By Tim Howard
As the National Party formally drops its commitment to net-zero emissions by 2050, the record of its deputy leader and local MP for Page, Kevin Hogan, shows a steady alignment with the party’s changing climate narrative over the past decade.
When Hogan entered parliament in 2013, his first target was the carbon tax.
In his maiden speech he declared it “a job-destroying tax” that “was never going to change the climate,” setting the tone for an approach that has always framed climate and energy policy through the lens of household costs and regional industry.
After the tax was repealed, Hogan issued a 2014 media release celebrating what he called a “record fall” in electricity prices in Page, attributing the decline to the removal of “Labor’s carbon tax,” which he said had “broken household budgets, particularly those of our ageing population on fixed incomes.”
By 2019, with climate politics shifting, Hogan acknowledged the science but not necessarily the policy direction.
Asked locally about the issue, he said, “I agree climate change is a real risk that needs us to respond accordingly,” though without spelling out what that response should entail.
Two years later, in 2021, the Nationals’ federal party room adopted what it called “in-principle support for a process towards net-zero by 2050,” after internal bargaining over safeguards for regional jobs and industries.
Hogan backed that compromise, consistent with his own public emphasis on regional impacts rather than emissions targets alone.
His parliamentary record reflects the same caution.
According to the voting database They Vote for You, Hogan voted against motions to bring the net-zero date forward to 2035, placing him firmly within the Nationals’ mainstream on climate ambition.
As shadow minister for trade and tourism in 2023, Hogan attacked the Albanese government’s proposed carbon border tax on imports as “nothing but a tax for tax sake,” arguing it would fuel cost-of-living pressures and undermine competitiveness—again echoing the Nationals’ cost-first framing of climate policy.
When Hogan was elected deputy leader in May 2025, he described climate policies as one of several areas due for review.
“We have no timeline… we’re going to have a review of it, get an audit,” he told the ABC, adding that any plan should consider “what’s achievable” and the effect on affordability and reliability—language that foreshadowed the party’s next move.
That move came this month, when the Nationals’ federal council voted to remove the 2050 net-zero target from its platform.
Hogan, present as deputy leader, told The Guardian there was “a majority view in the room that climate change was real, emissions had to be reduced and that affordability and reliability had to be taken into account.”
From repudiating the carbon tax, to conditional acceptance of a net-zero “process,” to today’s open review of the target itself, Hogan’s public comments have kept pace with the Nationals’ incremental retreat from long-term emissions commitments.
Throughout, his message has been consistent: climate change is acknowledged, but the costs of addressing it—particularly for regional Australia—remain the overriding concern.
