'Why are you talking about energy?' 'What are you trying to achieve?' 'Why now?'

These are some of the questions that people have asked me this week.

They are fair questions, but implicit in some of them is the suggestion of a power motive at work. That I am using energy policy as a political weapon for my own ends.

Now it’s true that I’m directly challenging Labor’s Net Zero consensus on energy and climate policy.

Make no mistake: that is exactly what I’m doing.

But I’m challenging Labor on energy and climate for a good reason: the Albanese government is smashing our national interest.

We need to honest about the cost of Net Zero, and the way that Labor is trading away our prosperity and security.

We must stop chasing damaging climate targets, and start building Australia’s national sovereignty.

In that position, I stand anchored in Article 2 of the We Believe statement adopted by the Liberal Party in 1954.

I’m challenging Labor now because we’ve adopted their Net Zero energy position for the last two elections, without success.

We’ve been defeated decisively in 2022 and 2025.

It’s time to rethink our position. Otherwise we can expect further ruin.

The reality is that the centre-left political market is crowded with people who are already chasing utopian climate goals.

There isn’t much room left for another party that apes the same policy settings.

The Australian people deserve an alternative policy position, and a centre-right political party that will fight for it.

In any case, why would we accept Labor’s framing of energy, and their terms of debate? It makes no sense to me.

We need to take back the decisive, higher ground and shape this looming debate.

That’s why I’ve spent time highlighting the moral hypocrisy inherent to Net Zero economy: the shady deals, the massive transfer of wealth, the grift.

All done under the cover of climate language.

We’ve had enough.

Something is now becoming clear: Labor knows that energy and climate is a massive vulnerability for them.

Electricity and power prices keep rising.

Labor is falling behind their 2030 renewables target of 82%.

The people are starting to ask questions.

That explains Labor’s bluster and bravado, led by their Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen.

In him, we see Labor’s growing anxiety about their climate policy.

Labor's revealed anxiety is helpful to us.

Alexander the Great was famed for attacking his opponents where he detected their point of psychological weakness.

Prior to battle, Alexander would study his enemies closely, searching for points of mental fragility.

The late Sir John Keegan, wrote in The Mask of Command: A Study of Generalship, that when Alexander:

“…detected that the enemy had artificially enhanced the strength of a strong position—by fortification or the emplacement of obstacles—those signs seem to have clinched his conviction that it was there he should attack, since they signified that there the enemy was most vulnerable to attack, in psychic if not material terms.”

This historical perspective might help explain Chris Bowen’s grandstanding in Parliament yesterday, where he attempted to fortify his brittle political position by suggesting that I was challenging for the Liberal leadership.

He misreads me—in my hierarchy of priorities, Australia comes first.

And he is standing in the way of our national prosperity and security.

Chris Bowen is my target, not anyone on my side.

Now that he has revealed his psychological weakness, we know where to mass our forces.

Because Chris Bowen knows the truth: his climate fantasy will be mugged by economic reality.

The transition costs in new transmission, renewables, and storage plants will be massive.

This week, at the Clean Energy Conference in Sydney, the CEO of Origin Energy, Frank Calabria told the audience that those massive costs will be “...ultimately recovered on consumer bills, so our attention has to be how do we bring consumers along on that transition.” ¹

But the Australian people are not simply consumers.  They are flesh-and-blood people with hopes and aspirations for themselves, their families and their country.

They deserve a fair go.

They are waking up to this massive transfer of wealth, and Labor has a problem on their hands.

Yet Labor’s problem it is much broader than our domestic politics. There is a global shift underway, too.

This week, The Economist notes that:

“…reaching net zero in the nearish future would require emission cuts to be quick, deep—and painful. For countries which have not yet seen any decline in emissions—which, worldwide, is most of them—the steepest cuts would have to come very early. In many cases such scenarios are barely physically imaginable, let alone politically feasible.” 

No wonder Chris Bowen was peacocking so hard in Question Time.

Because this confirms what the 2025 Statistical Review of World Energy wrote earlier this month that "national priorities — such as energy security and technological sovereignty — are increasingly overshadowing climate objectives.”

That explains the growth of fossil fuels usage in our region in 2024, as geopolitical tensions continue to shape Great Power competition in Asia-Pacific.

That’s why I’m challenging Labor’s climate and energy policy.

It’s early stages, but we are marking the drop zone for where the centre-right movement will land in the battle ahead.