When Parliament resumes today for the last week of sittings before a long break, the House of Representatives will continue its debate on Barnaby Joyce’s private member’s bill to abolish the net zero emissions target.

The government has taken the highly unusual step of giving the bill a priority almost always denied to such private member’s business, to showcase divisions within the Coalition. Labor’s decision to do so is political mischief-making of the highest order, but who can blame them? In the Senate, meanwhile, Joyce’s consigliere Matt Canavan will be introducing his own private senator’s bill to the same effect. (The fact that Canavan is currently supposed to be conducting a review of National Party policy on the issue shows how seriously that process can be taken.)

Opposition leader Sussan Ley is facing friendly fire from Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce, whose private members bill aims to abolish the net zero emissions target. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Tomorrow, it is likely that the issue will be agitated, for the second consecutive week, in the Liberal party room, as members of the party’s right seek to circumvent the more authentic process of policy review being undertaken by the shadow minister Dan Tehan.

These events come as yet another state branch of the Liberal Party, the Queensland division, voted at its annual conference a fortnight ago to abandon the net zero target. (The hybrid Liberal National Party is the........

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