THE HON DAVID LITTLEPROUD MP
Leader of The Nationals
Shadow Agriculture Minister
18 September 2025
Labor’s 2035 emissions reduction target an ‘expensive charade’
Leader of The Nationals David Littleproud said Labor’s 2035 emissions reduction target is nothing more than an expensive charade on Australian families, that would lead to more taxes, higher electricity costs and families paying more at the checkout.
Mr Littleproud said the 2035 target was a deception, given Labor was falling well short of its 2030 emissions reduction target, and Labor could not explain how it would reach its reckless 2035 emissions reduction target of 62 to 70 per cent or how much it would cost working families.
“Labor is recklessly trying to achieve the impossible, rather than doing what’s sensible, and those families and communities that can least afford it will bear the burden,” Mr Littleproud said.
“This reckless target opens the door to more and higher taxes under Labor, like broadening the Safeguards Mechanism to tax more industries and businesses.
“It also opens the door to a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, taxing products like the steel and cement that build houses and fertilisers and chemicals that help grow our food.
“When Labor taxes industries, transport and businesses, Australian families end up paying, through higher prices at the checkout and local job losses.”
Mr Littleproud said the 2035 target is more reckless Labor ideology being forced onto regional Australia, with devastating consequences to regional communities, industries and jobs.
“Labor’s failing renewables-only policy is impacting regional communities right now – damaging agricultural land and food production, steamrolling the rights of communities and increasing energy costs for families and businesses.
“Labor is destroying the very thing it’s meant to protect – the environment – with its all-renewables obsession at any cost. We are seeing the native environment being ripped up with transmission lines, industrial solar panels and wind turbines.
“No country of the industrial size and scale of Australia has an all-renewables approach. For Labor to achieve any kind of target, it has already given out more than $60 billion worth of subsidies, but our energy bills continue to increase.
“The government will still not tell us their integrated system plan, which is what the energy grid will look like, what the actual cost of it is, despite the fact Australia only produces a little over one per cent of total global emissions.
“That’s why every time you receive your power bill, it should have Anthony Albanese’s and Chris Bowen’s face on it.”
