Australia news LIVE: Coalition to meet to finalise net zero position; Suicide blast outside Pakistan court kills 12, injures 27

One of the few Liberal MPs who held their Sydney seat as teal independents capitalised on concerns over climate change to take blue ribbon electorates away from the party will push to abandon net zero.

Lindsay MP Melissa McIntosh says her western Sydney constituents are being severely impacted by high energy prices and will push for the 2050 emissions target to be dumped at today’s party room meeting.

“It’s actually not factional and it’s not ideological, it is about how much my community is suffering,” she told ABC Radio Sydney.

“I would like us to land on a position on net zero and I would like us to be a strong opposition,” McIntosh said.

“That’s really important for us as a first step to return into government.”

McIntosh said she hoped there would not be a leadership spill against Sussan Ley.

“We need to give the leader time, it’s been what? Just over 100 days.

“We need to be a strong opposition first, or attempt to be a strong opposition, before we even consider that.”

Staying with Hume, and she has praised Opposition Leader Sussan Ley’s approach so far but says there will need to be consensus reached within the party.

Asked about whether she was confident Ley could keep the party together despite differing views on net zero, Hume said the opposition leader had done “exceptionally well”.

“She has led the party consistently throughout the last 6 months, but now it’s time to put some stakes on the ground, get some agreement,” she said.

Liberal senator Jane Hume has acknowledged voters will not consider voting for the party without a net zero target but says the country should not have to align itself with the Paris Agreement.

“I don’t want to sound too parochial, but the problem is I am,” she said during a press conference.

“While these global agreements are important, we should be able to forge a uniquely Australian way to get there. We can’t afford to simply turn out the lights to meet objectives that Labor have set for us. It was crazy to legislate the targets.”

However, Hume, who is advocating to lift the moratorium on nuclear energy, said a net zero target in some form was important to get the party back on voters’ radars.

“Australians are telling us, every single poll is telling us, that a credible climate policy is represented by an objective to reach a net zero,” she said during a press conference in Canberra this morning. “That’s not unreasonable and it’s not impossible.”

Liberal senator Leah Blyth was on a flight from Adelaide to Canberra this morning for a party room meeting on net zero when the cabin of the plane started to fill with smoke.

“We fly a fair bit and certainly before going into politics I spent a lot of time flying but I’ve never had a cabin sort of filled with smoke quite like that before,” the South Australian senator told Adelaide breakfast radio earlier this morning.

“So that was certainly unusual and hats off to the Qantas staff who were calm, cool and collected and they got us back safely on the ground with no incidents.”

Blyth was travelling with colleagues Tony Pasin, the member for Barker, and Senator Andrew McLachlan.

The incident happened upon take-off, Blyth said. The plane was immediately grounded and passengers were safely disembarked with the help of cabin crew.

The Liberals are expected to finalise their position on net zero at today’s party room meeting.

Dumping the net zero target will consign the Liberal Party to perpetual opposition, according to the Liberal who narrowly lost the Sydney seat of Bradfield to a teal candidate.

Gisele Kapterian emailed shadow ministers ahead of a crunch meeting of the Liberal Party room at which the 2050 climate target is expected to be dumped in favour of a new emissions reduction pledge.

“My experience on the ground is that a credible, technology-focused climate policy is essential to securing the many discerning voters in key urban and suburban seats,” Kapterian, who lost by 26 votes, said in the email, first reported by the Australian Financial Review.

“Without these seats, mathematically, we cannot win government, nor, from a principled perspective, should a party of government be incapable of capturing these seats.”

Kapterian said she supported nuclear energy to reach net zero, a tagline she said was “a proxy for how seriously we take our commitment to a sustainable future.”

“That language is not a proxy for the ALP’s commitment to continuing unaffordable energy prices, inefficient subsidies, and the degradation of our natural environment. Furthermore, the outcome of the last election shows that our commitment to net zero was not an electoral drag in the seats we hold today.”

Liberal frontbencher Tim Wilson says he is confident his party can help define the country’s clean energy future instead of capitulating to the National Party’s net zero stance.

“It’s wonderful day to be a Liberal,” Wilson said as he arrived at Parliament House this morning. “One of the great things about being a Liberal is that we stand up for who we are, what we believe, and more importantly, we’re going to fight for the whole of the country.”

“There’s an alternative choice, which is we just end up being a National Party-lite, or we can define the future of this country. We can fight for hope and opportunity and building out and reindustrialising our country with the energy sources that we need, setting a sovereign target for our emissions, and, of course, building out our clean industrial future. And I’m super excited about choosing that”.

Queensland MP Garth Hamilton, who has spoken out against net zero, simply said: “We should have had this [meeting] four years ago”.

The public is seeking a serious outcome on net zero from the Liberal Party today, Tasmanian senator Richard Colbeck said upon his arrival at Parliament House this morning.

“It’s quite clear that the Australian community want to see something serious from us, so that we put ourselves in a position of where we should be, which is a party of government,” Colbeck told journalists.

“It’s an important conversation for us all. It’s an important conversation for the country, and then we make a decision that resonates with the Australian voting public,” the factional moderate said.

“The day will bring what it brings, but hopefully it’s one that resonates with the Australian people, because as a party of government, that’s what we need to do,” he said.

Nationals leader David Littleproud has refused to say if his party would stay in the Coalition if the Liberals decided to keep a net zero target, saying on Sky News only that his role was to put his party’s position “with the how, not just say no, but what and how, which is what we have done with a cheaper, fairer, better plan”.

Littleproud bridled at suggestions that ditching net zero meant the Nationals were climate deniers.

“The only argument Labor’s got at the moment, there is no intellectual argument against what the National Party’s put,” he said.

“They’ve reverted to pure old politics as saying that we’re climate deniers. That’s all the intellectual rigor they can bring to this debate. It shows this government is out of touch, and they’re going to spend nearly $2 billion on a conference to create a grandstand for Albanese to talk to the world.”