministers have signalled they will take weeks to reach a final landing point on the scheme.

Nor are Frydenberg’s internal problems over.

Abbott is implacably opposed to the policy and may cross the floor, and it is possible that Barnaby Joyce and fellow National Keith Pitt – who has broken ranks on the Neg for some weeks despite holding a junior frontbench post – will follow suit.

The government will need Labor’s support to legislate the package, and the opposition will try to amend to the proposal to increase the degree of ambition in emissions reduction from the current level of a 26% cut by 2030 – a target many experts say is woefully inadequate.

Abbott, who has been escalating his public assaults on the scheme in the lead-up to the resumption of parliament in an attempt to stoke the internal insurrection, traded blows publicly with Malcolm Turnbull on Monday.

In a barb directed at Abbott, the prime minister told parliament on Monday “ideology and idiocy” could not be permitted to determine the outcome of the Neg. Abbott used a television interview to fire back. “Idiocy is doing more of the same and expecting a different result,” he said.

In a message crafted for any wavering government colleagues, Abbott declared during Monday night’s interview on the ABC’s 7.30 that any attempt by Turnbull to “ram this through the party room tomorrow, to try to make us sign up to what is essentially the state Labor premiers’ energy policy, would be dead wrong”.

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Ignoring the widespread criticism of the current emissions reduction target, Abbott declared if the legislation was passed, the government would be implementing a policy focused on reducing emissions, not on reducing power prices.

The former prime minister claimed if the legislation was passed, Australia would translate its voluntary commitments under the Paris climate agreement into law.

“Now, the problem with putting voluntary targets into law is that it makes them mandatory, it means that they are now absolutely set in stone and there will be massive penalties if we don’t make them,” Abbott said.

“Now, no other country to the best of my knowledge, even those that are still in Paris, has set itself up for massive penalties on people that are adding to carbon dioxide emissions.”

Abbott neglected to point out that Australia signed up to the Paris agreement while he was the prime minister.